My painting is called the Wheat Field with Cypresses. Van Gogh painted it in 1889 during his Saint Remy period. I picked this because it looks relaxing and I can almost feel the wind in the picture.

 For my picture I used a lot of texture. I used some thick and thin brush strokes. For the foreground I used different colors that I mixed  to make my wheat field look real. I used thick daubs of paint in the sky to give the clouds more texture and to make them stand out. I also used ivory soap in the paint to make it thicker. This helped to make the sky look more real. I didn't want to use yellow and green in my sky like Van Gogh did, because to me the sky doesn't look that way.   When I painted my trees I tried to make them look like they were moving from the wind.

I like my sky and cypress tree best because I painted them like Van Gogh.  I used curvy lines like him.  I created definition  on my Cypress tree by using dark blue for the outline and light green and dark green like Vincent Van Gogh. I think I did a nice job with my version of Wheat Field with Cypresses. I'm proud of myself. I put a lot of hard work in my painting.

If I could do something differently I would paint more trees because Vincent Van Gogh did.

I learned that Van Gogh only sold one painting out of 800. I feel bad and sad about this because he worked hard on his paintings. No one liked Van Gogh either because he was strange acting. I thought it was interesting learning about Van Gogh.  It was fun painting our own version of a Van Gogh and making a self portrait. At times it was hard but I learned a lot.

By Kirstin

Click here to see the original online.