Friday, June 5, 2009

Art Study

We've been studying Vincent Van Gogh's work the last few months.  About a week ago hubby took R grocery shopping and they came home with some sunflowers.  Since Van Gogh Sunflowers are one of the prints we're studying, I thought it would be fun for the kids to create their own paintings with our sunflowers. 


We read Camille and the Sunflowers by Laurence Anholt, a story that is based on an actual encounter and real people.  It tells the story of Vincent coming to Camille's small town and Camille's family befriending the lonely artist.

After reading the story we broke out the watercolor paper, some pencils and the paints.  I turned on some Beethoven and let the kids create.  Here are their creations:




A view of my busy artists w/ our wilting sunflowers

Another shot of the artists and flowers







Finished Product



S's age 5


R's age 8



E's age 11



A's age 9


What I love about this type of activity is to see what part of the object the kids focus on the most.  Some focus in on the flowers, some on the vase.  In R's case, she drew all the people she saw around the flower at the time. :)  I love to see their creativity shine through. 

Just one more reason I love having them home, I get to see all this creativity come to fruition.  By the time I was R's age, art was a class I dreaded in school.  One too many art teacher had let me know that I was not artistic by the age of 8, that I gave up trying because I knew I wasn't good at it.  So glad my kids haven't learned that they aren't artistic because they couldn't make their project look like the teachers!

Not to be left out, here's J's creation:


 



J age 3


Hope you enjoyed our art project. 


6 comments:

Jen Unsell said...

Love their paintings! Great lesson!

deuteronomy649 said...

Beautiful paintings! I can't believe a teacher would tell you that you weren't artistic. How discouraging! Well I'm glad you didn't give up. Lovely results from very artistic kiddos.

Anonymous said...

I love you

SchoolinRhome said...

Great art projects!

healthyhomeschool said...

Linda, I love seeing your kids' art work. I think they are amazing! That's a good point about how they all focus on different aspects. I miss that with mine. It's just Michaela and me here now, but I find the same thing with her and myself


Your header picture is beautiful!


Lynn

amada said...

This is AWESOME. I think I'm going to show it to my kids! They'll love seeing other kids who studied the same thing as they did! How is everything going for you? We are fellow AOers with 5 kids as well with somewhat similar ages. I found you on THL. Hope to make a connection with you :)

Amy in Peru

http://fisheracademy.blogspot.com