This may have been my favorite unit we studied all year! We looked at the whimsical landscapes of contemporary artist Justin Vining. Here is one of his paintings:
Artwork by Justin Vining
We watched videos of him talking about his influences, watched time lapses of his paintings and emailed him some questions about himself. He responded to our questions in this interview I posted previously. This was a perfect artist to study for us because Justin lives in Indiana in a rural area and he is influenced by his surroundings. We are in Wisconsin, also with lots of farms in the area. I love that Justin talked in his videos about artists from the past that influenced him such as Van Gogh, Thomas Hart Benton and Andrew Wyeth.
After looking at the artwork of Justin Vining, the 4th/5th grade students drew their own whimsical landscapes. Some chose to use watercolor paints and others used water-soluble crayons or colored pencils to blend colors. I had a few types of water-soluble crayons. First, Crayola Ultra Clean Washable Crayons
