Sunflowers

Grade 1/2: Drawing Sunflowers

This was a high energy class where I found myself riffing as it went. The previous class was finishing up with another project that required paint, but I hadn’t had time to clean up the trays, so they ended up being used in the second half of this one.

I had a big bunch of (silk) sunflowers in a vase in the Art Room, so I gave the class the task of drawing from that still life, pointing out how the flowers look different from one another, depending on their size and position (one behind the other, facing different directions). We talked about the size of the centre portions, and the shape and colours of the petals.

No pencils – I gave them the oil pastels to draw with directly. They really got into it! You can see the energy in the drawings. That exercise went fairly quickly, so (thinking on my feet) I hauled out the still-wet trays of paint and gave them each a brush, with a directive to fill in all round their pastel flower drawing with the paint, mixing right on the page as they went. I liked what I was seeing before, but this made me even happier … the colours popped, and that great energy I saw before went just a little bit further. At this age they did not worry about getting things ‘just right’ so that freedom carries through. Love that.

It was a lot more cleanup afterward, but well worth it. Bravo, grade 1/2’s!