Wyatt’s favorite thing we do in our homeschool is art. He loves to create and paint and draw and learn, and I love to encourage that side of him. This year my plan is to focus on one artist a month, with the exception of November and December when we are just going to do seasonal type crafts and projects. We kicked things off in September with Van Gogh, and then October moved on to Georgia O’Keeffe. In all honesty, I was not super familiar with her work or her life, so it was a learning month for me as well. I knew about certain aspects of her work, like what people say about some of her paintings, but nothing about her life or her other work.

When I started to look at her paintings, I found some that were just perfect for fall – autumn leaves, apples, and bones. A ladder to the moon. More than just her beloved flowers. We learned that she loved nature, that she loved to take small things that some people may overlook and recreate them large so that they could not be ignored. Which was what we focused on for our first lesson!

Wyatt’s inspiration piece was O’Keeffe’s Autumn Leaves, Lake George, 1924. According to this website, fall in the Adirondacks was her favorite season, and I can’t say that I blame her. I would love to spend a fall in the Adirondacks!

I thought this was the perfect place to begin with Wyatt. He free painted a background, we let it dry, then added the leaf over the top, emphasizing that we were making something small, bigger for all to see.

Our next project up was two weeks later, after he had gotten over his cold. This time we based his piece on Georgia O’Keeffe’s apple paintings. We used the apples we had gotten at the orchard, and I let Wyatt arrange his own still life, and then we did some hand over hand for the first apple shape. Then Wyatt did the rest on his own!

Finally, the finale piece. This one I wanted to sort of line up with Halloween, so… we did bones. But not real bones! I did buy a replica of a raven skull from Etsy, but it is made of plastic and is not bone. I thought it would be neat to have a model, and I didn’t want like a big cattle skull or something. So, raven it was. The company sent us the one I ordered plus a bonus tiny one that I put on our nature shelf.

This particular painting I did a lot of hand over hand with Wyatt so that he could get the general sense of the shape and what we were doing. He did paint the background by himself first though. I thought this turned out pretty neat!

We read so many books about Georgia! I loved that Wyatt would wander over and pick up a book, and know that he was reading about Georgia O’Keeffe, who he just called O’Keeffe. I had no idea who Georgia O’Keeffe was when I was 8; as I said, I barely knew anything about her at my current age until this study.

This section contains Amazon Affiliate Links.

Georgia Rises || Georgia in Hawaii || Through Georgia’s Eyes || Georgia’s Bones || My Name is Georgia || Georgia O’Keeffe || Little People Big Dreams Georgia O’Keeffe

We love the Little People, Big Dreams biographies and I am always thankful when I can find them on the people we are studying. Wyatt’s favorite book this time was Georgia’s Bones, which I admit was pretty neat. Georgia in Hawaii was fascinating to me, more than it was to him. She was hired by the Pineapple Company in Hawaii to visit the island, and paint for them – specifically, a pineapple. However, no one was going to tell her what to paint, and she painted everything BUT a pineapple! However, when she returned home she reflected on how in love she fell with Hawaii, and how that was due to the Pineapple Company, and she did end up painting them a pineapple.

This was a great month of art and learning, and I am excited to return to our artists in January. I have a really good one all lined up. I wanted Wyatt to have the experience of making seasonal fun stuff as well though, so November and December are all about this type of art, like I made in my youth in school. It will be fun too!