Monet Inspired Flowers in a Vase

This is a beautiful project perfect for Mother's Day. I found it on the Instagram account of elementary art teacher Joel Scholten. @scholtenart

I made a few changes to suit older kids, as I taught this to my Grade 4-6 class.

We looked at the work of Claude Monet, noticing how he used many different colours and short brushstrokes. They painted a background for their still life using various neutral shades of acrylic paint. I use the brand Demco EnCouleurs which is a Canadian art supply company. They have affordable yet high quality student paint options which I love. 

While their background was drying, they painted stylized roses using a q-tip and tempera paint: a colour of their choice plus white. They filled two sheets of 9 x 12" paper.

The next class, they cut out a symmetrical vase from a folded sheet of construction paper of their choice. They glued this onto their background. 

Then they used a Q-tip and two shades of green paint to paint the greenery in their vase. The q-tips are awesome because you just throw them out after. 

No brush washing, woo-hoo!!

While the greenery dries, students cut out their roses. I had pre-cut a bunch of corrugated cardboard squares. Glue each rose onto the cardboard and arrange on the vase and glue down.

I love how these turned out with the low relief effect!