Sunflowers Coloring Page
Saturday October 25, 2008
The bad news: sunflowers, those happy, vibrant faces at which I dearly love to look, are beyond done for the season. The good news: jays have replaced yellow with their Technicolor blue, raucously plundering the large-seeded heads, just as the littler perching birds are busy at the small-seeded heads. The best news: when all of the seeds are long gone and you, I, and the birds are sick and tired of seeing brown stalks poking through snow drifts, any creature with opposable thumbs can print out this coloring page and fill it full of nice, warm colors.
I want to believe that Vincent felt similarly about the cheerfulness of sunflowers. I know my daughter, who drew this for you, does, too. We suppose he painted them as often as he did because it's almost impossible to see such a riot of fiery hues and *not* feel hopeful.
Have fun! Also, if you're so inclined, please mention a little something to your students about optimism, and how--especially in a bleak internal and/or external landscape--it is seldom misplaced.
Image credit: Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890). Sunflowers (Vase with 12 Sunflowers), 1888. Coloring page © 2008 Margaret Esaak.
Comments
This is a really cool image. How did you make it from the original painting?
The artist (who will be delighted to hear that you like her drawing; thank you so much) sketched it on a Wacom tablet while looking at a digital image of the original. She then cleaned up her lines in an image editing program (specifically: Photoshop v10.0.1).
My modest contribution was to add the line of text, change the format to a .jpeg (so that any web browser can recognize it) and upload it here for everyone’s use. Oh, there were words, too, but, really–she did the heavy lifting with the drawing. All kudos to Margaret, to whom I /bow.
give more sun flower picture