How To Draw Starry Night With Oil Pastels

Van Gogh 'Starry Night', 1889

One of the almost iconic paintings of all time, Starry Nighttime, by Van Gogh (1889) is a MUST for whatever art classroom or art instruction studio. Only how to execute this projection, and which what ages? Well, I've tried information technology a few years dorsum with half dozen-vii yr olds using crayon and watercolor resist. It worked well, but it didn't have that punch, that vibrancy, or that texture that I love and so much well-nigh the original. I likewise recently did information technology with my adult course in acrylic paint and texture paste, which resulted in AWESOME paintings but was exceedingly difficult, and acquired myself and my adult student much ache and wrist pain in the end.

Yeah, not something I wanted to try on my kids. So for my seven-13 year onetime historic period grouping I decided to practice it with oil pastels on black newspaper. Wow! What stunning results we got! The colors were creamy, blended, vibrant and textured. The black paper takes it all down a notch and gives it that mysterious quality, while allowing the colors to popular off the dark background. These were super successful! Only this is non to say that it was a very difficult and labor intensive projection. Our wrists were kinda hurting by the end as well, with all the repetitive motility. It took 1 group two 90-infinitesimal classes, the other group took a bit longer. But nosotros came away learning so much most layering, blending oil pastels, creating motility, and using our creative person eyes to observe every dash and color particular of Van Gogh's masterpiece with upmost precision. And another great benefit of this project? We used the grid method to draw the landscape. This ensured that all our stars, hills, waves and houses had their precise and rightful place in our composition. Another reason these look And so much like the original!

Teacher Sample, oil pastel on black paper

Materials:
Black construction paper
'Starry Nighttime' impress-out for each student (in a plastic sleeve, taped to a yogurt jug to stand it upwardly)
Oil pastels: black, white, brownish, yellow, orange, dark dark-green, light blue, heart blue, dark blue.

Process:
Students created a grid on their Van Gogh 'Starry Night' impress out, and and then a grid on their black drawing newspaper. Using pencil, they and so began lightly drawing in the composition filigree for grid. For well-nigh of my students this was a new concept, but even the youngest students grasped the concept quickly and were well on their way to mapping out their Starry Night with precision.

Teacher demonstrating pace-by-step coloring and blending.

Once drawing was consummate, we began coloring. I showed them pace by step how to color using my own sample. I regularly reinforced the need to closely examine the size and direction of the various line qualities in our painting. I showed them how to utilize small-scale quick dashes for the some areas like the starts and heaven, short curved dashes in the bushes, longer upwardly moving squiggly strokes in the tree, and longer streaks in the waves and mountains. This led to their overall success in mimicking the feel, texture and motility of Van Gogh's piece of work.
We used dashes of blue for the hills and overplayed with dashes of white, which resulted in blended tints of blues. We did the aforementioned with the green in our hills, adding dashes of white and xanthous, resulting in tints of green and yellowish-greens. Our houses were done in light blue and overplayed with white. We noted that the houses, tree and hills are all outlined in black. The church with church steeple seems to be the focal betoken in the lower part of the painting, so we were sure to emphasize this by ensuring it was large and assuming enough, and highlighted enough to make it depict the viewer's attention.

We connected similar this, closely examining and working out each surface area at a time, and beingness mindful of how to achieve the appropriate color, texture and feel of movement through blending, layering, and line work.

Those who wanted/needed to, followed along with me, while the more independent/advanced students colored at their own pace and using their own intuition. After a short time of me demonstrating, nearly all students were working independently. I ceased demonstrating on the my ain sample, and offered individual guidance where needed.

Our fix: 'Starry Night' visual. Close ascertainment.

We first colored the bottom one-half our our limerick (land, mountains, houses and tree).
In our next course session we addressed the sky in the same meticulous, close observational way. We noticed that the swirls are the focal point in the sky, and were certain to emphasize this element with actress highlights.

Day one. Bottom one-half complete!

This was a challenging projection, no incertitude, but all students went home feeing proud and successful. And boy, did they learn a TON in the process. I Love these!