Ahh, Claude Monet. Iconic. For this project we will be taking inspiration from his many water lily paintings as he has done approximately 250 oil paintings of lilies! If you look at the timeline of all of them you can see the paintings change over time as Monet had developed cataracts over the years altering his vision of his pond making his work become more abstract and impressionistic.
Materials
-oil pastels
-construction paper
Instructions
1. Get a piece of construction paper or any other paper that has a texture or “tooth” to it. This will help add texture to the art work and help the oil pastel adhere to the paper better.
2. Using 4-5 different pastels making sure you have a few different blue pastels selected, start with going over the whole page with a light blue. Once you have light blue down, you can go in with a darker blue. And then use the light blue pastel on top to blend the two colours together. Continue doing this for the whole page and blending different colours together. The more layers you apply, the easier it will be to blend colours together.
3. To make the lilies, start by drawing an oval in a light green. Then line the bottom of the oval with a dark green to add shadow. Add white on top to add highlight. Continue making groups or clusters of lily pads around the page wherever you would like.
4. To make the lily flowers, take a light pink pastel and use lines and dashes create a half circle shape to make the shape of the flower. You can also make pink ovals to create the flowers as well. It is abstract overall, it doesn’t need to be perfect! Continue doing this to any of the green lily pads.
Add and adjust on the way whether you need more blue in one spot or need more lilies etc. The key to this project is to take your time to build up layers and depth.
Annnnnd you’re done! Now you have a beautiful piece of art history that you’ve made yourself!