Summer Art Series: Van Gogh

 

 Hi friends!

I'm really excited to share the next project in my summer art series.   Last week I shared a project inspired by Edgar Degas, and today I'm sharing one inspired by Vincent van Gogh.  

My kids begged for me to do this series because they've been learning about famous artists at school, and they really love art.  My goal is to plan two lessons per month this summer. So far I've found that setting up these projects really makes them want to learn more about famous artists.  We've checked out books from the library, and watched some videos.  If I find a particularly good source I will share it here!   I have some Van Gogh sources below.

For van Gogh I picked to do a project inspired by his Irises painting.  We were lucky enough to see this painting last time we were in Los Angeles, so I thought it might be fun for the kids to create a project based off of a van Gogh that they actually saw.  When I saw the van Gogh painting I think the thing that inspired me most was the use of colors and light....so I thought what better project than a "stained glass!"

 I think that they turned out so cool!  I can't wait to share all the details for how to make them below.  I also want to say that you can really make famous art inspired sun catchers with any art, you just need a very basic template to trace.  Coloring books can actually be really good for this.

Before we get too lost in the details of how to make these beauties I want to share a few resources that I found for this artist.  We read van Gogh and the sunflowers, which the kids really seemed to like.  It's not too dense a book, and seemed perfect for my kids aged 5 and 7.

I also really liked this TED video which talked about how van Gogh captured light in different ways.  It's a great video incorporating science with art.  It's probably a bit more appropriate for older kids and adults, but my kids still enjoyed watching it even if they couldn't quite appreciate all of the concepts explained.

The suncatchers are made of wax paper, with colored white glue as paint.  The black outlines were made with black fabric puff paint.  Alright, who's ready for the tutorial!

What you'll need:

• wax paper
• black puff paint (or black colored glue)
• white glue
• liquid watercolor, acrylic, or gouache paint to color the glue (I used this gouache paint, because I love it and I already had it at home).
• paintbrush
• template

Let's get started!  

Start by printing out the template and placing it under your wax paper.  Then use black puff paint (or white glue colored black with black paint) to trace the lines on the template onto the wax paper.  Both of my kids wanted to help with this step, but ended up giving up half way through, so I finished the tracing for them.  I'd recommend  doing the tracing yourself for younger kids.

Let the traced art finish drying completely.  We waited to paint in the lines until the next day.  Then we used paint to color the white glue and began painting. 

You'll notice that the paint seems to repel the wax paper a bit.  This is ok!  (In fact, it was a great chance to talk to the kids about science concepts like  hydrophobicity)  You'll want to use a generous amount of "glue" paint if you want your flowers to look solid.  Lu was particularly obsessed with coloring in every piece of her suncatcher.  She would touch up hers as hers dried to make sure that there were no clear pieces.  I actually thought the spots of clear areas were kind of neat though, especially on the background.

And that's really it to the project.  We let them dry and hung them in a window to enjoy!  Here are our three finished pieces!
My kids really enjoyed making these.

I'll have two more famous artists posts in July, most likely Picasso and Leonardo DaVinci.  Did you miss my last famous artist post in June?  It was on Edgard Degas and can be found here:

Have a great week everyone!  I'll have a sewing post for you here next week!

XOXO,

Jill