3rd grade flowers Inspired by Vincent Van Gogh

In 3rd Grade we carefully examined Van Gogh's Sun Flower series of paintings. We talked about his FAMOUS brushstrokes and the style of IMPRESSIONISM. We began creating impressionistic drawings of Van Gogh's sunflowers. We defined impressionism as painting our 'first impression' and not painting ever single detail that we see. It was super fun and every students art work looked different. The medium we used was OIL PASTLE, the kids were amazed by the ability to mix colors and color in layers. I encouraged them to "color the paper away" so that their was color on the entire page.

Here are Van Gogh painting that we examined:

I covered the desk with newspaper so the students could color all the way to the edge. I also told them to choose their own colors,  they are the artists so they can make their own artistic decisions :-)

I showed them how to add a white highlight so the vase would look "3D"

Here are some finished product: