Sunflowers van Gogh style!

Continuing the theme of an Art History project across all grades...

While introducing contemporary artists is fantastic for students because they can make more relevant connections, I still feel so passionately about teaching and sharing with students the artists and paintings so well known in art history. Many of the artworks I share with students appear in TV shows, movies, and cartoons still today! Usually when I introduce some wildly famous work of art, I get hands shooting up telling me where they have seen the work in their pop cultural lives (which makes me seriously geek out!). Vincent van Gogh is one of those artists that I share every year. I just can't help myself. Seeing The Starry Night in person and his self portrait at the NGA was an experience I will never forget! SEE!

Okay so projects! Both Kindergarten and 3rd grade looked at the classic sunflowers on the table painting...

3rd Grade!

I Can create a sunflower artwork inspired by the famous artist Vincent van Gogh.

Day 1: Intro! Just a basic who was he, what did he paint, where was he from via Google Slides. We also had a nice discussion about how he only sold one painting while he was alive and how that must have made him feel. I love getting deep! Then we watched this seriously awesome van Gogh YouTube video...

Last thing before we started working was looking at his sunflowers up-close via Art Project by Google.

Work for Day 1 included creating the vase decorated to their choosing and gluing it to the table and background. We left the vase unglued at the top so we could actually stick the stems in. I did give them a template for the vase.

Day 2: Little van Gogh recap with my van Gogh artist poster (more on that later) and watched some sunflowers time-lapse videos! The second one isn't real but still fantastic and gives an opportunity to talk about digital art.

I do a short demo of gluing the petals to the back and details they can add for a slightly more realistic effect and then the rest of the time is theirs to work!

Day 3: van Gogh artist poster is up once again and then we went over a worksheet to prepare them for their next project. The rest of the time is theirs to complete their sunflowers and work on the worksheet.

I love how a project can be so similar but show each personality in it's completion!

Jefferson Elementary...

3rd and Kindergarten mixed together.

(ACK! Strips you make me angry every time I see you!)

McDill Elementary...

Kinderbeaners!

I Can create a sunflower made from shapes.

Day 1: Started the class with the Mati and Dada video that I showed 3rd grade at the end of their intro. Then we looked at more of his paintings and the sunflowers up close. Because this was their first real project I wanted to take it fairly slow so the only thing we did the first day was cut the grass and make the stem and leaves. I talked up the idea that we were making the flowers start to grow this art day and then they would finish growing the next art day to flow with the way to were making them. I also really tried to get them to to focus on the shapes of the different pieces but they get carried away and I'm okay with that ;)

Day 2: Had the van Gogh artist poster up when they came in as a re-fresher and then they watched just the first time lapse of the real sunflower. We had a nice chat about what other things would be good to use time-lapse for, I love listening to them think out-loud! Sometimes I wonder where and how they think of some of the things they say! For work time, I did a demo of creating the head and petals of the flower and showed them my "magic trick" of folding paper and then cutting to get more than one. Surprisingly enough finishing their flowers took almost the entire time!

Jefferson Elementary...

McDill Elementary...

Still contemplating re-visiting van Gogh later in the year to do a Starry Night project....Too much van Gogh? Thoughts?