Vincent Van Gogh and Drawing Plants

Unit 1 Part (C). Vincent Van Gogh and Drawing Plants

The first plants that you draw may not look very good. We all start there.

Drawing plants takes practice, and it often takes courage. You have to be willing to fail, in order to learn.

Vincent Van Gogh lived in Holland in the last century. After failing at school, and as a minister, he took up painting partly to support himself.

As Vincent started painting, he was able to capture the fundamental posture of a person with just a few lines. He used a common carpenter's pencil, which allowed him to draw strong bold lines.

Vincent also found individual postures in plants. He said that plants are as individual as people. One of Vincent's most famous paintings is of Sunflowers. He actually painted 12 painting with sunflowers, and all are considered priceless.

Vincent worked with actual flowers as models for his work. He did not try to make everything look perfect. When he paints or draws flowers, Vincent looks at the posture of a plant. How does it hold its leaves, how does it hold itself in the world.

To begin following Vincent's idea, take a plant, and start to draw what you see. Usually it is best to draw with a pencil, and sketch, drawing a line then drawing over that line, until you have a line that looks like what you see. Redefine the line you like, making it darker. Keep on drawing the plant until you have something similar. Try to draw the posture of the plant. Vincent Van Gogh Information Gallery

Leaves are arranged on stems in different ways. Some are directly opposite each other, others are alternating up the stem, and other whirl as they go up the stem. You can use this arranging technique to make your plants look more realistic. This arranging is called phylotaxis.

Van Gogh painted plants in the fields, in groups as the grew. In his irises, the flowers are painted as they grow, not ignoring the gnarled stems and odd colored flowers.

As you draw plants, try to notice how they reach to the sun, how they behave in relation to each other. Drawing plant help

Van Gogh was famous for using very powerful colors to exaggerate his lines, adding accents to his flowers. The yellow in the iris leaves is an example, or the dark lines under the front irises.

Van Gogh would accent parts of the drawing with heavy lines of color. Notice the black lines used on a front iris in the painting.

Vincent would draw a plant from several views before he painted.

Move yourself or the plant and draw the plant again. Which is the view of the plant that you might paint?

Vincent had epilepsy, a disabling condition where the brain has a type of heightened activity. While he lived he suffered from the disability, and from the social rejection he experienced. While he was not recognized for his work in his lifetime, he is now one of the most famous artists of all time. The sunflowers last sold at auction for 65 million dollars, and almost every time a painting is auctioned, it brings even higher values.

Vincent lived to 34 years old, and he painted for 10 years. In that time he left 1200 drawings and 500 paintings. Today, in Van Gogh Museum of Amsterdam, 200 paintings and 500 drawings are on display.

Your first drawings of plants might be very clumsy. As you draw plants in your lab notebook, you should see the drawings improve, and maybe, like Vincent, you might discover your own special style. If no one else sees it don't worry, very few people recognized Vincent's talent while he was alive.

If you want to learn more about drawing plants, a good book to read is,