If I have never expressed my hatred for glitter, I will do it now. Glitter is messy, hard to clean up, gets everywhere, and creates a beautiful sparkle when you are an art teacher blowing your nose. That said, sometimes artwork just needs a little bling, so my Christmas present to the 1st graders this year was to break the lock off the glitter cabinet and use it to add sparkle to our Van-Gogh inspired Starry Night pics.
First, we took a good look at Van-Gogh's Starry Night painting. Google Art Project and their high-res image of the painting make it easy to zoom in and see every little brush stroke made by the artist. We discussed the cool colors used in the background and how Vincent used tints (adding white to a color). We then used blue, purple, and some turquoise paint to paint stripes on a vertical piece of paper, adding white stripes between and letting the colors mix to tints on the paper. The next class, we started to discuss the large cypress tree that sits in the front of Starry Night, and how it looks so dark because it is a silhouette. Silhouettes are sometimes all we can see at night. We practiced with black paint making trees before placing one on top of our tinted painting from last week.
The next class period was spent trying to maintain a moderate level of composure as I broke out the glitter, modeled the process, then let them go. You can't argue with the results!
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