VAN GOGH ART PROJECTSTARRY NIGHT

MATERIALS Make enough cardstock copies of the Starry Night on cardstock. Optional to trim the sides of the cardstock and mount on black colored

paper. Soft pastels (cabinet). Large “canvas” or paper clipped to a board on an easel for the surprise

visitor.

PREP Cover tables with white butcher paper. Arrange pastels at stations. Have a dad dressed as van Gogh in either vintage clothes or a white shirt and

jeans with paint brushes in his pocket and a left bandaged ear and anything to make him look French. Reddish beard.

PROJECT

Students begin working on Van Gogh’s most famous painting and van Gogh bursts in to give them the “real” how-to paint Starry Night.

Take photos at the end with van Gogh and students holding up their paintings in front of the décor.

VAN GOGH ART PROJECT DETAILSSTARRY NIGHT

We are going to paint one of van Gogh’s most famous paintings called Starry Night which he painted from the window of the asylum in Saint Remy thirteen months before he died.

Van Gogh was obsessed with the idea of painting a starry night because in the late 1800’s he was reading a lot about the stars and the universe as part of a complex astrological system. He believed the stars symbolized HOPE. He also wanted to paint “stars of citron yellow, pink, green, and blue against the deep violet blues and greens of the night sky”. He was into COLOR!!!

This painting is called a VISIONARY LANDSCAPE because he made it up. Do you see the village of Saint Remy? It is really some distance away and cannot be seen anywhere in the asylum. And the church steeple, its architecture is more representative of his homeland in the Netherlands. Even the scraggly cypresses are borrowed.

Van Gogh used his memory of places he has been and his imagination to make a mystical rendering of nature.

You are going to “paint” this visionary landscape with oil pastels that will give a rich color similar to the oil paints he used. You will be using an underpainting that is very similar to the pen and ink one that van Gogh did. Please sign your name in cursive on the back with your class.

Van Gogh rushes in…………..what a “blast from the past,” I believe this is Vincent van Gogh. Oh my. I guess he is here to explain how to paint his landscape. Listen carefully.VAN GOGH:

Start with the ORANGE moon. As I have said before, “there is no blue without yellow and without orange.” Next make circles of YELLOW around the swirls. Some people have called these the cosmic gold fireworks or the yellow planets of the cosmos. The brushstrokes are very important here.

Now with your LIGHT BLUE make circles around the yellow. Next, use DARK BLUE and make swirls around the light blue. See how you can blend the pastels on top of one another?

Keep making a swirly flow and follow the underpainting when coloring the sky with the blues and greens.

Towards the bottom of the sky, there is more yellow to contrast against the black and blue mountains. After you do the mountains, you can use the same color to paint the scraggly cypress.

Use straight strokes to paint the town of Saint Remy. Then use some swirls to do the wheat fields and olive trees.

For the finishing touches, use black to add contrast to the cypresses and some parts of the buildings and sky. Add some yellow to show the light of the oil lamps in the buildings at night. YELLOW is van Gogh’s signature color.

Lastly, have the students use gold paint pens to add a few swirls around the stars (see sample drawing).