Sunflowers Inspired by Impressionism

Sunflowers Inspired by Impressionism

Create a sunflower art project in the classroom while learning about Impressionist paintings. First, show students sunflower paintings done by popular impressionist painters, like Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Diego Rivera and Paul Gauguin. Impressionist paintings often have visual brush strokes and textures in their creations. Be inspired by these texture filled Impressionist examples and have students create their own sunflower art project.

Materials

Paint Brushes 25 Pack Assorted Styles

Fuzzy Sticks 100 Pack Dark Colored

Fuzzy Sticks 100 Pack Rainbow

Acrylic Paint Jars 24 Pack

Rainbow Poms Large Size 125 Pack

Scissors

Craft Glue

Construction Paper

Paper Cup

White Copy Paper

Instructions

Step 1. Gather your supplies.
	Step 2. Use the flat, round Sponge Brush, and dab orange Acrylic Paint over a piece of yellow construction paper. Tip: keep the fun sponge texture as you dab around the paper.
	Step 3. Twist the ends of a dark brown Fuzzy Stick and a light brown Fuzzy Stick together to create one long stick. Form a flat coil with this stick as shown.
	Step 4. Lightly trace your Fuzzy Stick coil in the middle of a sheet of copy paper. Draw petals around the traced circle.
	Step 5. Paint the petals, using yellow, orange and gold paint. Tip: Overlap the colors and brushstrokes to create a unique texture!
	Step 6. Cut out the flower shape. Repeat to create a second flower.
	Step 7. Once the flowers have dried, slightly curl the tips of the petals. Turn them over and paint the tips yellow and set aside to dry.
	Step 8. Create a vase shape from a paper cup. Cut off the bottom of the cup then about 1/3 off of the outside. Fold the edges of the cup over 1 inch on each side. These will be your tabs for gluing the cup to the paper.
	Step 9. Paint the cup shape as your vase.
	Step 10. Glue the vase to the bottom of the background paper by gluing down the (2) tabs made in Step 8. Decorate the vase with yellow and orange Fuzzy Sticks.
	Step 11. Glue the flowers to the background. Tip: Allow children to play with balance! The flower might be off center in the picture and overlap the edge of the paper.
	Step 12. Create stems using green Fuzzy Sticks.
	Step 13. Glue onto the painting under the flower heads.
Further Discussion: Use this lesson as an opportunity to discuss analogous color schemes. Analogous colors appear next to each other on the color wheel, and often appear in nature. In this lesson we use the analogous colors of yellow and orange for the background, vase, and sunflowers. Limiting the color palette to these hues will produce a cheerful painting which is pleasing to the eyes.