Flowers offer the opportunity to explore a wide color palette and endless shape possibilities, making them the perfect subject matter for the end of the year.
Using liquid watercolor will make quick work of covering the large paper with vibrant color and easily allows for the magic of watercolor resist, which will analyze your first grade students.
Begin the lesson by reading the book Camille and the Sunflowers by Laurence Anholt aloud to tie in an artist’s study of Vincent Van Gogh and his iconic sunflower paintings. Project examples of his work while students work for inspiration.
What You’ll Need:
– 12″ x 18″ piece of white sulphite paper
– Colored oil pastels
– Liquid watercolor in a variety of colors
– Large paintbrush
For an optional textured finish, you can use liquid glue and tissue paper squares.
1. Begin by drawing a large “U” shape for the vase near the bottom of the paper. It should be big enough for your whole hand to fit inside.
2. Add circles for the centers of the flowers above the vase with an oil pastel, then draw petals using a different color. Demonstrate different ways to drawing flowers so your students don’t get stuck drawing just one style.
Color in all of the flowers with oil pastel.
3. Color in the vase. White can be used in areas that you’d like to stay white.
4. Add a horizon line for the table.
5. Choose two colors of liquid watercolor; one for the table and one for the background.
Try to pick colors that you haven’t used in the flowers. It’s okay if you paint over the oil pastel lines or even on top of all of the flowers; the oil in the pastel will resist the watercolor, allowing it to shine through from underneath like magic.
Be sure to only brush over each area with paint once of the paper might rip. If this does happen, wait for it to dry and tape the back.
6. Once your painting has dried, places a tray of colored tissue paper and liquid glue out of the tables.
Students will invent their own ways of decorating their flowers; some might roll the tissue paper into seeds while others will add shapes to their vases.
No art curriculum is complete without a Van Gogh sunflower art lesson and this one is the perfect level for first grade. Aren’t they all unique and wonderful?
Successful art projects don’t require fancy art supplies, so here is my list of must-haves and brands that I stock every year.
DOWNLOAD by clicking the yellow box below!
What a colorful art lesson. I love how you had the kids draw a U shape for the vase – how smart. Thank you for helping me be better blogger and art teacher to my children!
Why did you water down the glue? How did that make ths a better work of art?
It makes the glue easier to apply.
I love this idea! I was looking for some ideas for art and this is perfect! Sunny and bright! Thank you!
I did this project with my 12, 8, 6, and 2 year old this morning and we all had such a good time with it. We left off the tissue paper and did them on 8.5×11 paper and we’re about to laminate them we we can use them as placemats for the summer. Thanks for such a cheery and engaging project for all of us!
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Thank you so much for this idea!! I just did this with my students today (1st-2nd) and they loved it!! I let them choose what kind of flowers they wanted to do and they turned out so cute. I also enjoyed tying it into a discussion about why the watercolors resisted the oil pastels. Thank you again!
fun projest
Please send the watercolor resist sunflowers the free download wasn’t working. Thank you
Hi Gina! You’re right! I alerted tech support and they’ll fix it. Sorry for the trouble! It’ll be fixed soon.