Textured flowers: collaborative project

Working on the textures we painted these flowers with the 6th grade students. We practiced lots of different textures, using tempera painting with different tools, as small, large, flat and round paintbrushes, and toothpicks, chopsticks or cotton buds. Every student painted a quarter of a flower, so at the end we can compose all the paintings together in a big mural with colorful flowers.

To realize this painting we need first to draw the quarter of flower. The size of the square sheet and the ray of the biggest circle have to be the same for every students, in order to compose the drawing together. In my sample the drawing sheet is 24x24cm and the main circle’s ray is 15 cm. Subsequently we add two internal curved lines with the compass (without measuring), and three petals.

After that we paint every area with different solid colors. When the painting is perfectly dry we paint the textures with various tools. Eventually we draw the outlines of the flower with a black permanent marker. The activity takes around three hours. We need:

• a square drawing sheet
• pencil and rubber
• a compass
• tempera or acrylic paintings
• different paintbrushes (flat, round, small, large), toothpicks, chopsticks or cotton buds
• a permanent black marker