My painted self-portraits in the style of Van Gogh

The assignment this time was to make two self-portraits in the style of Van Gogh in which I had to express two different emotions. I have chosen for the emotions mad and sad, because I thought these emotions were very different from each other. 

Van Gogh had two essential qualities: his brush strokes and his use of complementary colours. I tried to add these two aspects in my painting as well.


I started with the background of both the two self-portraits. The emotion sad always reminds me of rain. So, I wanted to let the background looks like rain. I did this by painting all the brushstrokes pointed downwards and by using blue and grey as colours, because rain always falls down and looks a bit of blue and grey. The emotion mad always reminds me of a confused person. So, I painted the brushstrokes in different directions, because I thought that looked confused. I have chosen for some darker colour to express mad in the background.

After I had painted the backgrounds, I painted the clothes. I tried to add some colours of the background in the clothes. So, I used the grey of the sad emotions in the clothes and the red of the mad emotion.

Then I painted my hair. I did this the same in both the paintings. I have blond hair, so in the painted I tried to use colours which looked like that. I painted the brushstrokes  in a bow around my face.

After I had painted my hair, I painted my skin. I tried to use skin colours.

Then I had to paint the details of my face and the shadows. I only didn't had enough time for this, so I have one face which is half done and on the other painting I haven't got a face at all. (My idea was to use the colours of the background in the shadows.)