With my mini version of Van Gogh’s famous work, simplification was the key. The basic painting of this piece (with brush) came together quite easily. The challenging part (at this size) was the detail, done with acrylic paint pens, straight edges, and circle templates. There was a lot of back and forth, putting down and lines and cleaning them up… over, and over, and over. In the rendering of graphite on canvas, I removed the secondary elements and details and exaggerated their size and relationship. The yellow moon, twinkling stars, majestic steeple, and hint of cypress was all that was needed to tell the story of this starry night.
