Van Gogh - a Lesson Plan Idea

Start your Van Gogh art day with our art video of the life of one of the world’s greatest artists, Vincent Van Gogh. Let your children discover what motivated and inspired him, what drove him on, despite his personal problems and lack of success, and why he became a world famous artist. Art teaching has never been so exciting.

The video will keep your children enthralled and engaged throughout its 35 minute length. My experience tells me the video is appropriate for Year 2 ( 6 to 7 year olds) and above, but the final decision rests with you, the art teacher.

Teachers Please Note

We value the role of art education in schools, but understand that some famous artists produced controversial art works and led far from ‘normal’ lives. For this reason, in my videos, aspects of the artist’s lives may have been simplified, amended or exaggerated to make their stories accessible to kids. Paul, Artist in School make every effort to create accurate interpretations of each artist’s life – we accept no responsibility for the consequences of any factual inaccuracies.

Why not show enhance your art lessons with our easy drawing and painting tutorial videos, especially designed for children. All the basic steps are covered; sketching, measuring, tonal drawing, shading and painting in a simple step by step approach. Before you know it, they will be drawing and painting sunflowers just like Van Gogh, wonderfully.

Planning your Van Gogh Day

Start your art day with a showing of ‘The Life of Van Gogh’. This will set the scene for your art day. Follow this with some of the easy drawing videos displayed here to show the children how to draw/paint sunflowers and pots etc. Stop/start the videos as required so children can follow the drawing/painting process.

Set the task of the children drawing their own version of the Sunflowers based on their drawings and watch them produce their own wonderful creations.

In the afternoon show the sunflower painting video. Do not let children draw their picture first, encourage the children to paint their pictures directly on the paper. They will produce much more bold and dramatic paintings this way. After the morning’s drawing sessions they should feel more confident in doing this.

* Children will require sketchbooks, or at least 3 sheets of A3 paper for the drawing workshop – you may need more paper if the children are watching a number of videos

* For the painting sessions children will need a paper plate each for colour mixing and one paper plate between two for the paint. They will need an A3 or(be bold A2) sized sheet of cartridge paper to paint on. Perhaps get the kids to stand when they are painting.

* Colours required are blue, red, yellow, dark brown and white. All colours can be mixed from these.