Lines & Color - Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh - (3/30/1853 - 7/29/1890)

Van Gogh is likely one of the most famous painters worldwide. Why is he so famous?

In order to answer this question, we need to first understand painting at Van Gogh's time. Van Gogh is a Post Impressionist painter which came after the initial Impressionist period. Impressionism paintings are blurry paintings that were said to be an "impression" of the real paintings. Claude Monet Lillies and Degas Ballerinas are examples of Impressionism which became very famous over time. This term, Impressionism, wasn't initially a compliment (because people felt they weren't REAL like the paintings that look like photographs) but later this term grew to be one of the most popular painting periods of all time.

Vincent Van Gogh didn't invent a brand new paint concept. Instead he combined the works of artists world-wide, to create great paintings that intrigue many simply by enhancing the elements of art. He would use contrasting BRIGHT colors and lines that light up his works and move them into swirls to show flow and movement in the paint. He used many elements of art especially lines, color, and value in bold ways. Can you see the lines, contrasting colors, and flow in his works? What does contrast mean?

Project Sheet

Each student will get a colored paper (shaded blue) and then start with a lighter color oil pastel to first draw in the lines and shape of the drawing like an outline. Then, students can continue to color in using the pastels and even mix them to enhance their drawings. The drawings can be flowers, scenes, or houses etc. Don't forget to use lots of lines and show oil pastel lines and use contrasting colors (ie black and white or purple and yellow etc)
You can use your finger to smear the oils on the paper and fill the background with designs like VanGogh. The backgrounds should have patterns or lines that show brushstrokes. For example if you draw the sky, put stars and clouds and show "wind" etc to fill it in.
Only in the last 15min of class, add in a little tempura paint to fill in areas on the paper. Parents will put a few drops on a paper plate with qtips to mix in. This is a great time to mix the paints to get different shades of color from light to dark (light blue to dark blue etc). This is using value which is the last element of art.

Parent helpers

Be sure the name tags are on the back of their colored papers.
While students are using the oil pastels, parents can put dime size paint blobs on the paper plates (one for each student), use Qtips for mixing to conserve water and cleaning.
Then put the paintings on the drying racks or the back of the class once students have completed their paintings.
Thank you for all your help and support!

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