Van Gogh tried using the Pointillist stippling method while he was in Paris. An excellent example is this forest scene from the 1887 picture. He painted little dots of paint all over the canvas. The ground between the trees is covered in light and shade. The central yellow stripe alludes to a clearing's sunlight in the distance. It gives the scene depth along with the tree trunk on the right. Nature served as a source of inspiration for Van Gogh, who once said, "Occasionally it's precisely those areas where one no longer feels anything of what's regarded as the civilised world... sometimes it's precisely those spots that one needs to achieve calm."
