Art Club: Van Gogh

Van Gogh's brushstrokes and use of colour are instantly recognisable and he is a favourite for school projects - which are usually about reproducing starry skies and sunflowers. We stepped up the challenge a little. Using a photo of a local scene we painted it using Van Gogh inspired blocking out of shapes and adding life and movement using divisionist style strokes of individual colours.

This is the original photo, taken on the Grand Union Canal between Hemel Hempstead and Kings Langley. It was taken on an extremely cold and frosty morning just as the sun was rising. The sun is lower in the photo than in the paintings, and we clearly ditched the boat, too - I like a bit of artistic licence!

The quality of the photos of the paintings is not great, but I hope you get the idea.