Artist Profile: Vincent van Gogh

During his early life, van Gogh tried a lot of professions. He worked as an art dealer, a teacher, a bookseller, a minister’s assistant, and a missionary before he became an artist.

Van Gogh was Dutch and remained in the Netherlands from his birth in 1853 until 1886 when he moved to Paris. His brother, Theo, was an art dealer in Paris and tried to help van Gogh sell his paintings but they were too much darker than the art that was popular in Paris at the time. You can see an example of van Gogh’s early style in the painting shown here, The Potato Eaters. It is much different from his later paintings as you can see below. In 1886 van Gogh moved so he could learn about the style of art that was being practiced in Paris.

In Paris van Gogh was surrounded by impressionists who used a lot of color and preferred to paint natural subjects outdoors. Click here for more information about impressionism. He also met many painters including Paul Gauguin who would later live with van Gogh in southern France.

When he had had enough of living in the city, van Gogh left Paris for the more peaceful Arles in southern France. Here, he lived in the Yellow House that became the subject of a painting shown here. Compare this painting with The Potato Eaters shown above and you can see the effect of the impressionists on van Gogh’s style.

It was in the Yellow House that Paul Gauguin came to live with van Gogh. The two painted almost without break for two months but they did not get along well as roommates and Gauguin moved out after a bad fight. Van Gogh was growing ill and beginning to see things that were not there so he, too, moved out of the Yellow House, but he remained in southern France. Though he never stopped painting, doctors cared for him for the rest of his life.

Van Gogh and his brother, Theo, were very close. Van Gogh and Theo wrote many letters to each other and van Gogh often sent ink sketches of paintings he’d done. It is because of these letters that we know so much about van Gogh’s life. He painted hundreds of works of art and we know exactly when and where most of them were completed. Theo cared about his brother so much that he even sent van Gogh money so he could pay his rent and buy art supplies. When van Gogh became ill, Theo made sure he was well taken care of by doctors.

Bellow are a few more of van Gogh’s paintings. Notice the colors and the thick paint.

Starry Night Over the Rhone

Self Portrait 1889
Van Gogh painted many self portraits. To do so he used a mirror so the details are shown in reverse.

Want to paint the way van Gogh did when he was living in the Yellow House? Van Gogh painted quickly, dashing thick globs of paint onto his canvas. Oil paint had only recently become available in tubes so he didn’t have to make his own paints like artists before him. He could just squeeze the paint from the tube onto his canvas.

Van Gogh didn’t have to paint every little detail for the viewer to understand what he was trying to create. Try using quick, short brush strokes to create the idea of an object. For instance, if you decide to paint a tree, don’t paint each leaf, just use many dashes of green paint where the leaves should be. Use acrylic craft paints for this project. They will be thick enough to paint the way van Gogh did, but will be less expensive than buying many tubes of oil paint. Remember to paint on thick paper so the paint doesn’t soak through. Posterboard would be perfect. Just cut it to any size you want.

EDITED TO ADD: Vincent van Gogh by Eileen Lucas, book review

EDITED TO ADD: The Yellow House by Susan Goldman Rubin, book review

Return to main page.

The Yellow House by Susan Goldman Rubin

The Yellow House is a picture book, written by Susan Goldman Rubin, about Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin’s eight weeks as roommates in southern France. Rubin skillfully tells the story of the friendship that falls apart while the two artists live and paint side-by-side in Arles.

Rubin compares the artists’ painting styles, describing van Gogh as a painter who dashes paint onto his canvas in order to capture a scene quickly, while Gauguin takes his time, sketching his pictures before carefully applying thin layers of paint to the canvas. Jos. A. Smith illustrates these differences by placing paintings by each artist on the same page. He also adds his own drawings to show van Gogh and Gauguin painting together in the fields of Arles. Smith uses the same colors as the artists to show the sunbathed South of France that both painters fell in love with.

This book is an excellent introduction to van Gogh, Gauguin, and the most productive eight weeks of both their careers.

Return to main page.

Create Your Own Mosaic

It’s difficult to create a tile mosaic but, as you’ve seen in entries this week, you can make a mosaic out of almost anything, including nails, toothpicks, and Post-It Notes. The easiest material to work with is paper so that’s what you’ll use for this project. Once you’ve created a mosaic out of paper, move on to the second project in this post.

Materials Needed:

One large sheet of paper
Glue stick
Assortment of colored papers
Pencil
Scissors (optional)

First, decide what you’d like your mosaic to look like. You can create anything from a simple, repeating pattern to a complex picture. Using your pencil, draw the image onto your large sheet of paper. You’ll cover the pencil lines with paper so the drawing won’t be a part of the finished mosaic.

Next, cut or tear pieces your other pieces of paper into small bits. These can be cut into matching squares, rectangles, circles, random shapes, or a combination.

Lay out the pieces of colored paper onto your drawing as you want it to look. You can lay the pieces of paper so they overlap each other or you can lay them with space in between so the large paper shows through like the grout in a tile mosaic. You may want to try using different shades of the same color to fill in an area of your mosaic. For example, if you want to make water, use some dark blue, some light blue, and some green next to each other.

When the mosaic looks they way you want it, use the glue stick to attach the paper bits.

__________

Materials Needed:

Wooden Board
Flat Glass Marbles
Clear Silicone Glue
Pencils

Just like in the first project, draw your design or picture onto the board with your pencil. Lay the flat glass marbles onto the board and arrange them until you like the way the mosaic looks. Then use the Silicone Glue to attach the flat marbles to the board. Silicone Glue will work best since it was made specifically for glass and tile.

Be careful when you move your finished mosaic. If the board is twisted or bent the marbles may pop off. This is even true of a tile mosaic created by a professional.

Return to main page.

Saimir Strati's Toothpick Mosaic

Today’s featured mosaic is another odd one by Saimir Strati. He holds the Guinness World Record for this mosaic as well. It is the largest mosaic made of toothpicks. Unlike his nail mosaic, the image used is his own, not a copy of someone else’s art. It is a horse and is called Reinless Spirit.

The mosaic took 40 days of work. To create the different colors in the mosaic, Strati used toothpicks made of different types of wood. To see pictures of Strati in the process of creating the mosaic, click here.

Strati says he was inspired by Antoni Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia, an unfinished cathedral in Barcelona, Spain. In the picture below, notice that the building looks a bit like toothpicks set at uneven heights.

Return to main page.

David Alvarez's Post-It Mosaic

Since we’ve been talking about mosaics and mosaics made out of weird materials, David Alvarez’s Post-It mosaics seemed like a perfect thing to write about today.

Alvarez is a 19 year old student at Wenatchee Valley College in Washington who created the mosaic for an art show. He used a photo editing program on his computer to make a picture of musician, Ray Charles look like a mosaic. He then used the picture on the screen to create his mosaic out of 2000 Post-It Notes. He had to add glue to keep the Post-It Notes attached but the bottoms still flap the way they would if they were only attached with their usual stickiness.

Go look at the slide show of David Alvarez’s Post-It mosaic. Included is a picture of the way it looked on the computer screen. It couldn’t have been easy to turn it into a Post-It mosaic!

Return to main page.