Van Gogh's Irises

This class was all about Van Gogh so naturally I had to talk a bit about what Van Gogh the man was like and what may have drove him to paint the way he did and to supplement my blabbing they took a look at a little kid-friendly biography :) You can find it above.

Last term my Doodlebugs painted Monet's Irises so today while introducing the Picassos to Van Gogh's interpretation of the same subject they took a look at both paintings side by side and we explored the differences. It was really easy to spot the characteristics of each artist's style and talk about what made their painting unique to them. The pictures they looked at are below.. Monet's is on the left and Van Gogh's on the right. This is a cool way to point out that although we may all be painting the same subject matter you can have a completely different interpretation from your neighbour and this is what makes art and for that matter... life, so rich and so beautiful! 

But since Van Gogh is our master artist for today we followed his example and produced our version of Irises painting in his style. 

This painting can really be intimidating but the Picassos took it on one piece at a time and broke it down to draw in phases. 

They got to really lay the paint on thick... which let's face it most kids love and also explored a technique called double-loading. Some of my Picassos really had to fight the urge to blend the colours too much and also had to focus on their brushstrokes so we could get that lively texture that Van Gogh is so famous for... but they really got into it and their pieces are coming along beautifully!