Van Gogh Style Portraits

Vincent Van Gogh was famous for his self-portraits. We are thankful for that because now we can tell how he actually looked like in different times of his life. We had the kids paint their own self-portraits and have fun exploring their faces!
First we placed mirrors on the tables so they can see themselves as they are drawing,

Then we guided them through the drawing process.

 

Ask them questions - Where do you see you eyes? Do you have long or short hair?

 

Would you like to smile or be serious in your self-portrait?

 

Next class we had them paint their pictures. One of our kids decided to take it a step further and paint a portrait of his dad as well as Van Gogh painted a portrait of his friend the postman. And here are the results :-)

My Room - The Van Gogh Project

"Bedroom in Arles" is one of Van Gogh's famous paintings. Apparently he was a pretty messy guy (according to his friend Gauguin anyway) but he made sure he cleaned up his space before placing it forever on a canvas. 

Today the kids will create just the same painting. We had them each choose from which side they would like to portray their rooms and that is where they would sit and draw their sketches.

 

Next day they came to our studio and painted the rooms. It was quite darling to see the perspective with which they saw certain proportions or shapes.

 

Here are our final products together with Van Gogh's own.

The Starry Night Project

Our next artist is Vincent Van Gogh. Again, besides using Erica's resources, we came up with some extra activities for the kiddos to help them remember some famous paintings. Here is the famous Starry Night painting that we put a bit of a spin on...

You will need: 

card stock paper

black, yellow, white, and blue paint

paint brush

plastic forks

First have the kids use paint brushes and paint the bottom part of the painting. We used a painting in our book for the kids to see the details. Then, drip a big blob of yellow paint into the right corner and smaller blobs of white and blue along the top.

 

Then have kids use the fork to spread it around, swirl and twirl the paint just like this.

 

Everyone loved the effect and there is always certain excitement with using new things to create art with!

Our next Vincent Van Gogh project is coming up very shortly.