Grade 1 and Grade 5: Mixed Media Sunflowers

This was a fun one. When I was a child, I was OBSESSED with drawing sunflowers... and I wore a t-shirt with a huge sunflower on it and I doodled sunflowers on my Converses. Nature was a huge part of my formative years which made these two projects based on my favorite painter Vincent van Gogh a pleasure to make. 

The first is this slightly mixed media project in which the 5th graders used a dictionary page to draw a sunflower. Outlined in Sharpie and painted with a wash of color, the kids did a nice job capturing 'Sunflowers"

The second project was a ton of fun to make. We read a book about van Gogh's sunflowers and discussed the content in the story which talked about van Gogh's passion for painting and the struggles he encountered along the way.

We examined sunflowers..the center, the petals and referred to "Sunflowers" to see how van Gogh painted these top heavy flowers in different stages. 

We began by mixing colors for the background and added texture. The kids created their vases with a simple line drawing followed up with an oil pastel outline. Next up was painting the vases. Finally, we had a fun time creating the sunflowers and adding details to them after they were glued down.

Grade 1: Jasper Johns Number Paintings

I have blogged about my annual Jasper Johns 1st grade paintings in the past but wanted to share with you a few from this year. We made these back in January but this year, I saw a post where an unknown art teacher from Pinterest had the kids use their date of birth for the numbers instead of the classic 0-9 from Jasper Johns' famous painting. This was a neat new spin on one of my favorite American paintings. My first graders felt special thinking about their special day in numbers. We called their DOB their top secret code.

We explored primary colors through painting and ultimately we refreshed our memory about secondary colors as little bits mixed together. Students began drawing their numbers inside of rectangles followed by outlining and designing with oil pastels and finally tempera in the backgrounds.

0-9 by Jasper Johns

American Painters Rock!