Playground · Drawing · SVG · Standing test
The Starry Night, redrawn in SVG
Every model knows The Starry Night, but drawing it from memory in SVG is another matter: the cypress has to sit on the left, the village and its thin spire below, the crescent moon top right, and the sky needs the great double swirl and haloed stars, all made to look painted rather than flat. We rendered each answer large and zoomed into the sky, the cypress and the village. None of them animate.
The prompt, word for word
Recreate Vincent van Gogh's "The Starry Night" as an SVG, from memory, in as much detail as you possibly can: the swirling night sky, the crescent moon and the stars with their halos, the dark cypress in the foreground, the village with its church spire, and the rolling hills. Aim for the look of his brushwork, not flat shapes. Give one complete, self-contained SVG file (no external images or fonts).
Every answer runs live, in a sandboxed frame. Click into one to play with it.
How each model did
| Model | Our notes | Checks | Time | Output tokens | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GPT-6.1 Sol Our pick | The closest layout to the painting: a tall cypress on the left, eleven haloed stars, a crescent moon in a big halo top right, and the only true double swirl, an S-shaped curl across the middle. Sky and cypress are covered in short broken strokes (about 630 strokes, 43 KB). The village is the weak part: rows of neat grey houses and a chapel that look more like a modern estate than Saint-Rémy, and the cypress is a smooth cone rather than a flame. | 4 of 4 | 297 s | 17,516 516 thinking |
$0.175 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | The most painterly texture: the whole sky is laid in rows of dashed blue and cream strokes, with two concentric-ring spirals for the swirl, a crescent moon in a ringed orange halo and stars with soft glows. The cypress on the left is striped in green and ochre dashes, though its leaf-like bumps and loose curls look decorative. The village is a tidy cluster of simple blue houses under a tall thin spire. | 4 of 4 | 233 s | 22,698 8,411 thinking |
$0.455 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | A sky stitched from dashed strokes, with two loose spiral clusters, stars in dashed gold halos and a crescent moon in a large ringed halo. The cypress hugs the left edge with mottled green dabs and a forked tip, and the village is small houses scattered around a church with a cross. The distortion filter leaves thin unpainted white gaps at the left and right edges of the sky, and it was the most expensive answer. | 4 of 4 | 255 s | 19,523 7,431 thinking |
$0.978 |
| Gemini 3.8 Flash | A dark, framed version built from dashed strokes: hatched cypress on the left, two large dashed rings for the swirl and stars ringed in orange dashes. The moon is a large glowing disc in which the crescent is hard to see, the spire is a needle-thin line, and the hills are replaced by a striped green field in the foreground. The village is a flat silhouette row of houses and round bushes.
|
3 of 4 | 119 s | 18,522 1,845 thinking |
$0.070 |
| Muse Spark 1.3 | Has the right parts in roughly the right places, but painted in thick smooth stripes rather than strokes: the stars are flat yellow ovals (some with spikes, like lamps), the moon a pale disc in a haze and the swirl a single dark curl. The village is a few flat beige boxes around a stubby church tower, and a translucent grey band cuts across the foot of the cypress.
|
2.5 of 4 | 231 s | 8,945 2,237 thinking |
$0.038 |
| Grok 4.7 | A tangle of loose blue and gold loops fills the top half, with a crescent moon lost among them and no clear great swirl. The cypress is a thin dark stalk wrapped in vine-like curls, the village a short row of boxes with a spire squeezed between green wavy lines, and the bottom third is nearly empty apart from yellow tick marks.
|
1.5 of 4 | 88 s | 7,951 569 thinking |
$0.049 |
| Kimi K3 | On its second try (the first was cut off mid-drawing), a faithful layout in thick rounded strokes: a flame-like cypress streaked with green on the left, purple hills behind a village with the tallest, thinnest spire of any answer, and a gold crescent in a dashed halo top right. The sky has broad pale sweeps around a central eddy (about 500 shapes, 28 KB), though they read as one swirl rather than the double curl, and the stars are spoked rings that look more like cogs than glowing halos.Took 2 tries: stopped mid-page at 64,000 tokens; finished at 64,000 tokens. | 4 of 4 | 764 s | 41,939 29,519 thinking |
$0.486 $0.486 all tries |
| Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | A calm, smooth night scene: rolling green-blue hills, a village with a dark spire, a tall black cypress with stray branch spikes and a main spiral with a smaller curl beside it. The moon is an orange disc with a bright rim, reading more as an eclipse than a crescent. Mostly flat gradients with a few thin lines, so it looks like a digital illustration rather than a painting, and it took over 18 minutes.
|
2.5 of 4 | 1123 s | 43,614 31,746 thinking |
$0.262 |
| DeepSeek V4.1 Flash | A tall portrait crop rather than the landscape painting: a straight cypress wedge slants up the left, one oval loop of light strokes forms the swirl, and the moon is a full yellow orb with no crescent. The village is a dark block of houses with lit windows, and a pale blue blob spills outside the canvas on the right. The fastest and cheapest answer, but the plainest.
|
1.5 of 4 | 29 s | 12,049 6,035 thinking |
$0.004 |
| Mistral Large 4 | A soft version with translucent sweeps of pale blue over a gradient sky, two open loops for the swirl, a thin gold crescent moon and stars drawn as little pinwheels. The cypress on the left is a smooth green flame and the village only five outlined houses and a church with a spire, so it reads as a sketch rather than a dense painting.
|
2.5 of 4 | 349 s | 12,600 5,356 thinking |
$0.026 |
One answer per model, at each model's default settings unless the card says otherwise, through OpenRouter. If an answer ran out of room or stopped short, we asked again with more room, then with thinking off, and say so. We tried every answer, with Claude Opus 5.5 running the checks and drafting the notes; it is an Anthropic model, so we check its calls on Claude answers ourselves. This is a quick look, not a benchmark: run it again and every answer will differ. For measured results, see our benchmarks.
What we checked, by trying each answer ourselves: The layout matches the painting: cypress on the left, village and spire below, swirling sky above, moon top right; Has all the main parts: cypress, church spire, village, hills, crescent moon, starry halos and the great swirl; Looks painted: visible strokes and swirls, not flat shapes; Rich detail rather than a simple illustration. A partial pass counts as half.
Verdict
GPT-6.1 Sol gives the most recognisable Starry Night: everything sits where it should, and it is the only answer with the real interlocking double swirl, for $0.18 in 297 seconds. Claude Opus 5.5 ($0.45, 233 seconds) has the richest painted texture and Claude Fable 5.1 ($0.98, 255 seconds) is close behind, though both turn the swirl into two separate spirals and keep the village simple. Gemini 3.8 Flash ($0.07, 119 seconds) is the best value, a dark dashed version let down by a moon that looks like a sun. Kimi K3's first try was cut off mid-drawing; its second ($0.49, 764 seconds) is among the best, with the most faithful spire and hills, but its cog-like stars and single swirl keep it just behind GPT-6.1 Sol.
The rest look like illustrations rather than paintings: Muse Spark and Qwen are flat, Mistral is a light sketch, Grok is a scribble over a mostly empty lower half, and DeepSeek ($0.004, 29 seconds) is a portrait crop with a moon that has no crescent.
What would your prompt get?The Spring Prompt playground runs one prompt on up to six models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral and others, side by side.
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