O'Keeffe Inspired Flowers and Abstractions

Kids are SO convinced that they cannot draw! Actually, all adults are convinced of this as well.I constantly hear the grief of, "I STINK at DRAWING!!!" It simply isn't true.  A more accurate cry would be, "Gosh darnit! I've never been taught to draw and I find that SO frustrating!"

Anyone can draw. I swear. Just like anyone can do math, lose weight or drive a car. These are not natural talents/instincts for MOST people. They are things you must learn to do and work at!

Back to the flowers. I don't know if there is a lot of controversy over using grids to draw because I really don't care. Grids work. They teach students how to narrow their focus to one specific area and draw things in relationship to other things. 

So the kids have been amazing and put up with every silly drawing exercise I made them do: blind contour drawing, draw the silly kindergarten shape from the left in the square on the right, silly grid drawings, how to draw cylinders, cubes, etc...and low and behold, when I gave them the tast of drawing a flower, they rocked!! Now some of them missed the boat on their coloring skills, but everyone did SO WELL drawing a flower! 

Part 1:

Find a suitable flower image. Draw a grid on the image. Lightly draw a grid 2x the size on your final paper. Draw the flower. (Insert quick step for part 2 here) Color the flower using colored pastels. 

Part 2: 

Use newsprint or tracing paper and draw a 2"x3" rectangle. Trace a 2"x3" section of your flower drawing. Now draw THAT section much larger on a second piece of final paper. Color this using an analogous color scheme. 

Now you have a flower that shows off your fancy technical skills and a very cool abstraction. Quite a pair!