6th grade Art Studio students are beginning a unit on abstract art and composition. Abstract art is art that is distorted or exaggerated but taken from a realistic art source. We will look at Georgia O'Keefe's flower paintings, which take an extreme close-up view of flowers. By blowing up the flowers to fill the page or blowing them up further so that only a part of them fit on the page, the flowers become distorted , focusing on the colors and design elements rather than the subject matter. Students will look at silk flowers and photos of flowers through a viewfinder, designing a composition that explodes off the page in the style of Georgia O'Keefe. They will practice a variety of techniques with oil pastels, including working with oil to create an painting effect by melting the pastels together.
