Josey’s Art School
Presents
Studying Art with the Masters
By
Robin Norgren, M.A.
This Lesson:
Georgia O’Keefe
“Black Mesa Landscape”
Discussion
· When Georgia O’Keeffe was a little girl, her mother used to read history and travel stories to her every night before bed.
· At the peak of her career, O’Keeffe left New York and moved to the exotic expanse of the Southwest to live a solitary life.
· O’Keeffe’s love for the landscape and energy of the Southwest shimmers with growing vibrancy. It was there, under the endless skies and fiery sunsets of the Southwest, that O’Keeffe developed not only the remarkable mastery of color for which she is known but also the most essential tool of all art — the ability to pay attention, to look and actually see.
Source: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/22/georgia-okeeffe-southwest/
Materials needed
Pencil (to write the child’s name on the back of the work)
8.5x11 or 9x12 white cardstock/precut poster board/140lb watercolor paper – something with a bit more stability to it than copy paper in order to withstand the amount of paint and glue your students will be using. You will need enough for each participant to use as the base for his/her artwork
Paintbrushes and water bowls
YOUR CHOICE: Tempura/Acrylic/Watercolor paints
Rulers (optional)
Baby wipes
Aprons
Length of Time/Duration of project:
30 minutes
Prep work:
- Gather the materials
This should take no more than about 20 -30 minutes
Instructions
You have a few options for how you want to proceed with developing the main thrust of the project. I work with 3-5 year olds in a Montessori setting. This means that you are met with a gamut of skill levels. Some children will have no problem handling more of the details of this project which means less time needed to prep and more of the experience for the way the artistic process works is offered to the child. I have attempted to give you two ends of the spectrum but please feel free to modify as needed.
1. Take your piece of white paper that you are using as the base for the project and write the child’s name on the back of the paper or let them write their names on their own. We will be creating 4 different types of lines to represents the texture of the landscape seen in Miss O’Keefe’s painting.
2. We added a bit more of a jagged edge to this line.
3. This line contains more softened bumps with a dip towards the middle. You can tie in geography terms here if you like to represent each of the lines.
4. Last line which represents the mountain range.
5. You may choose to designate colors for each of the segments like the original painting or add in discussion about the color wheel and which colors compliment/contrast with each other.
6. I will show you the colors my students chose to use.
7. I used a combination of watercolor and acrylic paint.
8. We talked about how to add texture with our paintbrush. You use a tapping motion with the thicker paint on top of the thinner paint.
9. For the mountain range, we alternated between black and white and did a little color mixing to get shades of gray.
Find all my art lessons over on Teachers Pay Teachers:
CLICK HERE: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Joseys-Art-School
Look at my free art videos on YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbQExZltWJHERASlzbZ6nLtjeqvpAgLY7