Autumn Still Life

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4th grade students were so excited to walk into art class and find that each table was set with a still life of gourds and mini pumpkins!  What a fun fall surprise art project! 

After having studied Paul Cézanne and his iconic still life paintings, students used oil pastels to recreate the colors and shading in these lovely Autumn vegetables.


Here in New England, decorative gourds like these are ubiquitous in fall!  Their fun shapes and colors make them so charming.  We recently viewed this PowerPoint to learn about Paul Cézanne and his quintessential still life paintings of apples and fruit.  The pumpkins and gourds were the perfect way to put a seasonal spin on this art history lesson.

For this activity, I brought in all the gourds and pumpkins from home (I go a little overboard with my fall decorating!).  However, you could also ask your class or community to donate the gourds.  Even if only half your students brought one in, it would still be enough for these group still life setups!

I set 2-3 gourds and/or mini pumpkins on a sheet of manilla construction paper, and each student got a piece of brown construction paper to create their drawings on.  We took a moment to study how the shapes overlapped one another before setting up our compositions.

I demonstrated how to shade basic spheres, which is something my students had already been practicing in class.  We used oil pastels, and I emphasized layering the colors together to really give richness to our drawings.

The oil pastel colors and opacity are just brilliant against the brown paper.  These drawings made a lovely Autumn display when we were finished!


Happy Coloring!

The 38-slide Paul Cezanne PowerPoint to accompany this lesson can be found in my TpT store, All About Art.

 

Click here for more K-8 Art Lessons inspired by great artists!

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