Starry Night

Starry Night by Van Gogh has been a source of inspiration for many art teachers. My Grade 1 students created their own versions of this famous work of art by recreating the textured strokes using oil pastels and inks. When I started planning out this project it all seemed a bit daunting and I could never have done it without the support of Zilker Elementary and this awesome step-by-step downloadable powerpoint from Mrs.Brown - Thank you both so much! 

Materials required:
- A3 paper
- oil pastels
- inks
- pencils, erasers

Duration: 3 lessons of 80 minutes each

1. In the first lesson we identified Van Gogh as an artist and where he was from. What I loved about teaching in an international school is that you will almost always have a student who is from the same country as the artist in question which makes the kids even more excited. We looked at many of his paintings and discussed the movement of his brush strokes. Then we studied one of his most famous works of art "Starry Night." I wanted the kids to guess the name of the painting themselves so guiding questions included 'what can you see in the painting' - Of course you can't blame the kids for thinking that the cyprus tree was the Burj Khalifa! Other questions I asked were 'what name can you give it?', 'What kind of lines can you see? What shapes? Colours?" I made sure to show students close up shots of the painting so that they can clearly recognize the brush strokes and colours.
2. Before starting to draw, I showed students a finished example of the project so that they could gauge what materials they would be using, the time frame, and also that this would be a guided drawing session.

3. Using Mrs.Brown's powerpoint as a guide, my co-teacher Maggie and I created a 10 minute video tutorial for the students to follow. The video helps because we could pause and play whenever we needed to. 4.  By the end of the first lesson, the students managed to complete the drawing component and make the stars. 

5. In the second lesson it was time to focus on the sky and tree. After recapping the brush strokes and colours, the kids watched my video tutorial and began to fill in the sky using short strokes that were close to each other, following the shape of the swirls. Luckily, my oil pastels have a fairly large range of cool colours (navy, prussian, cobalt, ultramarine, turquoise and sky blue) so students were able to choose their colours freely. For the tree I limited the colours to a variety of greens, browns and black. Make sure they are pressing down hard enough with the oil pastel so that the ink can resist it.

6. The third lesson saw the kids draw and colour in the houses. I told them that they could make their houses as colourful as they wanted. This is what most of the work looked like before the ink wash. 

Photo courtesy of Mrs.Brown

7. Then they watched my video tutorial on how to apply the inks and we were done!

I LOVE the sky on this one!

I love doing this project with the kids because in spite of everyone doing a guided drawing session on the same topic, the end result for each child's artwork is so unique with their style of applying the oil pastels and colour choices for the inks.

If I had to do this project again, I would love to read a storybook about Van Gogh as a starter activity. Any recommendations?