Sunflower close-up and textured paper
Signing a giclee print

Vincent with Sunflowers

A lovely floral addition for your home gallery, and a good old nod to the master himself, Vincent Van Gogh.

This giclée print has been professionally printed on heavyweight, acid-free 310gsm textured archival paper using fade-resistant archival pigment inks, signed and dated. It measures 10 x 12 inches.

£40.00

Out of stock

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Details

  • paper size
    10" x 12"
  • paper type
    310gsm, acid-free. textured fine art archival paper
  • print
    Printed using high-quality, fade-resistant pigment inks
  • Signed?
    Yes

“How lovely yellow is! It stands for the sun.”

~ Vincent Van Gogh

Why did I draw it?

The backstory

Vincent Van Gogh has got to be one of the most recognised artists today. His iconic paintings pop up everywhere and are an endless source of inspiration for other artists and makers. I first encountered his work at school. Aged six or seven years old, our class was tasked with painting our own version of his iconic Sunflowers series. Did you do the same thing at school?

After completing my Frida Kahlo inspired illustration, I began thinking about who my next artist muse would be. I’ve always really enjoyed studying other artist’s work through the act of recreating them myself. It’s like another way of looking at it, but in more intimate detail, tracing every line, shadow and texture with my eyes.

In 2017 I visited the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. I’ve made plenty of visits to galleries before, but the experience I had at the Van Gogh Museum was like no other and was perhaps the best I’ve ever had. The museum surpassed all my expectations, and left me feeling a deeper understanding and connection with Vincent’s work.

His artworks are presented in chronological order alongside letters and information that provide context about his life. Walking around the museum wasn’t just an exploration of his artwork, but his biographical journey too.

I found the exhibition to be very moving. By the time I reached the end, his paintings felt like more than just beautiful works of art, they felt like vessels that held his life experiences and feelings, preserved in time. It was kind of spooky, actually.

the process

From the get go I knew that I wanted to create a portrait of Van Gogh in black pen with a colour background. I enjoyed creating the leafy background in my Frida portrait so was keen to do something similar with this one. Sunflowers soon popped into my mind, and I sketched out a plan in biro ink.

Van Gogh created many self-portraits in his lifetime so I had a good base of references to use as inspiration for my portrait.

A biro sketch of the artwork
Early progress on the artwork

Using paintings as a reference when creating a detailed pen drawing is a really unusual and mind-bending experience.  I had to carefully study his brush strokes, their direction, depth and colour, and interpret them into lines of black ink. A very different process to using a photographic reference.

Despite having paintings to look at, I still had to inject a great deal of personal interpretation into the illustration. There were still plenty of gaps to fill, and I really liked figuring it all out. It made the creative process feel like a response and not a recording, which is exactly what I wanted it to be. The goal was to use what I had soaked up from my Van Gogh experience and use it to create something new.

After sketching the final details of his clothing and the sunflower seed heads, it was time for me to add the finishing touch – a black border that would frame Vincent with his favourite flower.

In Van Gogh’s era, sunflowers were not a popular subject for floral art. They were even considered to be a bit crude by his peers. It was this association that Vincent loved and so made the sunflower his flower. I wanted to capture this relationship in my illustration. The flowers and the sunflower man are in the frame together, as one piece of art. They can’t be contained though, the flowers burst from the frame, breaking the mould, just like Vincent did.

Shading with black pen
Crosshatching the shirt details in fineliner pen

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