Van Gogh Tissue Paper Landscape

For this art activity we made our own versions of Van Gogh's "starry night." We used tissue paper, glue, construction paper, sharpie markers, paint brush, gel medium, scissors, and oil pastels. The first thing you do is cut the tissue paper into whatever shape you want.You then place them where you want with glue and cover all the tissue paper with gel medium. While the gel medium is drying you can cut out the construction paper landscape. Once the gel medium is dried you can draw signs of movement onto your picture with the marker sharpies. Finally, you will glue the construction paper landscape on top of the tissue paper.

 

For my landscape, I created a underwater sea with lots of blues and greens for the water colors. I drew a castle and broken ship to create the bottom of a sea landscape. The marker sharpies helped me create a look of movement throughout the landscape.

An extension on this activity could be to have the students each pick a place in the world and have them look up information on it and research what times of landscape they have. They could choose which landscape they liked best and then make their own representation of it. That way they would learn about different landscapes throughout the world and express how they picture it.

The art history implemention idea I liked best was the one relating to social studies. When you're learning about world culture and how it has changed throughout time, you can definitely implement art into it. Art is a huge way that people have expressed their cultures throughout the years. Depending on what country you are learning about, you can have the students do different art projects. Italy for example, you could have the students make mosaics and teach them what that meant in their culture.