Lesson -16 - Van Gogh "Sunflowers"

Today we explored the world of Van Gogh. We learned about his life, his art, and we looked at his painting technique. Van Gogh was an impressionist. Impressionism is a style of painting which began in Paris in the mid 1800’s. Impressionists painted most of their paintings outdoors and used natural subjects, as well as everyday people as their main subjects. This type of art places focus on the entire scene rather than one person, thus the main subject may be off to the side of the canvas instead of the middle center. In this way it looks more like a photograph instead of a traditional painting. The technique includes many short brush strokes so that when seen up close may not look like anything, however when looked at from a distance form a cohesive picture.

Among the many paintings Van Gogh created, we decided to concentrate on his sunflower picture, which he completed in 1888. For inspiration, the young artists used a picture of real sunflowers, and were encouraged to use their imagination when creating their work.

The children were able to use an all-media, medium weight paper, and multiple paint colors appropriate for this painting. In addition, to add more interest to their creation, they were also able to use pre cut felt pieces as petals and as the center of the sunflower. They were encouraged to paint as much of the subject as possible, but all little touches of pasted felt as an interest point.

In this class the children experienced working with different mediums as well as paint at the same time. We also took the opportunity to go over shapes, (most common shape in a sunflower is a circle) and how to place shapes on the paper to create balance.

Everyone’s final creations were bright, lively, somewhat abstract, and very beautiful.