Georgia O’Keefe Art Study – Poppy Collage Art Project

This post is our honest review of a product that we received for free. All opinions expressed are solely mine.

The Poppy Collage art project from See the Light has been one of my FAVORITE art projects with our kids so far. We are using the year 1 art curriculum from See the Light this year, but Poppy Collage is part of the Art Project series from artist Pat Knepley.

Our kids have really enjoyed the art lessons on dvd and I love that the teaching and history behind the lessons are all included in the four step-by-step lessons. Poppy Collage does have a little bit of prep involved {cutting tissue paper and gathering the few supplies}, but otherwise the lessons are full of art history taught from a Biblical perspective.

Poppy Collage focuses on the artwork of Georgia O’Keefe and her gorgeous close-up paintings. Throughout the lessons, teacher Pat Knepley shares the about the life of O’Keefe, different paintings and styles that O’Keefe worked on throughout her career, and then teaches children art elements and principles using different mediums.

The Poppy Collage Art Project

The video includes 4 step-by-step lessons and although the segments range from 17 to 22 minutes, you need to allow about 1 hour per lesson to work on the project. Our kids would pause the video every now and then to work on what the session assignment and would then resume watching. Here’s a look at the breakdown of the four lessons:

THE ABSTRACTED FLOWER DRAWING (22 minutes)

TISSUE PAPER COLLAGE TECHNIQUE (20 minutes)

LAYERING TRANSLUCENT HUES (21 minutes)

FINAL DETAILS TO CREATE INTEREST (17 minutes)

Creating Our Collages

Our kids set up camp in the living room around a table so they could see the video better and we put all of the supplies in the center of the table. We did have a live plant at first, but used some real pictures of poppies for the project as well.

Long after the older kids were finished with their project, Kaleb was hanging out in the living room and finishing up the background of his poppy collage. He was so particular about this one!

As a mom without a lot of art history knowledge {or memory – ahem}, I love how the video covers not only the history of the artist and famous pieces, but also the techniques and processes used in artwork. If I tried to explain art terms and model how to do something it can be really difficult, but the videos easily show the kids how to do certain techniques {and I can even participate along too!}.

Supplies for the projects are simple – glue, pencils, tissue paper, poster board, etc… no hunting around for some crazy things that I’ve never heard of before. Although targeted for ages 10+, all of our kids {ages 6 to 11} participated in the Poppy Collage art project.

Our Poppy Collage Projects

Laurianna, age 11

McKenna, age 10

While all of the kids created beautiful pieces, I was really amazed at the time and detail that Kaleb took with his project. Occasionally I would see McKenna lean over to help him with a few things, but he faithfully sat and finished his project and was SO excited when it was finished {me too!}.

Note: Zachary did one as well, but he didn’t want me to take a picture of it because his did not have a ‘filler’ background, so he thought it wasn’t as nice as the other kids {it was!}. His is hanging above his school desk where we can all see it still.

Find Out More

Poppy Collage is one video that is a part of the Art Projects from See the Light. You can purchase the DVDs individually {$14.95/ea} or purchase the entire year of nine art projects based on famous artists and receive a bonus cartooning video. We personally own the Art Class year 1 series and are working through that, but love these special projects. The kids are excited to work on another project soon!

These lessons have been so fun for us to work on and we can’t wait to share more with you soon!

Our family was given a copy of Poppy Collage to use and review. All opinions expressed in this post are solely mine.