Lesson inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “The Starry Night”.

****Updated with new pics on Tues. 10/24/17****

On day 1 of the lesson, students looked at a slideshow of Van Gogh’s paintings and learned about his life and artwork. We took a close look at his painting “The Starry Night” and noticed that he used lots and lots of short lines painted close together in certain directions, to create a sense of movement!

Then students got to work creating their own Van Gogh inspired masterpieces with a pumpkin!

Students followed along with me for the first steps, as I demonstrated under a document camera. (Photos below)

They traced a pumpkin using a cardboard cut-out along the bottom of their 12×18” tagboard paper. Students held their paper vertically rather than horizontally, so they would have more room on their paper to create the starry night sky.

Students then drew a line for the ground, a crescent or full moon ( a banana shape or a circle) and small circles for stars with pencil. They then drew straight lines in the pumpkins stem, and curved lines inside the pumpkin.

Students then took both a yellow and a green crayon in one hand and drew lines using both colors at the same time, all along the bottom for the grass making sure to press really hard as they drew.

They colored in the moon and stars with yellow, and outlined all the lines within their pumpkin and stem with whatever colors they wanted, making sure to continue pressing hard.

For a final step with the crayons, just like Van Gogh did with his brush, students drew lots of short dashed lines with yellow, circling all around each star. Then with blue crayon drew more dashed lines all throughout the sky curving around their stars to create a sense of movement!

Below are photos of students hard at work creating their masterpieces!!! 

On day 2 of the lesson, students painted their pumpkin, grass and sky any color they wanted using concentrated liquid watercolor paint. I LOVE liquid watercolors —they’re SUPER  vibrant and saturated! By far, my favorite paint for art lessons! (A little bit trickier for prep and clean up, but well worth it!)

A lot of you art teachers out there might think I’m crazy– but I don’t dilute the paint. Only if the paint comes out of the bottle like syrup would I add a teeny bit of water (like about 1 tablespoon *or less* per little cup of liquid watercolor paint). The ones I buy are Sax brand and lately it’s been hard to find online, as many colors are out of stock. The yellow is really the only one that I add a bit of water to, since I find that color is for some reason the most syrupy in consistency.

The only rule with color I had was that they had to paint their pumpkin, grass and sky each a different color. That way they would each stand out from one another.

*Skip this next paragraph in bold if you’re not an art teacher or not interested in details about paint and art teaching stuff*

I find that concentrated liquid watercolors can be tricky when trying to see the actual color in the cups due to their intensity. Red, orange, and magenta can all appear to be the same when just when looking at it. So what I have kids do is **GENTLY** take their brush (and I demo this part under a doc camera) and after dipping it in the cup, slide it up the side of the cup and look at the color dripping down the edge back into the cup to see. It seems to do the trick.  I might label each cup by color with tape and sharpie next time to make it even easier. Not sure how long the tape would hold up…maybe writing it directly on the plastic cups would be best but sometimes I use the cups for other things. 

The cups I’m referring to are from Tide laundry detergent caps….and they are awesome to use!! They are stackable, hold up with wear and tear because of the thickness of the plastic, are just the right size, and rinse out easily! Plus– this way I can pour any leftover paint into individual bottles! 

Anyhoo…….While painting, students learned about the technique crayon wax-resist. They all loved watching the paint glide right off the crayon parts and thought it was pure magic!!!!

On day 3 of the lesson, students went over their moon, pumpkin, and 5 circles for stars with glow in the dark three-dimensional puffy paint! We talked about how the puffy paint adds texture and will pop out from the paper. Students obviously LOVED this step although I must admit, I was a little nervous on how this would all work out! They did a really good job! …. other than a few kids “forgetting” to only add puffy paint to the few areas I told them!  Students then watched a quick 7 minute animated video on Van Gogh when finished!

Some finished work with glow in the dark puffy paint! 

I can’t get over the VIBRANT colors these paints have!! I love how each one turned out!!

Here’s some fun close-ups of the texture we added with puffy paints! Kids L-O-O-V-E-D this step!

In the photos below, this class used tempera cakes to paint rather than liquid watercolors because I didn’t receive my paint order in time, but they still came out vibrant!

I can’t wait to display them in the halls!! I love them ALL!! 

MY NEXT POSTS WILL BE TOMORROW AND THURSDAY NIGHT (10/25 & 10/26) WITH NEW FINISHED ARTWORK FROM SOME NEW ART LESSONS—1ST AND 3RD GRADE—- AND 2ND GRADE ABSTRACT SELF-PORTRAITS!!           

STAY TUNED!!….