Post-Impressionism is a term used to describe the reaction in the 1880s against Impressionism. It was led by Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Georges Seurat. The Post-Impressionists rejected Impressionism's concern with the spontaneous and naturalistic rendering of light and color.
Post-Impressionists extended Impressionism while rejecting its limitations: they continued using vivid colors, sometimes using impasto (thick application of paint) and painting from life, but were more inclined to emphasize geometric forms, distort form for expressive effect, and use unnatural or modified color.
Post Impressionism Project-
For this project you will need a Vincent Van Gogh painting to use as reference. Then you will take a photo that is similar to the painting. You will use the photo and the Vincent Van Gogh painting to create your post-Impressionist work using pastels.
Any student failing to bring a reference photo in time will be subject to taking a selfie in a Vincent Van Gogh Pose and using that as their project reference photo.
Project Medium - Pastels on colored paper
Here is a Van Gogh Painting entitled Sunflowers that a student picked for the basis of their Post-Impressionist art project.
Here is the same student's photo of a similar arrangement. It is ok to be different. We are just using the Van Gogh as a reference of how a Post-Impressionist uses their medium, the type of textures they get and the over all look of the work. So the work of the student will be based on the photo that they took not the Van Gogh painting.
This is the students finished work of art. For this project the medium was pastels, which was chosen to reflect some of the textural qualities of the Post-Impressionist works we studied.
Another Student Examples
