Susan's Homeschool Blog

This post contains affiliate links. I was given access to the class to blog about it, which I was very glad to do.

This is the sixth and final week of Mixing with the Masters, and we are creating some fabulous Georgia O’Keeffe paintings. We created the famous “Red Poppy” with gradient painting techniques in acrylic. Our second art project was a watercolor of a delicate tulip, using advanced blending techniques from the demonstration video. Third, we painted a cow skull with mixed media. The background of the cow skull also contained blending and using various tones of one color.

Red Poppy Gradient Painting

Alisha (the video instructor for the course) shows us how to paint this beautiful “Red Poppy” painting, using gradients, or blending the reds into the oranges. She helps us to see the endless variety of color in an enlarged flower. Georgia O’Keeffe painted many enormous flowers and was famous for causing people to enjoy details that were normally hard to see or notice.

You could use a canvas for this project, or you can save money by painting it on watercolor paper. You will want to trim the paper to the size of the flower, if you use the printable template that is provided in the course.

Pink Tulip Watercolor

Alisha taught us how to blend different colors in watercolor, which is hard to do unless you understand that you need to control both the pigment and the amount of water that you are using. Also, if you make mistakes, nothing is permanent, because even dry watercolor can have water added, and then the paper towel can blot it enough that you can mostly remove the color and paint on top of it.

When my daughter shouted that she dripped the wrong color accidentally on her paper, we were able to remove it easily because of Alisha’s instructions.

Cow Skull Mixed Media

Georgia O’Keeffe moved to a desert, so she no longer had flowers to paint. Instead, she saw bones buried in the sand, so she began painting those bones with all their details. One famous painting was of a cow skull, and this is the painting we made with mixed media. We painted gradients of blue in the background the first day. The second day we painted the red and black stripes. The third day we decoupaged the skull shape to the painting with mod podge. I cut the skull out from the worn yellow pages from a book, using the template Alisha provided in the course. We painted on top of the skull, and then we added the details of the skull.

I was astounded by how much detail my oldest son was able to add to the skull! (It’s the first painting in the cow skull picture above.) I’ve been floored by the amount of art skills my kids have acquired through this Mixing with the Masters art class, and I highly recommend it! We focused on six of the most famous painters from history, and we learned their techniques and became even more familiar with their most famous works. My kids have also learned the background of the different art movements throughout history as well as a little about each artist’s life, enough to inculcate a greater love for art!