Inspired by Artist Justin Vining: Abstract Whimsical Landscapes

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 are cheap and will blend with water.  Thanks to the art teacher who mentioned this product on the Art Teacher Facebook group.  A bit pricier version of these water-soluble crayons are the Caran d’Ache Neocolors.  They blend soooooo nicely.  The quality is amazing.  A trick to stretch a box of these further is to simply break the long crayon into a couple of pieces and have one of each color piece sitting in between kids so that they can share the colors.  I actually just have a box of water-soluble crayons all mixed together portioned in baggies to distribute… the Neocolors, Crayolas and Reeves Water Soluble Wax Pastels (okay quality, similar to the Crayolas).  Aren’t these gorgeous and fun?