Using Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’ as inspiration, the children in our art clubs have been busy making collages this week.  It has been very nice to see how they have brought in elements from previous sessions to enhance their work.  It is always heartening as a teacher to see children remembering what they have learnt and using this knowledge to reach for new heights.

One of the biggest challenges in this project was for the children to grasp the concept of layering.  This was particularly key here as by far the easiest approach was to put in the table and background first, followed by the vase and then finally the flowers.  Some children really struggled with this idea of working from the bottom up and as a result found that they had to fill in around their beautiful flowers to create a background.  Not impossible, but certainly challenging! I guess that, because the flowers were the main feature of the painting, it was those that they couldn’t wait to get started on, despite my frequent reminders to ‘do the background first’!

Not to worry, however, they all produced lovely work in the end.  It was pleasing to see that they all had the creative confidence to use the original painting as a starting point but take it in their own direction.  So many of them asked, ‘Can we do other flowers as well as sunflowers?’ and ‘Can we do our own background?’.  I wholeheartedly encourage this sort of open ended thinking so of course the answer was a resounding yes.  I hope you love them as much as me!

Work by children aged 5 – 7