Georgia O'Keeffe / Close Up Drawing

Mini Biography
Georgia O’Keeffe was born November 15, 1887 in Wisconsin. Her parents were dairy farmers and had seven children. O’Keeffe’s mother put all her girls in art classes and when Georgia showed skill they let her go to art school.
Georgia went to college at the School of the Art institute of Chicago. Here she won a contest for still life painting. Her prize was to see an art show at Lake George, New York. The place she visited was owned by Alfred Stieglitz, the man she would later marry.
After college O’Keeffe was an elementary art teacher. She also taught at Texas A&M College. She continued to make her own artwork and take art classes. In 1916 a friend of hers showed Steiglitz drawings by O’Keeffe. He liked them so much that he put up a show of her work without telling her. O’Keeffe was very mad that her work was on display without her knowing. She went to the gallery to ask for them back, but ended up letting them stay and moving to New York. She later fell in love with Steiglitz and they were married. Steiglitz was a photographer and he often took pictures of O’Keeffe.
O’Keeffe like to paint the landscapes around her. In New York she painted skyscrapers, at Lake George she painted the lake. When she visited New Mexico she painted the desert. She liked New York so much she moved there.
O’Keeffe became the most famous painter in the United States. Her work sold for lots of money. She was the first woman to have an art show in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. She was very famous for flowers and bones she painted very close up. She used oil paint and watercolors. When she was in her 80s she lost a lot of her vision. When she couldn’t paint anymore she decided to make pottery, which can be made without seeing.


Tie In to Project
Georgia O’Keeffe loved using a magnifying glass to look inside flowers and paint them very big. It is easy to draw something smaller than it is, but drawing something big is harder. Good examples are “Black Iris” or “Red Canna.” There is no background in the paintings, only foreground. It looks like you are inside the flower.

Demonstration
Tape a copy of “Black Iris” and your own drawings of an up close- cropped image on the board. Have the student’s guess what the image is. Draw on the board around the drawing what the image would look like as a whole.

Project
Cut a piece of paper in half and tape it to a larger sheet of paper. Draw a flower or other interesting object to fill the entire space of the larger sheet of paper. You may have to demonstrate drawing to fill the space, emphasizing that the petals should touch the edge of the paper. If time allows color or paint the object. Do not leave any white space blank. Remove the smaller piece of paper. This smaller piece should be a close up view of the center of the object drawn.

Tip: Tape on the back to avoid missing color spots or use watercolor tape and make a border.


Materials
Paper- 8x10 and 8x5 for each student. (Or scissors and have them cut and share)
Pencil
Crayons, Paint, or Markers

Variations
You can cut the paper smaller than 1/2 a sheet to fill the space more easily.

Instead of drawing the subject matter in class, photocopy a drawing of an image and give it to students. Have them place a viewfinder on the drawing to find an interesting close up. Cut this out and paint it. Or re-draw what is in the viewfinder at a larger scale.