Poinsettia to Do Today

If you're looking for a quick holiday project idea that you can do today and cover the idea of tints, shades and complementary colors this is it.  This was a fun and engaging for my sixth graders.  The painting can be done in a day, but we discovered the project looks great if you take the time to cut out the flowers and mount them on red paper.  That's what we did with ours.  We got tons of compliments on them and they are on their way to deck the stage for the holiday musical.  Sorry I don't have photos of that step, but we experienced a bit of a time crunch this afternoon.

To make our poinsettias students used a piece of light colored chalk to mark out the place for the center of the flower.  Magenta was added to white to make the pink tints.  My students began by painting in a few radiating lines, like spokes on a wheel to keep their petals straight.  More petals were added to fill out the flower.  A bit of green was added to white to make a tint of green for the leaves and the leaves were painted in.  We didn't bother rinsing our brushes today, just wiped them on a paper towel between color changes.

Using a smaller brush green veins were painted on the pink leaves and pink veins were painted on the green leaves.  We dotted in the center of the flower with the back of the brush.

Cut loosely around the flower when dry leaving a bit of white paper and glue on red background....Stunning!

This is not my project...I found it on Pinterest.  Unfortunately it was an "uploaded by user" photo without a source.  If this is your project please leave a comment so I can credit your fabulous idea.