Looking for a fun, no-fail, 2-3 day painting project that ties in to art history and Veteran’s Day? Katie Mallette’s poppy field paintings for the win!

Our kids loved them, and we got lots of teacher compliments too.

We cut out 12″ x 18″ paper in half to make a skinnier composition at 6″ x 18″. The students used 3 different shades of green oil pastels to draw their stems and grass. Stress to them to start at the bottom of the paper and draw up.

Once they had their stems and grass drawn out, paint the large and medium red circles on the paper. Then paint the wildflowers around the poppies. Add black circles to the middle of your poppies and you’re done!

A student asked me why we didn’t paint on white paper instead of black paper. I thought about that and realized that would have been even better. The challenge when painting on black paper is that the red needs to be painted twice to get the brightest red. So next year we’re going to paint either a blue sky or a sunset sky before we do the rest.

Enjoy!

Materials:

• 6″ x 18″ paper
• 3 different shades of green oil pastels
• red tempera or acrylic paint
• white paint
• other colors for the wildflowers

Poppy Field paintings in progress

Poppy Field paintings in progress

Poppy Field paintings in progress

Georgia O’Keeffe, 1928, Oriental Poppies