Crayon Resist

This project began with examples of Georgia O'Keeffe's drawings of flowers. The teacher emphasized that the artist's drawings filled the page and were in focus. We made flowers by the technique of crayon resist.

The procedure included:

• students choose a flower to draw or come up with their own flower design
• draw and color the flower by pressing hard with crayons
• fill the whole 9 x 9 paper with the flower design - you can run off the page
• recolor the flower pressing hard again
• apply watered down black tempera paint over the top of the flower by brushing it from the center to the outside in the direction of the pedals
• any areas of the paper without crayons on it will turn blackened or gray

I had a hard time deciding what design to use for the flower. None of the examples grabbed me, so I went with a simple daisy type look. I had problems getting the pedals to be even and had to erase a few times. I like how the tempera paint brushes along the shape of the pedals giving them a feeling of movement.

An extension activity in science would be to study the plant parts. Students would have a 12 x 18 piece of paper to draw on so they could include all of the parts of the plant. Once the paper is dry, they would label the plant parts with colored sharpies.