2nd-5th grade school art class: Painting a bouquet of tulips

This project was inspired by a bouquet of multicolor tulips I received recently. I liked that some of the tulips had gradient color petals changing from yellow near the stem to white and then light pink at the edges. So I tried to paint them on our next art class!

The project took 2 sessions. My students are 7-10 years old and they already knew the concept of drawing tulips from our previous lesson – check it here.

Materials: paper, acrylic paints, crayons for background, pencils, erasers & a bouquet of tulips.

Session 1:

1. Start with drawing an edge of a table.
2. Add a vase. Think about the composition. Make sure the vase is NOT too big so there is enough space for flowers. Don’t place the vase close to the edges – make it close to the center.
3. Draw tulip cups (take a look at this lesson). Make the flowers pretty big (many of my students tend to draw everything very tiny). Note that the flowers in a bouquet can overlap.
4. Add stems and leaves.
5. Make the background with a long side of crayon (go over the flowers but not around them).
6. Start painting the tulips. Begin with lighter ones. Make some tulips with gradient petals. Make part of the flower one color and another with different color (example: yellow + red, light pink + dark pink, pink + purple). Ask kids to mix their shades. Note that they should not mix more than 2 colors so the color stays clean and bright. Also note that the direction of brushstroke should be from the stem to the edge of petals. We stopped the first session on this step.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Session 2

1. Paint other tulips.
2. Paint leaves. Kids can mix shades of green (lighter, darker) to make the leaves more realistic.
3. Add stems with thin brush.
4. Paint the vase. Show students that there is a lighter part of the vase and a shaded.
5. Paint the table. Add shade on a side of the vase.