Van gogh Inspired Flowers by 8th grade

Here is  some artwork completed by our 8th grade class. They created these based on Van gogh's Sunflowers.

Van gogh Inspired Flowers

     This lesson was completed by my 8th grade students. First, they were given 6 tempra paint colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple), plus black and white for tinting and shading. I did a lesson on mixing colors and using black and white to create tints and shades of the different colors. Next, we examined Van gogh's famous artwork, Sunflowers, discussing his use of the 8 elements of art. The students were then encourage to create a bouquet of flowers inspired by Van gogh. Finally, they were asked to paint their sketches using colors created by mixing the primary and secondary colors at their disposal. In the end, they created tints and shades of their colors to add shadows and highlights to their artwork. They did a great job...

"Winter Birch Trees" by 8th grade

      I found this lesson on Deep Space Sparkle blog a few years ago, and have been doing it with my 8th grade students ever since. Since then, I have seen many blogs do posts on the same project and I'm always interested in seeing how they do it. Often, teachers make small changes as they go and the project comes out a little different for each class.
     For example, this year, instead of leaving the snow area on their paper pure white, my students added a wash of the lightest purple watercolor we could make. We combined water with a few drops of purple liquid water color paint to achieve the super light color. I love the way it changed the overall look of the artwork. I did keep the tissue paper sky in the background, but one of my students missed class the week before, so I gave him some materials and said, "See what you can do!" His came out great!! You will be able to tell his apart from the others. It is the only one with a painted, solid blue sky. It makes me think I might need to create a spin-off lesson for another grade.
Here are some of the finished ones...

"Merry Christmas, Blue Dog" by Eighth Grade

George Rodrigue, a Cajun artist, is the creator of the famous Blue Dog, who has captured the hearts and imaginations of people around the world. His website, http://www.georgerodrigue.com/, is great if you are interested in learning more about George and his art.
I shared the book, Why Is Blue Dog Blue, with my eighth grade class. Then, they completed a fun book- based project where they drew (all on their own, no guidance from me) and painted the famous Blue Dog, who by the way is sometimes NOT painted blue, in a color of their choice. Tis' the season, so they drew him wearing a Santa hat.
For this project, we discussed how to add a bit of black paint to their original color to create a tinted color for shading. The final step was outlining and filling in solid black areas. I think they are great! My kindergarten class saw them and asked if they could do a Blue Dog painting, too. Of course I let them, and they are also great. I'll post about them soon!

Here are some finished 8th graders' paintings (I'm still waiting on more to finish, so there are more pictures to come later)...

I'm so proud of all their efforts!

Flowers Inspired by Van Gogh by Gr. 8

This is the first completed art lesson created by my 8th grade art students. It took a few weeks. We explored the life and techniques of Van Gogh through books, posters, and video. They studied his work, Sunflowers.

Van Gogh's Sunflowers

The first week they observed illustrations of different flowers and used these as ideas for creating their own bouquet of flowers in a vase. I encouraged them to make their own decision whether they wanted to do all sunflowers or a variety of flowers.

They all spent some time sketching their picture, then they used layers of oil pastels to add the first layer of color. We reviewed techniques for using the oil pastels since it was their first time using them this school year.

The last step was using a variety of tempra paint colors to add interest to the overall composition of their artwork. We discussed using the paint not just to add color to their work, but to focus on adding TEXTURE to their artwork to mimic the style mastered by Vincent Van Gogh. I think they did a great job!