Post-Impressionism · 1853–1890
Van Gogh's Card — the Starry Night painting studio
Swirling impasto strokes, complementaries at full charge, and 27 palettes distilled from the paintings: The Starry Night, Sunflowers, Café Terrace at Night, Almond Blossom. Van Gogh's Card turns that hand into a generator you can steer — then exports stills, vectors, animation or print.
Vincent van Gogh painted some two thousand works in a single decade, most of them in a final five-year rush through Paris, Arles, Saint-Rémy and Auvers. What makes the canvases instantly recognisable is not only the colour but the stroke: long swirling impastos, comma-shaped dashes, dots and jabs, laid side by side so the surface itself carries the movement.
The studio's engine starts from that observation. Every card is built from strands of strokes — currents of swirls carrying darker and lighter passages, punctuated with complementary pairs (blue against orange, yellow against violet) the way Van Gogh set them down. The Starry Night's deep ultramarine-and-canary world, the whole brass section of the Sunflowers, the blue-white spring of Almond Blossom: each palette re-aims the engine at a different painting.
You never have to stay automatic. Run your own brush over the canvas to add strokes by hand, set a line of calligraphy in one of nine typefaces, drag the white borders until the framing feels right — then export the card as a still, an animation or a printable page.
The paintings behind the palettes
The palettes are named after the paintings they were distilled from, so choosing one is choosing a world. A few from the drawer:
The Starry Night
Deep blue night with rolling, luminous turbulence — the swirls and stars of the 1889 canvas.
Sunflowers
Cadmium yellow on yellow, held up by green stems and one orange accent.
Café Terrace at Night
Gaslight yellow against cobalt evening — the Arles café under its first stars.
Wheat Field with Cypresses
Wind through yellow fields, and the cypresses' dark green flame.
Almond Blossom
Pale blue sky crossed by blossoming branches — painted for the birth of his nephew.
Starry Night Over the Rhône
The Big Dipper over dark water, town lamps doubled in the river.
What the engine paints
The engine treats the card as ground to be covered in strokes, not shapes to be filled. Density, direction and glow are all dials: push density and the field tightens toward the wheat-field canvases; pull it down and the card opens into sky.
- Swirl strands: curved impasto runs that carry the eye, as in the night skies.
- Comma dabs and dots: short punctuation marks scattered along the currents.
- Complementary pairing: strokes are chosen in opposed hues, so the surface buzzes.
- Period tints: palettes keep each painting's own ground — night blues, wheat yellows, blossom blues.
The stroke language
Swirl, impasto and comma-dab strokes with high-contrast complements.
A Van Gogh stroke rarely sits alone: it runs with its neighbours, turns with them, and stacks colour on colour until the surface has relief. That sense of paint standing off the canvas is what the engine chases with layered, translucent strands.
Watch this studio paint
One seeded card, painting itself stroke by stroke — the same animation the studio exports as a GIF.
Sample cards from the 27 palettes
A few of the colour worlds waiting in the palette drawer. Every studio carries a full gallery of all 27.
Explore Van Gogh's Card in depth
The studio site goes further than the canvas: story pages, a full palette gallery, and the family page on the three painters.
- Van Gogh's Starry Night studioPaint a card live in the browser — strokes, text and seven export formats.
- Van Gogh's Arles: the Yellow House & Saint-RémyThe story of Arles: the Yellow House, the sunflowers, the starry Rhône, the asylum.
- Van Gogh palette gallerySample cards built from each of the 27 Van Gogh palettes.
- Monet, Van Gogh and Cézanne — the three paintersThe painters behind the three studios, with the friend-site links.
The story behind the palettes
Van Gogh's Card keeps a story page for Arles on its own site: the Yellow House and the sunflower campaign for Gauguin's room, the starry Rhône, the asylum at Saint-Rémy, and the last weeks at Auvers.
On the studio site you will find the painting studio itself — palettes, the brush, text tools and seven exports — plus the Arles story page and a gallery of sample cards from all 27 palettes.
Frequently asked
Is the Starry Night painting generator free?
Yes. Van Gogh's Card is free with no account, and everything happens in your browser: painting, text, and all seven export formats.
Which Van Gogh paintings do the palettes come from?
Twenty-seven paintings — among them The Starry Night, Sunflowers, Café Terrace at Night, Starry Night Over the Rhône, Wheat Field with Cypresses and Almond Blossom. Each palette keeps the colours of its canvas.
Can I paint like Van Gogh without knowing the paintings?
Easily. Pick a palette and the engine does the brushwork; density, direction and glow steer it. Knowing the canvases only makes the palettes more fun to steer.
What can I export from the studio?
PNG, JPEG and WebP stills, an SVG vector, an animated GIF of the card painting itself, a self-contained HTML snippet and a print-ready PDF — all rendered locally.
Related pages
Each page has its own focus — here is where to go next.
- Painter's Cards — the three studiosThe hub for the Van Gogh, Cézanne and Monet card studios — pick a painter and paint.
- Cézanne's Card — Mont Sainte-Victoire studioConstructive colour patches from 27 Provençal palettes.
- Monet's Card — Giverny garden studioSoft broken strokes and water-lily light from 27 Monet palettes.
- Van Gogh vs Cézanne vs Monet — which studio?A side-by-side comparison of the three engines, strokes and palettes.
- The gallery — cards from all three enginesA gallery of cards painted by the three engines, and the paintings behind each palette.
- Guide — paint, decorate & export a cardStep by step through the studios and the seven export formats.
- About Painter's CardsThree free browser studios, one family — how it works and why nothing is uploaded.
- Terms & open-source fontsFree, no login, nothing uploaded — and the full open-source font list.