The Starry Night Mobile is a way for students to create a 3D version of the famous Starry Night painting by Van Gogh. This lesson gives students the artist license to take Van Gogh’s Impressionistic style and practice it for themselves. Adding features into their landscape and continuing the organic, wispy shapes.
Materials: Two Pieces of cardboard, scissors, pencil, string, something to color with, ruler.
New Vocabulary: Negative space, Mobile
Journey:
Step one: Draw a horizontal line and two vertical lines that are about two inches thick on the top and left/right hand sides.
Step two: Draw out your landscape not including the sky.
Step three: With the other piece of cardboard cut out the shapes you see in Starry Night’s sky such as the swirling clouds, stars.
Step four: Color your landscape and the shapes you created on the separate piece of cardboard.
Step five: Cut out the the sky shapes, and the sky portion where you will hang your separate shapes. Make sure you leave the two inches on the sides and top .
Step six: Create holes in the left over cardboard (two inches) that you left. Using your string, hang your sky shapes in the negative space above you landscape.
group tour: Take a look at Van Gogh’s Starry Night painting.
extend your journey: Discuss post impressionism with the class and what its characteristics are.
learn new vocabulary: Mobile, negative space.