Introduction: My Starry Night

About: Designer, Researcher, and Educator
This is an art assignment I made last year. You had to pick a famous painting and replicate it, but with two options:
1: an exact replica
2: using different materials and techniques.

So, after a bit of looking at paintings, I decided to go for Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh, my favorite painting by one of my favorite painters.

Since I really wanted to give this painting my personal touch, I decided to go for option two. But, that gave me second choice: Which materials and techniques?

I don't have a large amount of pictures to choose from as I usually can, because when I was starting with this project I wasn't thinking about making an instructable of it. The instructable will show the steps I took to get to my end result.

I hope you like it!

Original painting image from wikipedia.

Step 1: I Used...

an HB pencil
fineliners
coloured pencils
a pen
A3 sized paper
scissors

Step 2: Dividing

Since I couldn't choose which technique I wanted to use, I divided the painting in four parts, all four of them to be worked out differently. I didn't want to have the parts directly next to each other so I first divided the paper in four and then I drew a rectangle in the middle of each of those four parts.

Step 3: Printing the Painting

Next up was printing out the painting as big as possible on a regular A4 paper.

After printing it, I divided it in four, just as the paper.

Step 4: Drawing

Using the HB pencil, I drew the painting one part at the time, focussing at the big lines to keep it manageable :)

As you can see, the dimensions of the painting and the paper weren't the same, that's why there are lines at the outside of each part, I've drawn these a way they could have continued.

Step 5: Different Techniques

Now that I got the basic drawing, what was left was the techniques I wanted to work them out with. I decided to gog for the following four:

- coloured pencils
- coloured fine-liners
- black fine-liner
- pen

I didn't just want to use any technique on a part. The upper right part needed soft, swirly colors, so I went for coloured pencils. The bottom right part didn't need colour but did need detail and shadows, so I chose the pen. The other two, both made with fine liners, were chosen because of the other two techniques. I put the black fine-liner next to the colored, swirly upper right part and the coloured fine-liners next to the regular pen part.

Step 6: The Borders

To make them a bit more visible, I used a grey fine-liner and a ruler to trace the borders of the parts.

Step 7: A Few Details

And that's how I made my version of the amazing painting of Vincent van Gogh!

I hope you liked it :)