Our Version of Starry Night

There is a poster of Van Gogh's Starry Night painting hanging on my wall in the art room and a couple of the students have been asking constantly when we were going to paint it. I thought it was time to tackle it today! But of course, we can't just jump into painting this masterpiece without a bit of knowledge on Van Gogh and how he came to paint the way he did.

This painting looms so large in the art world that it warrents a lot of discussion and the children were very interested in talking about why Van Gogh used the colours he did, why his brush strokes are so strong and how he created pattern within his art to evoke feelings, form and even temperature! Next they took a look at this animated video of the painting to set the mood for getting down to work!

This video transformed a roomful of chatterboxes into a bunch of Starry-Eyed (pun intended) children ready to paint like Van Gogh!

For this painting the children used canvas boards and easels, not the norm in my art classes as I try to keep my costs down and the cost of canvas boards can add up quickly, but for this exercise I wanted to give them the full Van Gogh experience. We primed our canvas in a yellow ochre colour first to mimic the undertone of the painting and then they sketched out the scene.