Georgia O’Keeffe’s Fall Leaves

Georgia and her husband, Alfred, vacationed during the 1920’s at his family’s summer home in Lake George, New York. She would explore and hike daily. On those hikes she would find natural objects such as leaves, stones and branches. She adored all living things and their symbols of the changing seasons. She would often take such items as leaves and magnify them to the point of being semi-abstract while adding beautiful paint colors and textures to those leaves.

Here are our interpretations of our fall leaves.

Here are our interpretations of our fall leaves.
My 3rd grade students enlarged the leaves to fit in a
12 x 18 previously painted piece of construction paper.

Students looked at various types of leaves
before drawing out their leaf shape.

Next, they added various colors of oil pastels to

create texture on their leaves.

We looked at color swatches to get ideas of fall colors

and finished with painting

bold lines to represent the veins of the leaf.

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These lessons are great for ages 7–12 but any age student with some guidance can create a beautiful painting with these directions.

The PDF includes:

Step by Step full-color photo tutorials for each lesson
Background information about Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe timeline
Vocabulary words and learning objectives for each project
Supplies needed
Student galleries
I Can statements
National Standards
Reproducible leaf handouts for making templates
Reproducible shapes info handout
Reproducible landscape coloring sheet for early finishers
Reproducible artist statement
Vocab cards for each project
How To Make Painted Paper
11″ x 17″ poster