Flowers for Mom

For Mother's Day, we made mom a big vase of flowers!

This is a mixed media project that could be adjusted a bit to work "beautifully" (get it?) with all age groups. 

First we examined a vase of flowers and a floral painting. We observed various flower shapes and decided it wasn't necessary to paint super-detailed flowers - simple blotches of paint could be turned into flowers later in the process.


On a large sheet of sulphite paper, we drew a line to represent the top of the vase. Then we painted various flower shapes above the line with cake temperas and white liquid tempera (to create tints).



We worked on creating flowers of different shapes, sizes, and colors. We also tried to repeat various flowers throughout the bouquet for repetition and harmony. Then we added the stems and leaves, and a few fallen flowers on the sides.




While the paintings dried we created our vases. Younger artists used simple squarish shapes; older ones created more elaborate, symmetrical vases. The vases were collaged with various punch-outs and cut pieces of paper.




Now that the paint was dry, it was time to add some black outlining to better define the shapes and details in the flowers. (Our Little Artists skipped this step.)






The main idea was to add enough detail to determine what the flowers looked like using Sharpies. This was done by adding shape outlines, textures, swirls, popcorn lines (like cloud shapes), and other types of lines to define our flowers, stems, and leaves. 

I just LOVE details, so this is my favorite part of the project... but that's just me. Once the details were completed, the vase was glued down, and some artists added additional collage elements, like butterflies fluttering around the flower bouquet.