Snowy Starry Night!

2nd graders finished their snowy starry night and are ready to take them home to hang up and enjoy! We compared the differences from the winter snowy night and Van Gogh's Starry Night and what the changes were that we would need to make. We drew everything with pencil first. Then traced over with crayon...making sure to leave space on one side to make and glue down the tree and also color in the snowman solid with white and add detail. Then I 'made' vivid blue watercolor by simply taking blue tempera paint and watering it down and putting it in resealable plastic containers for kids to dip into. Paint over entire crayon snowy night and let dry for a beautiful crayon/watercolor resist.

Then after the starry night is dry, trace tree tracer on black paper, add glue to secure where the student left room on one side of the composition. Then using watered down white tempera or acrylic, show students how to spatter white 'snow' with a toothbrush. We talk about do's and don'ts. Then dry and take home!

3-D Van Gogh Sunflowers on Table

2nd graders learned all about Vincent Van Gogh as an artist and made our own 3-D version of his famous Sunflower painting study below.




2nd graders first drew with pencil Vincent's vase. We drew these on a small slip of paper and showed a short cut on how to start the vase from the bottom of the paper so it's flat on the bottom. Then we talked about how to draw a sunflower. It is different from the traditional daisy most students know how to make. We talked about how the center is a large brown circle and how the petals are short and pointed, and there's lots of them. We agreed it did look like a sun! Name/class on the back in the middle (for when they get cut out!)

 After drawing, I let students know that they could either use oil pastels or crayons to color. First we outlined the vase with yellow. Color in the top stripe solid. Then yellow oranges and yellows for the sunflowers and green stems.

 Then I had containers of watered down yellow paint to be like "yellow watercolor" but everyone's was the same consistancy so this worked great! (Becky Brandt, you taught me everything!) Paint over the top so it's like a crayon resist! Next, get a sheet of yellow 9x12 construction paper. Fold in half. Paint one side with watered down brown paint for the table.

Brown watercolor on one side

 Let dry for next time! (We watched "Getting Know the World's Greatest Artists: Vincent Van Gogh" for half the time to learn about the artist and did the first half of this project). Now once everything is dry, fold the yellow constrution paper in half. Cut two slits ON THE FOLD half way down.

 

              Open up and pop out the middle, make fold so it then looks like a chair.

I told students to put glue on the 'wall' the part that sticks out. Then cut out the flowers and vase and glue on so it looks like the vase is sitting, NOT floating on the table. Viola! Vincent Van Gogh 3-D sunflowers!

Help! Is Impasto Impossible!? Recipes?

HELP! We're studying Van Gogh and his heavy, thick, distinct, brushstrokes. I really want to make impasto for my students, scrape it on in a picture form, then paint over when dry. RECIPE?! HELP! What to use to make large amounts! Anyone out there with ideas? And it needs to be in expensive in large amounts:) Help soon!:)

Autumn Starry Night with Vincent Van Gogh

Miss Oetken's Autumn Starry Night

1st graders learned about the famous work of art, Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh. We learned that Vincent Van Gogh is famous for his stylistic brush strokes (little lines of paint layed upon each other) and we discovered it's mostly blue with a bright yellow moon and stars! 1st graders made their own Starry Night with a fall seasonal twist. We changed the cyprus tree to a spooky leafless tree with bare branches. Then added a few pumpkins and then 3 spooky houses instead of a huge village like in the original painting.

Miss Oetken numbered the steps along with a picture to help to students know what comes next. Then we used colored crayons appropriately for the hilly grass, purple mountains, etc.  to trace over and outline pressing hard with crayon. Ater everything was colored in and outlined, we talked about Van Gogh's brushstrokes and how his little dashed lines make up the painting. We filled in areas with different colored dashed lines to show how Van Gogh would have painted his Fall Starry Night.
Then we used liquid blue watercolor to cover the entire drawing to show it was quite a blue and beautiful fall evening:)

Student work, WOW! Keep scrolling for more:)

Hangin' with Vincent (Van Gogh)! 5th grade explores his Impressionist masterpieces & touches on art careers

5th grade is currently studying Vincent Van Gogh! First we watched "Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists" Vincent Van Gogh to really understand where the artist began from young to old. It also explores some of his famous masterpieces such as his "Sunflowers" and studies of his bedroom ("Bed Room at Arles", 1889).
We first started looking at Van Gogh's style in his "Sunflowers". We looked at how Van Gogh has a distinct style of layered, thickly applied, long dashed brushstrokes. 5th grade then took a stab at it by first drawing a vase design of their choice, a horizon line, such as the table it's sitting on (since it's not magically leviating), and concentrated on mimicking & understanding the drying petals of the bouquet and then using oil pastel (contains wax) to mimic the dashed brushstrokes. Then we turned it into a watercolor/ oil pastel resist. The class also really started to grasp the correct way to use watercolor with wet on wet and mixing techniques with their brush!  Here are some more examples from class.

Then after completing that, we started to look at Van Gogh's 3 studies (only 1 is found in the United States, and that is "Bedroom at Arles" and found at the Chicago Art Institute) of his bedrooms. We looked and pointed out the different between the 3. Then I asked if the students had heard of the art based career "interior designer". I then explained that interior designers help pick out how a room is designed from anything from the colors of the walls, to the kind of chairs in the room, to how to cordinate furniture and combinations of bedding and pillows. We also learned what warm & cool colors were, how they can psychologically make us think that we feel warmer or cooler than we are, and also change out mood. Interior designers take this into account when planning for a client. 5th grade's project was to redesign Van Gogh's bedroom with color, pattern, and later make things 3-D. We made things 3-D by taking another photo copy of the same bedroom, and colored in items, cut then out, then glued them down with a piece of foamcore, to make it raised on the page(in mine it's' the chair, the bedpost, and a picture frame). We then added other 3-D elements like felt for curtains, a bedspread, or even a carpet.

student work



student work