O'Keefe on a pyramid

photographed flat to capture the detail

I love introducing students to the work of Georgia O'Keefe, especially the huge flowers that focus on the perspective of the artist and the viewer.    I also try every year to have 4th grade students create some work using a pyramid.  The pyramid usually shows up on the yearly assessments and often students don't have a strong visual in mind of just what that looks like.  By creating one in the art room, I hope to reinforce that visual so that at least that question will be an easy answer for my students.  This year I decide to combine the pyramid with flower images in the style of O'Keefe.  I used my document camera to project the flowers for easy viewing and began the lesson by having students break the flower down into easy shapes to reproduce rather than viewing it as a contour shape.  We've done a lot of work with value in 4th grade and I felt this was another lesson to review value by encouraging students to really study the values of each flower petal and incorporate the multiple values into their coloring process.  You know a lesson has gone well when students are excited with their finished product and eager to take it home and share it with family.  I was frantically taking photos as students cleaned up to make sure I could share one or two of these!

An assembled pyramid