Showing posts with label van gogh lessons. Show all posts
Showing posts with label van gogh lessons. Show all posts

Sunday, March 27, 2022

Vincent van Gogh Inspired Buttons and Earrings!

Hi! I scored this amazing sweater recently and while I absolutely loved it, I hated the obnoxious plastic white buttons that were on the sweater. They just stuck out like a sore thumb! So I picked up some polymer clay at the craft store with the idea to create my own. Normally, I buy the 'name brand' polymer clay but this time, I was feeling cheap and decided to give the house brand a try. It was half the price and I have to say...despite the fact that the yellow clay stained my hands a pinch, it worked great! I'm used to stained hands so, no big deal!
I went about creating these factory style and it went pretty quickly. I made a video to share the process in case you need some van Gogh bling in your life. Like, duh. Of course you do.

So easy, right?
Once complete, I just stitched these onto my sweater and added some jump rings and a French hook to the earrings and I was all set in my new upgraded van Gogh sweater!

Not only that but this craft was just the creativity thirst quencher I needed this weekend. Thanks for letting me share, y'all!
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Thursday, April 19, 2012

In the Artroom: Full Moon Rising

Every year my school hosts an end of the year art show. Throughout the year, I hoard all of the masterpieces the kids create. A couple of weeks before the art show, my Army of Amazing Moms start to mount, sort and organize. Once completed, each teacher is given the mountain of masterpieces for their class. They recruit their room moms who then hang all the works of art.

I teach 420 kids. Each of them makes roughly 5 works of art.

That's 2100 pieces of artwork that fill the hall's walls of our school.

And it freaks me out every year...will I be able to get everything ready in time? What about those absent kids who need to finish? And where on earth did I put that class' paintings?!
As I was making a feeble attempt to organize for the show, I stumbled upon these beauties created by my genius fourth grade students. They painted these masterpieces at the beginning of the school year and I'd completely forgotten about how amazing they were. It was a great lesson for the start of the school year as it allowed me to introduce the elements of art and a couple of the Big Name artists.
So I thought I'd share it with you!
For this lesson, we used the following:
  • charcoal sticks
  • large rectangular sheets of paper
  • black tempra paint
  • naked crayons (our name for crayons sans paper)
  • Crayola watercolor paints with the addition of turquoise and magenta
  • watercolor brushes
  • color diffusing paper in leaf shapes
Here's how we went about creating:
  1. We started the year learning about Leonardo da Vinci. Using charcoal sticks (because Leo would have used 'em!) and the element of art of line, we drew a tree branch from observation. 
  2. From there, we drew a circle for the moon anywhere on our painting and painted over our charcoal lines with black tempra paint.
  3. Next, we chatted about Leo's love of nature and did some leaf rubbing. This introduced organic shapes, texture and color. 
  4. Finally we were ready to paint. First warm colors were introduced with the leaf painting.
  5. For the background, we used the cool colors and a variety of values.
  6. During this time, Vincent van Gogh and his love of line, texture and movement were introduced. I'm sure you can see his influence in some of the paintings.
I love the variety of lines this artist used on her tree branch.

Just like any lesson, you've always got the Early Finishers and the Pokey Little Puppies. I myself fall under the PLP category, so I don't like to rush the kids. For my early finishers, they were given the format of a cinquain poem and told to use their artwork as the inspiration.

There are a couple of different ways to go about a cinquain poem. We wrote ours like this:

Line 1: A noun
Line 2: Two adjectives
Line 3: Three -ing words
Line 4: A phrase
Line 5: Repeat Line 1


The kids wrote their poems onto these leaves with a sharpie. These leaves are made from what's called a color-diffusing paper. After writing their poem, the kids used warm color water based markers to color their leaves. Then they simply painted their leaves with water and viola! A beautiful poem-y leaf to accompany their masterpiece.
Because of the dark sky in this painting, the artist used white to paint their tree branch to make it more visible.

I love how this branch seems to hug the moon!
And there you have it! A great addition to our art show. When it all finally comes together, I'll be certain to share photos of the show with you. Thanks for stopping by!
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