Sunflowers Bloom Bright at SIS

Bold colors and blending techniques were the focus of a recent fourth-grade sunflower project in Meg Gioffe’s art class at Somers Intermediate School.

The students created sunflowers inspired by artist Georgia O’Keeffe. O’Keeffe is known for her use of smooth blended brush strokes and vibrant colors. Mrs. Gioffe started the class with a lesson on O’Keeffe’s style and asked the students what they noticed about her artwork.

“It looks very realistic,” said one student 

“Not all the flowers are perfect,” another student added.

Pointing to the vases of sunflowers on top of the students’ workspaces, she agreed with their observations. “You can tell she’s painting from a real flower for inspiration,” said Mrs. Gioffe. “Our flower examples aren’t real, so they look perfect.”

Last year, these same students worked on Vincent Van Gogh-inspired projects. They learned about his style and how every time he touched his paintbrush to the canvas it was visible, showing texture and movement in a different way than O’Keeffe. This year, the students are studying O’Keeffe whose style is completely different with smooth brush strokes.

“It’s so gorgeous and lusciously smooth and blended,” Mrs. Gioffe added, referencing an example of O’Keeffe’s art. “You can’t see where the brush hit the canvas.”

After their lesson, students got to work on their projects, which they had already started. To begin, they drew their sunflowers on black paper using white pencils. Once they were happy with their drawing, then they covered the lines with white glue.

“We drew them with a white color pencil and then we went over them with glue to make a wall so that the color doesn’t go into the next part,” said Henry S.

The next step of the project needed new supplies. Cray-Pas oil pastels and paper blending sticks were provided to every table. Using the Cray-Pas, students colored in their sunflower petals with various shades of yellows, oranges, and even a little brown. All the colors on each petal were blended using the blender stick. Using the blender helped to smooth out any of the lines from coloring to help replicate the style of O’Keeffe’s sunflower. Using the oil pastels allowed the students to explore the colors without fear of making mistakes.

“If you mess up with the wrong color,” said Lily W., “then you can just color over it and use the blender to smooth it out again.”

The final step in the project was to color the background. Students were free to use whatever color they wanted. Some chose to color a bright blue sky. Others decided a sunset would be a nice addition. While others let their imaginations take them to less common places.

“I just wanted to be a little unique by doing a summer night,” said Joseph S. “These are fireflies,” he added, referring to the flecks of yellow on the black background.

“I kind of wanted to make it realistic but not too realistic,” said Amelia J. “I might make the background a forest or tall grass.”

The finished products were blooming with bold, vibrant colors and rich, gorgeous textures. While each picture was unique, together they created a beautiful bouquet representing the fourth-grade class.