Young Artists Study Van Gogh

Our artist of the week is Vincent Van Gogh.

 

As usual, we started by reading some books about Van Gogh. We learned he had lots of problems, that no one liked his paintings, and he only sold one painting his whole life.

 

He also cut off part of his ear and then painted himself a few times with the ear all bandaged up.

 

Not surprisingly, this was one of the pictures that didn't sell during his lifetime.

 

I told Hailey and Makayla that Van Gogh has a special appeal for me. When I was their age, Mom had a copy of one of Van Gogh's many versions of Sunflowers hanging in our living room.

 I always liked that painting.

 

 

I told the girls how we'd been to visit a Van Gogh museum in Europe, and how there were many paintings I loved

 

and a some that were meh.

 

 

We studied his most famous painting, Starry Night, noting all the colors, the short strokes of paint, and the feeling of movement.

 

Hailey created her own Starry Night, using artist chalk.

 

 Makayla was not in a painting mood, so she listened to.....

  ,,,Don McLean's Starry Starry Night while Hailey worked.

You can watch it here.

 

Here's Vincent's Starry Night

 

and Hailey's Starry Night.

 

 

Van Gogh was born in the Netherlands, so I picked up some authentic Dutch cheese, all the way from Costco.

I was pretty sure the girls won't like this cheese. Here's Hailey, suspiciously smelling it...

...and gingerly taking a nibble/bite.



Hailey declares "It's Goud(a)!!"

So does Makayla!

In fact, they went back for seconds,



thirds,

 and fourths, fifths, and sixths, pretty much polishing off the whole wedge in one sitting.

 

 

Our next day we took a look at Sunflowers. We noted that several versions had colorful variations.

 

Using acrylic paint, we choose a colorful background. Makayla went for purple,

Hailey for pink.

Albertson's provided our lovely Sunflower bouquet model.

We aren't trying to exactly reproduce our bouquet; we wanted to enjoy our own colorful sunflower creation, using our centerpiece as inspiration.



Makayla's version...

...and Hailey's version.

 

Our next Dutch food are these cookies,

made locally by a couple of Dutch brothers who run a Billings deli.

Surprise! They were even more popular than the cheese!

After learning about poor Vincent, we're moving on to happier things.

We've got fun times ahead!