Flower Drawings

I was walking around outside collecting leaves and flowers for my workshop tomorrow when I remembered some flower paintings five and six year old students of mine did in the summer about five years ago. I remember being struck with how many details they noticed in the different kinds of plants, and how they translated those details to paper. 

I first offered china markers, crayons, and white watercolor paper. Then, each student choose one complementary pair of colors to add through gouache paint.

Summer is a great time of year to draw some flora and fauna from observation. If you want to replicate this experience and don’t have gouache, you could use tempera cakes or watered-down tempera paint.

The week of the class, we also looked at picture books by Douglas Florian for inspiration. Douglas also makes some great non-picture book art, which I will definitely share in future workshops.