I finally finished faking van Gogh’s sunflowers. I’ve been faffing around with it off and on for a few weeks now. The strange sunflowers at the bottom of the vase took a lot of work and I was stumped about how to do them at first, but then I worked out how to dapple paint on with a palette knife and it started coming together. Here are the stages I went through. Tomorrow – the timelapse video 😀 I did this from one of Ed Sumner’s Cheese and Wine Painting Club videos. He runs a painting session every Friday lunchtime on Facebook.
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That’s a darned good fake!
Thanks Alli, took my time and really got to grips with his technique 😀
I think our adoption of Van Gogh as the quintessential romantic “wild artist” has done him such a disservice. I am currently reading Van Gogh’s letters (2nd attempt) and it is full of him discussing technical matters, critiquing other artists, worrying about not being able to draw from the model because he couldn’t pay them. As we would say today the man was a machine he worked and worked and worked. Not to mention his working career in a fine art dealership. You don’t get to where he did only on talent. Indeed he is often very critical of what he achieved.
Fab Rosie! I love the darker ones lower down, such rich colour, amazing 🤩
Thanks Phil, they were the hardest to do but I’m glad I persevered 🙂
I can explain a bit about those “strange sunflowers” after watching ours grow this summer. It turns out that once all the florets in a flowerhead have been pollinated the petals drop off and the flower head droops over, presumably to protect the developing seeds. What you have there are the dried seedheads. Of course in our case the cockatoos came and ate all the seeds and snapped the flowers off their stems!😂😂😂
Cockatoos??!! How exotic 😀
Not around here at least!😂
You’re so right about van Gogh. I always admired his technique but since I’ve become a lockdown faker, I’ve had a chance to really analyse it and he’s so complex