I hope you are all in the midst of enjoying this wonderful holiday season. Christmas is now just six days away and hopefully we all can slow down enough to celebrate and be with the ones that you love. I never really plan for a yearly theme and when I do I always change it. This year I changed twice but it is not difficult to figure out what I landed on. I have always loved Van Gogh and have enjoyed studying and learning about his art through the years. A couple of years ago I dove in and copied three of his paintings. I painted with my most familiar medium: watercolor and then tried acrylic and ended up painting rocks. I painted only from the colors that were in his palette. I copied the wheat fields, lavender fields and a not so famous vase of sunflowers. But I avoided The Starry Night....too scary.
You probably knew that Van Gogh painted all of these plus about 100 more while he lived in Saint-Remy-de-Provence but did you know that he drew inspiration for The Starry Night in the wee hours of the morning? He could only sketch in his room at the asylum but could paint in a public room elsewhere in the complex. Venus was the morning star and the brightest. He placed it to the right of the cypress tree. The background hills were accurate but he created the little village below including the steepled church.
So this year's Christmas theme: STARS!
My Christmas card...each hand painted with gouache
Under the Christmas tree
My first attempt at copying- then I just immersed myself
in my studio: felt and my new gouache set
to create swirling star ornaments on "night" card stock
Then to the kitchen to make star shaped butter cut out cookies
both white and blue
I cut out felt and scrap fabric stars, sewed them together with seed beads and added ribbon to make a garland for the tree. Yes Vincent came along for the ride
The Starry night on rock - 4"
lavender fields paint pens on a 3" rock
Haystack on rock
Five sunflowers- lost during a raid in WWII - oil pens on rock
