Vincent van Gogh

“Irises”

Submitted by Robin Montoni and Deegan Vigliotti, 2011

Time Allowed: 1 hr. 15 min. (For both the presentation and the art activity) Background: Robin Montoni did a power point presentation of Van Gogh's artworks, personal history (his relationship with his brother) and life. We discussed his paintings, the use of colors, what he painted and the type of brush strokes he used. The students studied the Irises painting, we talked about how this is not the "real" painting but a print, I showed them a picture from a book of the same painting to show them how different two prints can look from one another. Art Lesson: I discussed with the students how many of Van Gogh's painting have monochromatic color schemes. I painted the word "Monochromatic" on a large piece of paper in varying shades and tints of blue to show the children that it was all blue but there are different kinds of blue. We discussed how blueberries are blue, the sky is blue, the ocean is blue, bluebirds are blue but they are all blue and it you put all those different blues together you would have something monochromatic like Van Gogh's Irises. Then we discussed the brush strokes used in the painting and how they were very very thick and Van Gogh used lots of paint and to get a similar effect for our artwork we would use paper.

Art Activity: Collage

Materials: 1 large green poster board school glue green construction paper pre-cut into stem and leaf shapes (varying sizes and shades of green) brown construction paper (in varying shades) the kids could ripe to create "the dirt or ground" of the Iris garden tissue paper pre-cut into roughly 2"x 2" to 3"x 3" squares the kids could roll, squish, crumple, and fold whatever they wanted to create the "Irises" (I used a variety of blues, purples, whites/creams, and yellows) Activity: Students worked in pairs to create a collage of irises. Pre-cut construction paper for the stems and ground and tissue paper for the flowers were given to students. Four students at a time came up to the docent to glue their paper and tissue to poster board. While the students were gluing (precut paper or scrunching their tissue), the other students were given a coloring page to occupy their time. We showed each child's picture and pointed out what is unique to each collage - different colors, varying shades of each color, remembering one white flower, etc. We set the poster board and all the supplies up at the front of the room and had the kids come up four at a time to recreate their own Iris/Flower garden. We provided two coloring sheets for the students who were not working on the poster. The students working on the poster had about 10 min to work on the poster before a new group came up. We gave the students limited instruction just here is the "ground" side here is the "sky" side and create your own garden. The children really seemed to enjoy it and they all did a piece of the collage, some just wanted to glue leaves and stems, and vines, other just wanted to make dirt, others wanted to just do flowers and still others did it all.