Sunflower in Perspective Lesson

Perspective in Art
Medium: Water Colors

Reason for the Lesson: This is a lesson about perspective.  Touching and feeling an object can help students develop a piece of art that represents their own perspective on the object.  This lesson uses water colors so the students will be able to explore the way in which water colors work.  Having them touch and feel the real sunflower allows them to see to see the texture which will help them to understand perspective when it comes to drawing their own sunflowers.

Prep Time: 10 - 15 minutes, more if checking out books at library.

Classroom Time: 1 Hour

Materials: A REAL sunflower, various pictures of sunflowers from artists, Water color paper, water colors, sharpies, pencil, erasers,

Preparation: Collect all materials. Check out books from library that feature sunflowers.  Find a LIVE sunflower for the kids to look at and touch!

Instructions for Leading Lesson
Discuss interesting facts about the Sunflower. Talk about height that a sunflower will grow; discuss number of seeds a flower will produce; Discuss that Native Americans used the seeds to make oil; show  sunflower artwork created by popular artists from the past.

Discuss the shapes found in a sunflower;  circle for the inside, tear drop for the petals, hearts for the leaf, etc.  Discuss the varying color found in sunflowers and how all sunflowers are different from each other. Then we touched on texture and how the area in the middle of the flower has texture because of the seeds.  

Give the class a chance to draw their own sunflower.   Start by drawing a large circle with pencil on the upper part of the paper.  Then draw a smaller circle on the inside that will become the inside of the flower.   Add the petals and talked about how to layer the petals to look like there are several layers. Draw stem and leaves. Instruct to outline pencil markings with the black sharpie.   Add water colors, use lightest color first, yellow then worked through orange to add additional color and dimension.  Add green for the stem and leaves then finally adding blue for the background.

Credit: Art-A-Attack