Van Gogh Wheat fields with cypresses painted on Galaxy Tab 2 using Paintology app

Fig-1
Fig-1

Ever wanted to create a painting of a grand master, then you can with your Android tablet and a free copy of Paintology (downloadable from Google play). Fig. 1 shows a famous painting by Vincent Van Gogh ‘Wheat fields with cypresses’ created on the tablet in about 30 minutes. I don’t expect everyone to make a drawing this fast since you may not be as familiar with the tools of Paintology like I am. However, it shows how with a little effort and some patience you can start painting and drawing like this. Fire up your tablet and open Paintology and I will show you how to do this painting below. I have also provided a video of this painting at the end of this post.

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Fig-2
Fig-3
Fig-3

First of all, you need to select an appropriate canvas color which is a light blue. I usually pick up a canvas color that is broadly a color that will be suited to the background of the painting that I will draw. This is often based on a proportionately larger color that would appear in a painting and generally it is often the sky or the land for a landscape drawing. Picking up the ‘haze tool’, I then draw the outline of the landscape (fig. 2). I then sketch the outline using the same tool with various colors following an actual image of the original painting that I have opened on another laptop. The clouds have a swirling effect and Van Gogh is famous for his portrayal of this in almost all of his paintings. I use a rounded movement to create the sky picking out the colors easily from the left color palette (fig. 3). Notice, how the sky also contains texture in the clouds in addition to the solid colors. Also there are variations of the primary colors used in creating depth to the clouds. This is a relatively easy task in Paintology due to the easy accessibility of the color palette.

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Fig-4
Fig-5
Fig-5
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Fig-6

Next, I work on the land where there is a vibrant range of colors blue, green yellow (fig. 4). The blue at the far distance can almost be mistaken for land or sky but that is the beauty of his paintings which keeps you wondering. Don’t worry about the accuracy or the placement of your paint, use a broader brush size to fill in the areas quickly. When doing the bold outlines, I reduce the size of the brush and sometimes increase the ‘hardness’ setting on the brush tool. Fig. 5 shows an important element of the painting which is the large cypress tree and the area around it. I used deeper colors as did Van Gogh for the tree and foliage and used variations of dark and light to give it depth. I continue to fill the plane where the tree sits to the left hand side and add some bold brush strokes for the wheat strands (fig. 6). Tidying up the final painting with more details in the foreground we end up with the final painting as shown in fig. 1.

 

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