Georgia O’Keefe (1887 – 1986) was an American artist. Born near Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Georgia O’Keeffe was a major figure in American art from the 1920s. She received widespread recognition for her technical contributions, as well as for challenging the boundaries of modern American artistic style. She had a long and varied career but is mostly famous for her over sized flower and bone paintings.
When asked about why she painted flowers 10 to 100 larger than in real life she responded “A flower is relatively small. Nobody sees a flower – really – its so small – we haven’t time. So I said to myself – I’ll paint what I see – what it is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it”
I was fortunate to see a wonderful exhibit of her Flower paintings a few years back at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I have never looked at a flower the same way again.
Materials: heavy weight sketching paper, or watercolor paper, sketching pencil, watercolor pencils or watercolor paint.
Inspiration is “Flower on Red Earth No. 1” 1943
Step #1: Draw very light pencil guidelines down the center of the paper and across the middle. Start with a small circle in the middle.
Step #2: Draw the petals starting from the center circle and have them overlap as shown. Make sure a least one petal goes off the page.
Step #3: Draw tiny circles around the center circle and add the filament and anther coming out of the center of the flower.
Step #4: Draw leaves behind the petals and add your own details.
