My Oil Painting done on Canvas is meant to depict my imaginations. When I'm under a lot of stress, I tend to daydream a lot to sort of as a way to cope with my intense and stressful emotions. When doing this, I usually imagine myself in a huge field of flowers with a sky similiar to the 'Starry Night' by Vincent Van Gogh. In my painting, I pretty much painted out a visual representation of what the setting of my daydreams look like, the daydream helps calm down because I feel at peace in it.
Inspiration: My main source of inspiration behind my painting was Vincent Van Gogh, more specifically his very famous painting 'The Starry Night' The motion and movement that Van Gogh painted in the sky of 'Starry Night' correlates to the imagination that I have about his painting. When I day dream, I envision the sky with so much movement and texture similar to his 'Starry Night' painting. I used this part of his artwork to create the sky filled with many different shades of hues of blues, reds, yellows, purples and even some gold as well.
'Starry Night' 1889
Sketches & Planning The only part of my painting that I was incorporating Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' was primarily only the sky. As we can see, in Van Gogh's painting he was able to create lots of movement as well as motion to really depict a abstract sky with many hues of different blues and baby blues. That was my primary focus for my painting. To depict this, I sketched out the movement that Van Gogh has in his to replicate into my painting. Besides the sky, I knew I wanted to create a large field of grass as well as some flowers. I wanted to create my entire painting with the same texture as Van Gogh has, due to this I understood that I would have to use oil paints instead of acrylics, that way my painting would look more 'Alive.' with more evident motion.
Process:
Beginning my process, I sincerely analyzed Vincent Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' I paid attention to his details as well as his brushstrokes, and how he uses his brushstrokes to create movement throughout the entirety of his painting. I began by planning out what acrylic paints i'd use. Instead of creating the whole sky with different hues of blues and whites, I decided to mix some other vibrate and intense colors into it as well, such as some hues of reds, yellows, and even some intense purples. I did this primarily to convey the different waves of emotions that I go through during my daydreams. I wanted the sky to represent my internal feelings of; anger, frustrations, and sadness. I was able to accurately convey those emotions in the sky of my painting. I did this by using a very thin and small brush to create the individual lines to create the motion of the sky, similar to the 'Starry Night.'
After doing so, I then proceeded to create some daisies. I am very fond of daisy's and I absolutely love them. When I'm daydreaming, I envision a field of many daisies. For me, daisies symbolize joy and happiness, they remind me of happy times as well which is why I tend to imagine myself in them! I was focusing more so on perspective, I wanted to create some big flowers to have the viewer perceive themselves close to a flower, from that flower I then gradually created smaller and smaller flowers to show distance. Finishing the daisies, I then created a sort of highlight to show how the sky is sort of reflecting off of the flowers.
Critique:
Similarities: Some similarities we can notice is that when viewing my artwork, we can automatically notice that the style is extremely similar to Vincent Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' we can notice this due to the same motion I was able to create especially with the small brushstrokes I did. The brushstrokes I made are highly similar to his own brushstrokes. He made individual lines to create those waves of motion. We can also notice another similarity of the stars I painted. In Van Gogh's we notice that his stars are circles and have different hues of yellows on the perimeter of each star. I took note of this and did the same thing for my own painting, that way viewers can recognize that my inspiration was Vincent Van Gogh. Differences: Some differences we can notice straight away is the field of flowers I created. I made the field of flowers a very different texture and motion than the sky I painted. I didn't use individual strokes of paints to create any movement. I actually used a flared brush to create the roundness of the petals of the daisies. Looking back at the sky, we can notice that I also used very different colors than Van Gogh used for his sky. Van Gogh only used different hues of blues and whites. For me, in my painting I only used different shades of reds, yellows and some intense shades of purple as well and those colors are only meant to depict my frustrations as well as my sadness.
Reflection: Overall, doing this project was very interesting, I believe I did a good job at being able to convey my own daydream into a painting on canvas. It was hard trying to find an idea of exactly how I should go about conveying my daydream into a physical piece. It was a very hard challenge for me overall, but when viewing Vincent Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' I automatically got the idea that I should actually convey my emotions through the waves Van Gogh made in his sky. Since, my emotions come in huge rushes of waves, I knew that I would be able to depict that through the waves Van Gogh created in his sky. The only thing I'd have to alter is the setting (making it into a field of flowers) and the colors in the sky (using different colors of intense reds, oranges, yellows along with some touches of purples and pinks as well. ) Seeing my finished piece truly made me proud, and I feel that I did a very good job at conveying my daydreams into a painting very well, and I enjoyed it very much in the process too.
ACT Connections:
1) Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork? My inspiration of Van Gogh's 'Starry Night' greatly affected my artwork and helped me depict my 'waves' of emotions conveyed through the sky of my painting.
2) What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration? I feel as though Vincent Van Gogh would greatly appreciate my art because of the message I am conveying behind it by using his technique in creating motion throughout the sky.
3) What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration? Some generalizations I concluded about the idea of the topic I had which is 'daydreaming' when researching about paintings depicting daydreaming, there were many paintings I saw that would present a very basic cloud coming from someones mind to convey them 'daydreaming' I didn't like this and I didn't want to use a very vague idea to convey my intense daydreams I have.
4) What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research? Daydreaming as a way to sort of 'escape' my emotions.
5) What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research? I believed it would be incredibly difficult to depict my daydreams because I can physically see it, I can only visually see it. It was hard bringing that visualization onto a canvas.