Vincent’s Sunflowers – 8 x 10 inch acrylic painting on Ampersand gessobord

This probably looks familiar to you. That’s because a painter from long ago, did the original. I’m only his humble student, trying to learn by following his brushstrokes. Vincent van Gogh completed his painting in 1888. It is now in a private collection, and unfortunately not in a museum, where I can go and gaze at it…admiringly. I am grateful that WikiArt has this painting online, as well as many other van Gogh paintings, so I can at least admire them digitally.

I really should call this “Speed Painting with van Gogh”, because I tried to paint as fast as possible, putting down the big areas of color first, then layering quickly on top of that. I timed myself. From pencil drawing to last minute tweaking… 1 hour and 20 minutes! I COULD have fussed over this one for days, especially if I wanted it to look exactly like his painting. And maybe one day, I will do that. But for this exercise, it was all about what I could do quickly, about what I saw in front of me, and about color. If you put the two paintings side by side, you will see a lot of differences. I am surely no van Gogh…but…I do love to meander in his brushstrokes from time to time….and pretend!  

I took process photos as I went along.

Of course, I am smitten by sunflowers in my own backyard too…so I have a feeling I will be painting more of these happy flowers soon!

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