Spring Flowers in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe

The First Grader's at St. T's study Jazz and the music of North America in their classroom.  In the Art Studio, we study the visual artists of North America.  This spring we have been painting giant flowers in the style of Georgia O'Keeffe.  We begin our exploration by reading the book:  My Name is Georgia, by Jeanette Winter.

We want our flowers to be HUGE, so we each begin with a piece of white paper 24" X 36".  The First Graders are almost as big as these paintings!
I give them a demonstration in blending one color of wet paint with another.  Each of us chooses one color to have on our palette which we will blend with white.  After looking through flower catalogs and describing the early spring flowers that we have seen around our school and at home, we sketch out the shapes of our petals.  We make them big, big, BIG.  So big that they don't even fit on our huge paper!
Then, using one brush, we outline the petals with either the white or the colored paint.  We use the other puddle of paint to fill in the petals, always pulling our brushes in the directions that the petals would grow from the center of the flower. 

We stop here!  and wait till next week when our paint is dry and WON'T blend with the details we add to the centers and backgrounds.
After reading Miss Rumphius,

and re-examining the flowers catalogs, with particular attention to the centers of the flowers, we choose bright colors and fancy up our paintings from the center out. 

The finishing touch is the green paint we add to define the edges of the petals.
HAPPY SPRING!!!!!