IN THE CLASSROOM:Van Gogh ‘to go’

Students at Killybrooke Elementary School in Costa Mesa recently got to create art like Vincent van Gogh, except for one difference: They didn’t have to wait as long for it to dry.

Van Gogh, one of the world’s most notoriously troubled artists, rendered many of his paintings in thick, swirling brush strokes that reflected an excited state of mind. When art teacher Brianne Burtness taught students the van Gogh method, she had them use oil pastels instead — so they could show their work to their parents some time before entering middle school.

“Some of his paintings took over a year to dry,” said Burtness, whose Art Masters class is paid for by Killybrooke’s Parent Teacher Assn. “That’s how much paint he put on the canvas.”

Every few weeks, Killybrooke students learn about an artist, then create works in his or her style. Giao-Anh Le’s fifth-graders most recently learned about the American landscape painter Winslow Homer before embarking on van Gogh. On Thursday, Burtness led Le’s class in replicating van Gogh’s classic nocturnal scene “The Starry Night.”

Burtness showed the students how to approximate van Gogh’s brush strokes by drawing wavy, circular or short lines. The different line structures, she noted, provided contrast in the painting, which features a bending cypress tree in the foreground, a village in the background and a swirling, star-filled sky.

As the class worked, Burtness tossed out anecdotes about van Gogh’s life — for example, that he often went hungry to save enough money to pay for art supplies.

Daniel Lawrence, 10, said despite the radiant colors in much of van Gogh’s work, he could detect the artist’s inner turmoil by looking at his paintings.

“He painted himself a lot, but he’s never smiling,” Daniel said. “Even when he paints other people, they’re never smiling.”

He added that he was surprised how many classic artists, like van Gogh, struggled for success in their time.

“A lot of the people, at first, nobody liked their paintings,” he said.

A number of students in Le’s class said they drew and painted in their spare time. Amanda Moore, 10, counted herself a fan of van Gogh — although, unlike the legend, she had a backup plan to support herself financially.

“I want to be either an artist or a vet,” she said. “But I love art.”