Description of the Unit – Second grade students explored Vincent van Gogh’s unique style of painting by observing and then recreating his famous Sunflowers still life.

Activity statement – While other painters preferred painting softer, more elegant flowers like gladiolus and dahlias, Vincent van Gogh preferred the rough textures and coarseness of sunflowers, and featured them numerous times in his paintings. He made multiple versions of his most famous painting of sunflowers, a still life of the flowers in a vase. The more he painted sunflowers, the more he experimented with color.

For this unit students will also play with color, especially mixing color to replicate the different tints, tones and shades they perceive in Van Gogh’s painting.

I don’t often have my students create art that is a replica of famous art, (rather I have them simply be inspired by other works of art), but there are certain times where to do so really advances their understanding of a particular concept, idea or technique. In this case we do it so that students get some practice at color mixing, trying to recreate the colors they perceive in the painting.

We first practiced creating tints (adding white), tones (adding gray) and shades (adding black) to colors so students better understood what happens to colors when mixed with white, gray or black. I also had them experiment with mixing colors with other colors, noting if the subsequent color has become lighter or darker, and why they think that is. We also mixed different pure colors together to see what kinds of hues we could come up with.

Following this, we observed van Gogh’s many sunflower paintings, eventually settling on the one we used for our re-creation. Students did a rough sketch in pencil to have the basic composition mapped out.

The fun part came next. Students were given a base palette with pure colors, and were tasked with mixing them into the colors they perceived in the painting; their color interpretations, if you will, very much in keeping with how van Gogh interpreted color in his own way. We went section by section: background, tabletop, then vase, then flowers. Overall a very satisfying way for students to lay with color mixing and color theory.

Goals – Students should…

Understand:

• That a major part of the painting process is to learn to mix colors in order to achieve a variety of hues, tints, tones and shades

Know:

• The definitions of tint, tone and shade

Be able to:

• Add white, gray and black to pure colors to create tints, tones and shades, as well as mix colors together to create different hues

Objectives – Students will: experiment with mixing color to achieve tones, tints and shades found in van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting.

Resources and materials –

• Examples of van Gogh’s sunflower paintings
• Canvases
• Pencils
• Erasers
• Paint (we used acrylic)
• Paintbrushes
• Cups (for water)
• Paper towels (it’s important for students to dry the brushes after rinsing them so that they do not apply watery paint)
• Palettes (I use disposable appear palettes for mixing color)

Questions –

(While observing Sunflowers)

• What do you notice about the colors?
• Do flowers usually look like this? Why or why not?
• Would you say this painting is realistic? Why or why not?
• What do you notice about the way the paint has been applied to the painting?
• Do you notice texture? Describe.
• Can you see the brush strokes?

Evaluation – Did students:

• Understand the definitions of, and how to create tints, tones and shades?
• Experiment with color mixing while painting?

Informal:

• Student questions
• Group discussions
• Oral responses to essential questions
• Elaboration and risk-taking

• 2nd grade
• Art History
• Painting