Van Gogh Collage

In this project, we focused on the style of Vincent Van Gogh, who painted the famous "Starry Night" among many other pieces during his short career.  To create our collages, we first cut out small pieces of tissue paper, using various colors.  We used minimal amounts of glue to adhere these to our construction paper background before applying a gel medium over the top when we were completed applying the tissue paper.  Once this was dry, we had a clear, glossy finish over our work.  Using oil pastels and markers, lines were made throughout our picture to represent the style of Van Gogh.  Another piece of construction paper was used on top of all of this to create a landscape of our choosing.  Lines were again made on this piece to add style.

For my project, I chose to use a nighttime landscape of a lake, surrounded by trees.  To accomplish this, I used a black background with a piece of blue for the water.  To make the trees, I again used construction paper: green and brown.  Using oil pastels, I made small stars and lines in the sky.  Lines were also made on the lake, trees, and background using a silver and black marker.  

This project would be fun to do in my future classroom because it gives the students an opportunity to use tissue paper in a different way.  Also, the gel medium used to attach the tissue paper gives the project a nice shine that would stand out when hung in a hallway.  Along with this activity, students could work on finding some facts about Van Gogh, or even doing a research paper on him, depending on their age.  This research will give them more insight into his style of painting and his works of art.  Another extension of this activity is to have students write a story explaining their artwork.  This will allow students to explain what they have made while also giving them practice in creative writing.  

Art History in the Classroom:

Possibly the easiest way to incorporate art history into a normal general education classroom is to cover it in social studies.  As students learn about different cultures, societies, traditions and geographic places, art can be brought in to enhance the lesson.  For example, when studying about the Ancient Egyptians and their burial practices, art history can be taught by examining the tombs that were made to place the bodies of prominent individuals in.