Vincent van Gogh mimic art

We recently read van Gogh and the Sunflowers which inspired some autumnal sunflower painting. We learned quite a bit about Van Gogh and his famous "marks" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art site. There is a gallery of van Gogh paintings that we enjoyed looking at also.
Georgia: van Gogh painted with lines and most people didn't like it. Josie: He liked to paint sunflowers. They made him happy.

Georgia and Josie : Before he became a "painter" he sold books and was also a preacher but didn't like it. At about 30 years old he became a painter full time. Nobody really liked his paintings and didn't realize his greatness until after he died. He only painted for like 10 years and then he went mad and committed suicide. In those 10 years he painted 900 pictures and drew 1100 drawings!!
Thanks to Mom I cut some of her sunflowers for our van Gogh mimic art class last week.

We spent some time just looking at the flowers and discovering how many colors actually make them up. We also took some time in our minds looking at our paper and mapping out our paintings in our heads before we began. A couple of days before we dug into the paint I had them draw the flowers on another paper which is something van Gogh did a lot too.

Georgia paying attention to highlights and shading! Nice job!

Josie doing the same.

Now come the leaves.

Georgia really gets into her painting. She put the dark lines under her eyes on purpose and said she was going to play football.

Emeline also painted a lovely picture.

Here they are!!! I love them. van Gogh would be proud girls.

Emmy ended up with a brown blob. She did have separate colors but with all her mixing!!!

I really stressed during this project that I didn't once want to hear "Oh I don't like this" or "I can't paint" or "I made a mistake" or "I quit". I wanted them to realize that van Gogh had his own style, as we all do, and that he was ridiculed at first but turned into magic after a while. It was important for me to have them walk away embracing the fact that we all have different abilities, and styles and that- THAT IS OK! They were all very proud of their work so it worked...

...FOR ONCE!!!