Fourth Grade Texas Wildflowers

Materials Needed

• 9 x 12 poster board
• pencils
• black glue
• watercolors/brushes
• newspaper
Other resources
The Legend of the Bluebonnet- Tomie de Paola
The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush- Tomie de Paola

Getting to Know series- Cezanne
Cezanne prints
Texas wildflower prints

My fourth graders read the books The Legend of the Bluebonnet and The Legend of the Indian Paintbrush, both by Tomie dePaola. When we finished, we looked at pictures of different Texas wildflowers. Using these pictures, they created their own still-life of Texas wildflowers. They started their still-life with a pencil drawing on a piece of white paper.

When they finished, they turned the paper over to the back and they colored on the back of the drawing with their pencil. It was really important to make sure the entire paper was covered in graphite.



They placed this on top of a piece of poster board, with the graphite touching the poster board. They used their pencil to trace over their original drawing, creating a graphite transfer onto the poster board.

Using black glue (I make this with school glue and black acrylic), they traced their lines. When the glue was dry, they used watercolors to paint their flowers. They used many different techniques to paint. They used wet-on-wet and dry brush. They used different values of the same color and made some of their own colors.

These turned out so stunning, that I used many of them for various shows throughout the year. Pin It