My First Flower Painting

This was a very successful introduction to painting lesson. If you have kids who have never painted before (how sad!) this is a good project to start with.1. Have the students to fold an 11" x 17" paper in half, across the middle so there are two 11" x 8.5" sections. Give each student a cup of blue tempera paint and brush. They are to a large pot or vase that nearly fills the bottom half of the paper.
2. Students paint about 5-6 groups of petals on the top half of the paper with red paint.
3. Students paint center of each flower with yellow. It's ok if the colors mix a bit - it only makes things more interesting.
4. Now the kids can also see how to make the color green as you can add a bit of blue paint in each cup of yellow. After they have mixed the color, they can add the stems by painting lines from each flower down to the vase. Add a few leaves and you have a lovely flower painting. Note: I found the folding of the paper really helped to make the kids use the whole paper. The tendency is to paint small, so you have to kind of force kids to think big sometimes.
CA Visual Art Standard: Creative Expression, Grade One
2.2 Mix secondary colors from primary colors and describe the process.