paint like van gogh

why study van gogh

vincent van gogh painted for only ten years, from roughly 1881 to 1890, yet he produced over 2,100 artworks including around 860 oil paintings. that compressed career is part of what makes him such a valuable case study. you can trace his entire development — from dark, muddy peasant scenes in the netherlands to the blazing, rhythmic canvases of saint-remy — and see exactly how each technical breakthrough happened.

van gogh is not an artist you study for subtlety. you study him for directness. every brushstroke in his mature work carries visible intent: direction, speed, thickness, and color are all legible on the surface. where vermeer hides his process and rembrandt buries layers beneath layers, van gogh leaves everything on the surface. that transparency makes his technique unusually learnable.

what you will gain from studying him is not a bag of tricks. it is a way of seeing color relationships in the real world and translating them into paint with confidence and speed. the skills transfer directly to plein air painting, expressionist work, and any situation where you need to make fast, decisive marks with thick paint.

this guide covers the core techniques that define van gogh's mature style: impasto application, complementary color pairing, expressive mark-making, alla prima speed, the influence of japanese prints, his approach to natural subjects like cypresses and wheat fields, and the famous swirling brushwork of the starry night. if you are new to oil painting, start with our oil painting for beginners guide first — van gogh's techniques assume basic familiarity with brushes, mediums, and paint handling.

impasto brushwork

impasto — paint applied so thickly that it stands up from the canvas in three-dimensional ridges — is the signature physical quality of van gogh's work. he did not invent the technique (rembrandt, hals, and courbet all used heavy paint), but he pushed it further than anyone before him, turning the paint surface itself into an expressive element as important as the image it depicted.

van gogh's impasto is structural, not decorative. each ridge of paint follows the form it describes: curved strokes wrap around a vase, vertical strokes rise with a cypress tree, short choppy strokes vibrate across a wheat field. the texture is not random — it is directional, and that directionality creates a sense of energy and movement that flat paint could never achieve.

how to load your brush

van gogh used stiff hog-bristle brushes (mostly flats and filberts) and loaded them heavily. to approximate his approach, squeeze paint directly onto the palette in thick ridges rather than small dabs. pick up a generous amount on the brush — more than feels comfortable at first. the goal is to deposit enough paint in a single stroke that the bristle tracks remain visible after the brush lifts off.

do not thin your paint with turpentine or medium when working in this mode. van gogh used paint straight from the tube for most of his impasto passages. if the paint is too stiff to move easily (some cheaper student-grade paints are), add a tiny amount of linseed oil — just enough to make it workable, not fluid.

stroke direction as drawing

study any detail of the starry night and you will see that van gogh's brushstrokes function as contour lines. the strokes in the sky curve to describe swirling motion. the strokes on the cypress flame upward. the strokes on the village rooftops follow the slope of each roof plane. this is not an accident — it is a deliberate drawing system embedded in the paint application.

to practice this, choose a simple subject — an apple, a shoe, a coffee mug — and paint it using only directional impasto strokes. no blending, no smoothing. let every stroke follow the contour of the form. the resulting painting should read as both an image and a topographic map of the object's surface.

palette knife vs. brush

van gogh occasionally used a palette knife for broad areas (backgrounds, skies, tabletops), but the majority of his mark-making is brush-based. the palette knife produces a smoother, more uniform texture; the brush produces striations and bristle tracks that give his surfaces their characteristic grain. when you are studying his work, default to brushes unless a passage is clearly knife-applied.

complementary color pairs

van gogh was obsessed with color theory. he read charles blanc's "grammaire des arts du dessin" and michel eugene chevreul's "de la loi du contraste simultane des couleurs" and applied their principles with an almost scientific rigor. his letters to theo are filled with references to complementary contrasts — colors that sit opposite each other on the color wheel and intensify each other when placed side by side.

the three complementary pairs van gogh used most frequently are:

• blue and orange — the dominant pair in the starry night and many arles landscapes. cobalt blue or ultramarine against cadmium orange or orange-toned earth colors.
• yellow and violet — the pair behind the sunflowers series and the bedroom in arles. chrome yellow (or cadmium yellow) against purple-violet mixtures.
• red and green — used dramatically in "the night cafe," which van gogh described as an attempt to express "the terrible passions of humanity" through the clash of red and green.

van gogh did not simply place these colors next to each other. he wove traces of each complement into the other's territory. a blue sky will contain flecks of orange. a yellow wheat field will have violet shadows. this interweaving creates optical vibration — the colors seem to buzz and shimmer because the eye is constantly processing the contrast.

practical exercise: complementary still life

set up a simple still life (oranges on a blue cloth is the classic van gogh exercise). paint it using only one complementary pair plus white. do not reach for any other colors. force yourself to mix all your darks, mid-tones, and neutrals from just those two complements and white. you will discover that the two colors mixed together produce surprisingly rich grays and browns, and the unmixed complements sing against those neutral mixtures.

van gogh wrote to theo: "there is no blue without yellow and without orange." he understood that colors only exist in relation to each other, and he built entire paintings around the tension of a single complementary pair. learning to do this will sharpen your color perception more than any amount of arbitrary palette mixing.

his palette evolution

understanding how van gogh's palette changed over time is essential for studying his work, because the technique and the color are inseparable. the dark dutch period, the paris transition, the arles explosion, and the saint-remy refinement each represent a distinct color world with its own logic.

the dutch period (1881-1885)

van gogh's early palette was earth-dominant: raw umber, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, ivory black, and lead white. he was painting peasant life — dark interiors, potato fields, weavers at their looms — and he used dark tonalities inspired by rembrandt and the hague school. "the potato eaters" (1885) is the masterpiece of this period: somber, almost monochromatic, built from browns and dark greens. the paint application is thick but the color is restrained.

paris (1886-1888)

in paris, van gogh encountered impressionism and neo-impressionism. he saw monet, pissarro, signac, and seurat, and his palette exploded almost overnight. he began using chrome yellow, vermilion, emerald green, cobalt blue, and other intense pigments he had previously avoided. he experimented with pointillist-adjacent techniques — small, separate dabs of pure color placed side by side — though he never adopted the strict dot system of seurat. the paris self-portraits show this transition in real time: each one is brighter and more chromatically adventurous than the last.

arles (1888-1889)

arles is where everything came together. the southern light gave van gogh the saturated color he had been reaching for in paris, and he responded with the most chromatic paintings of his career. his core palette in arles included chrome yellow, cadmium yellow, zinc yellow, cobalt blue, ultramarine, emerald green, viridian, vermilion, and lead white. he used very little black — preferring to mix darks from ultramarine and a red or from complementary pairs.

the sunflowers series, the bedroom in arles, the night cafe, and the harvest landscapes all come from this period. the colors are pushed to maximum saturation, often straight from the tube with minimal mixing.

saint-remy and auvers (1889-1890)

in the asylum at saint-remy, van gogh's palette became slightly cooler and more blue-dominant. the cypresses, olive groves, and the starry night all lean into deep blues, blue-greens, and muted yellows. the color is still intense but more controlled — less raw than arles, more orchestrated. the brushwork becomes more rhythmic and patterned, and the interplay between warm and cool becomes more sophisticated.

at auvers-sur-oise, in the final months, the palette shifts again toward cooler greens and deep, almost threatening blues. "wheatfield with crows" uses a compressed palette of cobalt blue, chrome yellow, and green — three colors pushed to their expressive limits.

a working palette for studying van gogh

if you want to paint in van gogh's arles-period style (his most distinctive), a good starting palette is: cadmium yellow light, cadmium yellow deep, cadmium orange, cadmium red, ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, viridian, chrome oxide green, and titanium white. skip black entirely — mix your darks from ultramarine plus cadmium red or from complementary pairs. this limitation will force you into the same color logic van gogh used.

expressive mark-making

the term "expressive" is overused in art discussion, but with van gogh it has a precise meaning: his marks carry emotional content through their physical properties. a calm field uses long, parallel horizontal strokes. an agitated sky uses tight, spiraling curves. a solid building uses short, stacked, brick-like dabs. the mark vocabulary is consistent enough to function as a language.

the mark vocabulary

van gogh's mature work uses a surprisingly limited set of mark types, each assigned to specific subjects and moods:

• long parallel strokes — used for calm fields, water surfaces, and flat ground. these create a sense of stillness and horizontality.
• short choppy dabs — used for foliage, grass, and textured surfaces. these create visual energy and a sense of organic growth.
• curving arcs — used for skies, hills, and flowing forms. the curvature conveys motion and atmospheric turbulence.
• spirals and swirls — reserved for the most emotionally intense passages: the starry night sky, cypress trees, and clouds under stress.
• radiating lines — used around light sources (stars, suns, lamps) to create halos of energy. these are unique to van gogh and became one of his most recognizable signatures.
• stippled dots — a remnant of his neo-impressionist study, used sparingly in backgrounds and transition zones.

matching mark to mood

the key insight is that van gogh did not choose marks randomly. he assigned mark types based on what he wanted the viewer to feel in each area of the painting. in the starry night, the village below uses calm, rectilinear strokes (stability, human order), while the sky above uses spiraling, turbulent strokes (cosmic energy, overwhelm). the contrast between mark types is what makes the painting so psychologically powerful.

when you study a van gogh painting, before you start mixing color, make a small pencil diagram mapping the mark types in each region. identify where the marks are calm, where they are agitated, where they are directional. this diagram is your brushwork plan — it tells you what your hand needs to do in each area of the canvas.

the role of drawing

van gogh was a tireless draftsman. he made hundreds of reed pen and ink drawings that use the same mark vocabulary as his paintings — dots, dashes, curves, and parallel lines used to build form and texture. his drawing practice directly informed his painting marks. if you want to internalize his mark-making system, spend time copying his ink drawings before attempting his oil techniques. the drawings strip away color and let you focus purely on the stroke language. see our how to draw guide for foundational drawing practice.

painting quickly alla prima

alla prima — italian for "at first attempt" — means completing a painting in a single session, wet-into-wet, without waiting for layers to dry. van gogh painted most of his arles and saint-remy works alla prima, often finishing a canvas in a single day. he wrote to theo that he sometimes completed a painting in "half a morning" or "one long sitting."

this speed was not recklessness. it was a deliberate strategy rooted in two practical concerns. first, he was painting outdoors in provence, often in intense heat and wind, and he needed to capture the light before it changed. second, he was working with thick, undiluted paint, and impasto passages must be completed wet-into-wet to maintain their sculptural quality — if you let an impasto layer dry and then paint over it, you lose the freshness and the strokes look labored.

preparation is everything

alla prima speed requires thorough preparation before the brush touches the canvas. van gogh typically made pencil or pen sketches of his subject first, working out the composition and major shapes. by the time he started painting, he already knew where everything would go. he also pre-mixed large piles of his key colors on the palette, so he did not have to stop and mix during the painting session.

for your own alla prima practice, follow this sequence: (1) make a small thumbnail sketch, 2-3 inches, working out the major value shapes. (2) pre-mix at least 6-8 color piles on your palette — lights, darks, and mid-tones for each major area. (3) sketch the composition lightly on the canvas in thinned paint or charcoal. (4) block in the major shapes with large brushes. (5) refine with smaller brushes and thicker paint, working from background to foreground.

embracing imperfection

the alla prima mindset requires accepting that not every stroke will be perfect. van gogh did not go back and correct individual marks. he let the energy of the session carry the painting. if a stroke was wrong, he placed the correct stroke next to it or on top of it rather than scraping and reworking. this is hard for beginners who want to fuss and refine, but it is essential to capturing the vitality of van gogh's surfaces.

set a timer. give yourself 90 minutes for a small canvas (12x16 or smaller). when the timer goes off, stop. the discipline of a time limit will force you to make decisions faster and let go of perfectionism. after ten or twenty of these timed sessions, you will find that your decision-making speed has permanently improved.

japanese print influence

van gogh collected hundreds of japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, primarily by hiroshige and hokusai. he hung them on the walls of his studios, made painted copies of several, and wrote extensively about how japanese art was reshaping his understanding of composition, color, and line. the influence is deep and structural — it is not just an aesthetic borrowing but a fundamental shift in how he organized a picture.

flat color and bold outlines

japanese prints use areas of flat, unmodulated color separated by strong outlines. van gogh adopted this principle directly. in many of his arles paintings — the bedroom, the sunflowers, the drawbridge — he outlined major forms with dark lines (usually prussian blue or a dark mixture) and filled them with relatively flat color. this technique, which he called "cloisonnism" following the example of emile bernard and louis anquetin, gives his paintings a graphic boldness that works even at a distance.

to practice this, choose a van gogh painting that has obvious outlines (the bedroom in arles is ideal) and make a copy focusing specifically on the outline-and-fill structure. draw the outlines first in a dark color, then fill each area with its local color. you will notice how the outlines create a rhythmic pattern that unifies the surface — this is the japanese principle at work.

cropped compositions and high viewpoints

japanese prints frequently use unexpected croppings — a branch cutting across the foreground, a figure half-visible at the edge — and elevated or tilted viewpoints that flatten space. van gogh absorbed these compositional strategies and used them throughout his work. the tilted floor plane of the bedroom, the abrupt cropping in many of his still lifes, and the high vantage points of his harvest landscapes all show japanese compositional thinking.

for more on how composition principles shape paintings, see our composition in painting guide, which covers spatial organization from a broader perspective.

nature as spiritual subject

van gogh also adopted from japanese art the idea that nature itself — a blossoming tree, a mountain, a wave — could be a complete and sufficient subject for a major artwork. this seems obvious now but it was radical in the european tradition, where landscape was still considered a lesser genre. his blossoming almond branches, painted as a gift for his nephew, are the most directly japanese paintings in his catalog: a close-up of branches against a flat blue sky, with no horizon, no perspective, no narrative — just the beauty of the thing itself.

cypress and wheat field techniques

cypresses and wheat fields are van gogh's two signature landscape subjects, and each one demonstrates a distinct set of technical solutions worth studying in isolation.

painting cypresses

van gogh described cypresses as "beautiful as regards lines and proportions, like an egyptian obelisk." he painted them repeatedly at saint-remy, developing a specific technique for their dark, flame-like forms. the cypress paintings use some of the thickest impasto in his entire catalog — the paint stands up from the canvas in ridges that can be a centimeter or more deep.

the key to his cypress technique is the upward stroke. every mark on the tree moves vertically or diagonally upward, like flames rising. the colors are deep: mixtures of viridian, prussian blue, and black (one of the few subjects for which he used black) create the characteristic dark green. but he wove in strokes of yellow, orange, and lighter green throughout the dark mass, preventing it from becoming a dead silhouette.

to practice this, paint a single cypress on a small canvas. start with a dark underblock of mixed green-black, then build up the form with thick, upward-moving strokes. vary the green from dark (prussian blue + viridian) to warm (viridian + cadmium yellow). add a few strokes of pure cadmium yellow or cadmium orange to suggest light catching the tips. the result should look like a dark flame — solid at the base, flickering at the top.

painting wheat fields

wheat fields required a completely different approach. where cypresses are vertical and contained, wheat fields are horizontal and boundless. van gogh painted them with short, directional, roughly horizontal strokes — thousands of them — each representing a stalk or cluster of stalks bending in the wind.

his wheat field palette centered on chrome yellow and cadmium yellow for the grain, with cobalt blue and ultramarine for the sky, and viridian or chrome oxide green for the unripe portions. the crucial detail is the shadows: he painted wheat field shadows in violet and blue-violet, not brown or gray. this complementary shadow color (violet is the complement of yellow) makes the yellow grain glow by contrast.

the horizon line in van gogh's wheat fields is typically placed very high — sometimes the sky occupies only the top fifth of the canvas. this creates a sense of immersion, as though the viewer is standing in the field rather than observing it from a distance. the high horizon is another japanese compositional device, used here to maximize the expressive power of the wheat texture.

for a study exercise, paint a wheat field using only cadmium yellow, ultramarine blue, and white. the yellow makes the wheat, the blue makes the sky, and the mixture of the two makes the green and violet tones in the shadows and middle ground. this three-color limitation will teach you how van gogh extracted maximum variety from minimum materials.

the starry night swirl technique

the swirling sky of the starry night (1889) is van gogh's most famous passage of painting. the technique looks wild and spontaneous, but it is actually carefully constructed from a set of repeatable principles that you can learn and apply.

the concentric spiral

the large swirls in the starry night sky are built from concentric arcs of paint — each arc slightly offset from the last, creating a spiral motion. van gogh did not paint these in a single continuous gesture. he laid down one arc, reloaded his brush, and placed the next arc alongside it. the gaps and overlaps between arcs create the visual rhythm.

each arc is a different color or value: a dark blue arc sits next to a lighter blue arc, which sits next to a blue-white arc. the value gradation across the arcs creates a three-dimensional effect — the swirl appears to recede and advance, not just rotate on a flat plane.

color within the swirls

the sky in the starry night is not monochromatic blue. van gogh mixed several distinct blues — ultramarine, cobalt, prussian blue — and placed them alongside greens, blue-greens, and pale yellows. the result is a sky that shifts temperature constantly: warm blue next to cool blue, green-blue next to violet-blue. this temperature variation gives the sky its sense of luminous depth.

the stars and moon are painted with thick applications of chrome yellow and white, surrounded by radiating lines of lighter tone that create halos. these halos extend several inches out from the center of each star, blending into the blue-green sky through intermediate tones of pale yellow-green.

how to practice the swirl

start with a small canvas (8x10 or so) and a limited palette: ultramarine blue, cobalt blue, viridian, cadmium yellow, and titanium white. block in the entire surface with a mid-value blue. then, using a loaded flat brush, begin laying arcs from the center of a spiral outward. alternate between darker and lighter blue mixtures. let each arc touch the previous one but do not blend them together — the distinct edges between arcs are what creates the rhythmic energy.

add a "star" by placing a thick dot of cadmium yellow and white in the center of the spiral, then radiating short strokes outward from it in all directions. the radiating strokes should transition from pure yellow near the center to pale blue-green at the tips. practice this star-and-spiral combination five or six times on the same canvas, overlapping the swirls as van gogh did, until the entire surface is a turbulent sky.

the turbulence connection

scientists have noted that the swirling patterns in the starry night closely match mathematical models of fluid turbulence described by kolmogorov's scaling laws. van gogh had no knowledge of fluid dynamics, but his intuitive observation of clouds, water, and wind currents was so precise that he reproduced turbulent flow patterns with remarkable accuracy. this is worth knowing not as a novelty but as evidence of how deeply van gogh observed natural phenomena before painting them. his swirls are not decorative inventions — they are records of real atmospheric behavior, exaggerated for emotional effect.

thick paint application: materials and method

van gogh's impasto is so distinctive that it deserves a dedicated discussion of materials. he went through paint at an extraordinary rate — his letters are full of requests to theo for more tubes — and the sheer volume of paint on his canvases creates specific challenges that you need to plan for.

canvas and ground

van gogh painted on commercially primed linen and jute canvases. the weave of the canvas matters for impasto: a coarser weave grips the paint better and provides a textured foundation that reinforces the bristle marks. if you are buying canvas for van gogh studies, choose a medium to coarse linen rather than a smooth cotton. the commercially primed surface (usually an oil or alkyd ground) is fine — van gogh did not prepare his own grounds.

paint quality

for serious van gogh studies, use artist-grade oil paint, not student grade. the difference matters here more than with most techniques, because van gogh applied paint straight from the tube with minimal medium. student-grade paints contain more filler and less pigment, which means the impasto ridges will be softer, less colorful, and more prone to cracking as they dry. artist-grade paint has higher pigment density and better body, which produces firmer ridges and more saturated color.

if cost is a concern, invest in artist-grade paint for the key colors — cadmium yellow, ultramarine blue, and titanium white — and use student grade for less critical mixtures. the yellows and blues are where van gogh's color intensity is most dependent on pigment quality.

drying time

thick impasto takes a long time to dry. van gogh's heaviest passages may have taken weeks or months to dry completely, and some of his paintings show evidence of cracking and wrinkling caused by the outer layer of paint drying before the inner layer. this is a known risk with thick alla prima painting.

to mitigate drying issues, avoid mixing slow-drying pigments (ivory black, alizarin crimson) in very thick passages. use faster-drying alternatives where possible (mars black instead of ivory black, cadmium red instead of alizarin). and be patient — let your van gogh studies dry for at least a month before varnishing, longer if the paint is very thick.

practice exercises

the following exercises are designed to isolate and practice the core skills covered in this guide. work through them in order — each one builds on the previous.

exercise 1: mark vocabulary study (pencil/ink, 30 minutes)

find a high-resolution reproduction of the starry night and make a pencil diagram of the mark types in each region. identify at least four different mark types (spirals, parallel lines, short dabs, radiating lines). then, on a separate sheet, practice each mark type in ink using a reed pen or a thick marker. fill an entire page with each mark type. the goal is to get the marks into your muscle memory before you pick up a brush.

exercise 2: complementary pair still life (oil, 90 minutes)

set up a simple arrangement of two or three objects. choose one complementary pair (blue/orange is the most versatile). paint the still life using only those two colors plus white. mix your darks from the two complements. mix your mid-tones from one complement with a touch of the other. let the pure, unmixed complements appear only in the areas of highest intensity. study how van gogh used this approach in sunflowers (yellow/violet) and the bedroom in arles (blue/orange).

exercise 3: cypress study (oil, 60 minutes)

on a small canvas, paint a single cypress tree against a blue sky. use only upward-moving strokes for the tree. mix three values of green: dark (prussian blue + viridian), medium (viridian + cadmium yellow deep), and light (cadmium yellow + viridian). build the tree from dark to light, thickest paint at the top where the form catches light. add a few strokes of pure cadmium orange for warmth.

exercise 4: sky swirl study (oil, 45 minutes)

paint a small canvas entirely as a swirling sky. no landscape, no horizon — just swirls and stars. use the concentric arc technique: lay down alternating light and dark blue arcs in spiral patterns. add two or three "stars" using thick yellow paint with radiating strokes. focus on getting the arcs to touch without blending. when you are done, the surface should have visible ridges of paint that you can feel with your fingertips.

exercise 5: full van gogh master copy (oil, 3-4 hours)

choose one van gogh painting and make a full copy. the bedroom in arles is a good first choice because it has clear outlines, flat color areas, and a manageable composition. work alla prima — complete the painting in a single session. pre-mix all your colors before starting. sketch the composition in charcoal first, then block in the large shapes, then refine with thicker paint and smaller brushes. do not blend. let every stroke remain visible.

for a structured approach to master copies, see our how to do a master study guide, which covers the full process from thumbnail to finished copy.

exercise 6: plein air alla prima (oil, 90 minutes)

take your paints outside and paint a landscape from life, using everything you have practiced: thick impasto, complementary color pairs, directional brushstrokes, and alla prima speed. set a 90-minute timer and stop when it rings. this is the closest you can come to replicating van gogh's actual working conditions. do not worry about producing a masterpiece — focus on making every stroke count and keeping the paint thick and fresh.

van gogh once wrote: "i dream of painting and then i paint my dream." the dream is less mysterious than it sounds. he meant that he visualized the finished painting before he started — the colors, the marks, the mood — and then executed it as fast as he could before the vision faded. that combination of careful preparation and fearless execution is the real lesson of his work.