A Vincent van Gogh Art Lesson: Your Students Will Love this Vibrant Sunflower Painting.

May 10, 2025 by Jenn

Here’s an engaging Vincent van Gogh art lesson that is great for the tail end of the school year. As the weather is getting warmer, there’s no better subject than the heat loving plants themselves, the sunflowers. I love showing my students his sunflowers with their vibrant color schemes and expressive textures that he is known for.

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More about Vincent Van Gogh:

Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch, Post-Impressionist Painter.
His unique style of painting is best represented by his vibrant color choices, bold brushstrokes and the ability to express his emotions in his work.

Why Sunflowers?

To Vincent van Gogh, sunflowers represented gratitude and happiness.
He wanted to use the colors to express emotion.
He hung them in the guest room of his house when his artist friend, Paul Gauguin stayed with him.
Van Gogh felt that painting sunflowers allowed him to experiment with both color and his famous textural style.

Check out his Sunflowers on the Van Gogh Museum’s website!

Planing the Painting:

To begin a lesson, I typically show artwork, discuss with students and do some sketching. For this particular Vincent Van Gogh Art lesson, I love to go big (18”x24”), since sunflowers can be quite large in real life. You can certainly go smaller if there’s a time crunch or if you would like to use another material such as oil pastels. I have faux sunflowers that they can look at up close to get texture ideas when sketching. This is also a great opportunity to bring in a vase of real sunflowers, if that would be of interest to you.

Starting the Painting:

I typically use bogus paper, which is a type of recycled gray paper known for its texture and absorbency At the same time, you can get away with construction or drawing paper in a pinch.

Having the sketch to reference, the kids will use a neutral colored tempera paint to block out their painting. I encourage the kids to try to keep it light and sketchy, rather than to have any thick areas. This way, these lines are easier to paint over as the painting progresses. For this same reason, I remind the kids that it’s okay if they make a mistake or need to make a change. This is simply a plan/basic layout and will be covered when all is said and done.
Since the kids painted the outline of their design light and sketchy, chances are they will have time to start painting the background (You will have to take your class length into consideration when deciding on how much to try to accomplish each session). I have several background color choices (different shades of blue, pink and purple) all prepped in cups with lids.

Outline of an Elementary Art Van Gogh Sunflower Painting

Elementary Vincent van Gogh Sunflower Painting-Second Step: fill in the background.

Second Session:

During the next session for my Vincent van Gogh art lesson, I have the kids start with the petals since they will be lighter than the sunflower centers. I have yellow and a small amount of orange poured for the students. I demonstrate how to add texture and blend the orange into the yellow while everything is still wet (wet on wet).
For the center, we blend brown with a little bit of orange and an even smaller amount of black. Black lines can also be added directly to the wet paint to get the fuzzy look that sunflower centers have.
I have the kids paint the stems and leaves solid green (i’ll bring in another painting technique here in the future session.

Vincent Van Gogh Art Lesson: Sunflower Painting.

Final Session for the Vincent van Gogh Art Lesson:

Some students may have to catch up on some of the previous steps.
The kids will choose a “background color” that is different from the one they selected for their background. They will use this to lightly sponge a texture in the background. Sponging not only breaks up the space, but it looks neat and teaches them yet another technique that they can use in future paintings.
I also provide yellow and have the kids drybrush it onto the leaves and stems.
Sunflower coloring pages are provided to early finishers.

Vincent van Gogh Art Lesson Alternate Approach: Draw out the sunflower, outline in sharpie and add paint. The sharpie outline will still be visible.