Children's Artwork Based on Famous Art (Van Gogh)

I've been hard at work as we near our Pre-school art show.
I have forgotten to show you some of the projects...so I will be sure to do that this week (for those of you who like to do art with your children, these are great for all ages!)

This four year old class was inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's very famous Starry Night.

I don't have pictures of the process, but I basically broke it down into 4 steps.

1.  Show the children the painting and talk about it.  We looked at the shapes, the colors, the overall feel of it.

2.  Using black construction paper and a white crayon, they drew some basic shapes.  Most of them did the moon, circles in the sky, the "mountain", swirls in the sky.  Some even did the houses.

3.  Using oil pastels, they started with one shape at a time, and drew tiny broken lines to immulate the brush strokes.  Some children did not want to do that and used the oil pastels to color in the shapes.

4.  After they were done, their teacher found some paint at Michaels with glitter and stars in it, and they were allowed to paint in some of the shapes if they wanted to.

Here are a few examples of how they turned out:

Aren't they great?  :)

Children's Artwork Based on Famous Art (Kadinsky)

I have the pleasure of "being in charge" of our beloved pre-school's art show this year.
I thought I would show you all of the projects as we work on them in case you were looking for new and fresh ideas for kid's art projects.
Even though the projects are being done by pre-schoolers, I think older children would enjoy them as well.  Just vary the level of adult help to fit the child's level.

The theme of the art show this year is "A Night at the Art Museum."
I chose a famous artist and a famous piece of work for each classroom.
This project is based on this very well-known painting by Wassily Kadinsky.
I used it for a three year old class.

Above is Kadinsky's version, below is a three year olds version.  Pretty cool-huh? ;)

Start out by dividing the paper in six sections very lightly with a pencil.
I hung the paper on an easel and the children painted in each box with a different color tempera paint.  I showed them how to outline each box with the paint and then fill them in.  They did a great job!

Next, they were given a large piece of watercolor paper.  I loosely drew eighteen circle of varying sizes and the children painted each circle with watercolor paint.

After they dried, I cut them into circles.  We actually used circle cutters, but you could hand cut them, or if the child is proficient with scissors, they can cut them out by themselves.

I used 3-D pop up foam stickers in between all the circles so they would look three dimensional.  It's hard to see it in the photos, but in real life it looks awesome!

Here's another version.  As the art show nears, we will matte them on black paper.

Sigh...you know those colors make me happy!  ;)