My Starry Night

I have always been fascinated with Vincent van Gogh's paintings. In fact, I remember one day in my sixth grade art class my teacher spread several books full of famous paintings across one of the tables. She told us to flip through the books until we found a picture we liked. We were then to show her the picture and she would photocopy it. The next class period we were to try and draw the picture she had copied for us. I remember looking at Bruegel's "Hunters in the Snow" and of course the "Mona Lisa" along with several other paintings. But the one that caught my eye was this one: 

google images

I just fell in love with this painting! When I showed it to my teacher she smiled and looked at it for a minute and then said, "something told me you would pick this one." I guess she knew me well enough to know what style of art I would be drawn to. 

It wasn't until a few years later when I realized that this painting was done by Vincent van Gogh. It's titled "Langlois Bridge with Women Washing" and is certainly a masterpiece. Since that day in sixth grade, I have been a huge fan of van Gogh, whether I knew it or not. 

http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79802
\

This past year, in my painting class, we were to recreate van Gogh's "The Starry Night." The only guidelines were that we had to use acrylic paint and it must be close enough to the original that anyone off the street would be able to recognize it as "The Starry Night" at first glance. But we did have to change something(s) about it. 

Here's my version: 

I kept the colors very similar to the original painting. And I basically kept the sky and hills close to van Gogh's, but instead of a village with a church, I painted our house and barn. I replaced van Gogh's cypress tree with a tree we have in our own yard which has a swing hanging from it.
Like van Gogh, I used thick brush strokes and blended the colors roughly on the canvas, rather than on my palette. This kept a certain familiarity to the painting.

I had so much fun with this painting, probably because I love van Gogh's style so much and had a blast trying it out myself. I was honored to have this painting displayed in the Friends Gallery here in town for a short while, but now it's home is on my top shelf in my bedroom.