Thorpe Primary School

Where we all can shine

0113 5217040

parents@thorpe.leeds.sch.uk

Dolphin Lane, Thorpe, Wakefield,
West Yorkshire, WF3 3DG

15 April 2020 

Hello art lovers.

Hope you all had a relaxing Easter holiday. If it was anything like mine, it was pretty much indistinguishable from all the other days in the past three weeks, there was just slightly more chocolate.

As this week's artist is Georgia O'Keeffe, I thought I would attempt to create a flower in her unique, close-up style. Also the sun is shining and I have been inspired by the plants starting to bloom in my garden. 

Last summer, I worked out that I could take pretty good close up photos on my phone. I'd only had the phone for 2 years at this point! I went a bit crazy taking photos of flowers, so I had lots to choose from for this project. Not really sure what this is, gardening is not really my forte.

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I'm not a big fan of painting, so I decided to to use soft pastels and coloured artist pencils to add detail. I've had these pencils since I was 16 and have not used them in over 20 years, so was very excited to dig them out and I was not disappointed. 

 

I started by lightly sketching the shape of the flower onto some cartridge paper and then started to block in some colour with the pastels. This was a bit messy, so I used an extra sheet of paper to rest my hand on, so I wasn't getting pastel all over the drawing.

 The technique is to use the pastel on it's side like this and then blend the pastel with your finger; you could even use a cotton bud if you don't want to get your hands messy. Make sure to keep the pastel strokes quite delicate, you can always add more colour if you need it, but it's hard to get rid of if you have put too much on. I have used a white pastel to add highlights.

Now the flower is completely covered with blended pastel, it's time to add detail with coloured pencils. The technique is to layer the colour over the top of the pastel with light pencil strokes as in the picture below.

I have used 3 or 4 different greens for this background, gently building up the colour using a cross hatching technique.

The finished picture, what do you think? I'm not sure it looks much like the original flower, but I really enjoyed drawing and colouring it. As always, if you try this yourself, I'd love to see your work via parents@thorpe.leeds.sch.uk