SECOND GRADE . . . Spring has arrived!

Inspired by the artwork of Vincent van Gogh, second graders painted a still life in art class with a vase and a bouquet of flowers. Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), a Dutch post-impressionist artist, created many paintings of a vase with flowers. Most people are familiar with his arrangement of "Sunflowers." Van Gogh was known for using short directional brush strokes to help to define the shape of his objects and the movement in his scenes.

"Sunflowers"
Vincent van Gogh

We set out to explore van Gogh's style of artwork. We painted our vase, table and back wall with bright colors, adding patterns with our brush strokes. Some of the designs are very subtle, such as in Bianca's lovely painting below. Some students chose to create a more abstract design and this keeps our eyes moving all over the page, such as with Cole's masterpiece. Other students added more dramatic patterns, such as Sabrina's painted swirls that beautifully frame her bouquet of flowers. The different styles of our paintings reflect our own creative expression.

Once our backgrounds and vases were completed, we learned a new technique for painting flowers. We did not draw our flower petals with a pencil, but let the thickness of our brushes to do all the work, This gave our blossoms a more natural appearance, as if they were 'just picked' wildflowers. Everyone used the same technique, but notice how different each bouquet and each flower within the bouquets appear.

Finally, just as Vincent signed his painting on the vase, we signed our names the same way. Here are more examples of our work. To see all of our 2nd grade flowers in bloom, click on this link for artsonia.com.  http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=114839