Literature-Based: Miss Rumphius's Lupines

Miss Rumphius is one of my favorite books. It's worth a read-aloud, even if not doing a corresponding art project. Every year I do some version of this project, as it's a great way to review cool and warm colors.

The first step was to make a background with pastel in any combination of warm colors onto white paper. Then we started with the stems. We talked about how the greens in nature are rarely the same bright green as the paint straight out of the bottle. So after a quick review of value I gave out green, black and white and they painted their stems.

Then after reviewing the colors of the lupine in the book ("blue, purple and rose colored"), they mixed blue, red and white to make their petal colors. The last step was to use their finger-tips to make the cone-shaped lupine flowers.