Our first drawing class of the semester started with the entire class watching the movie,Loving Vincent, an experimental animated biographical drama film that is based on the legendary artist,Vincent Van Gogh’s life. It is a movie that was made by more than 100 artists, by compiling 65,000 paintings. There could not have been a better way to start a drawing lesson. The hard work put into all those paintings was a great source of inspiration for me.
From the class discussion on the movie, I learnt that Van Gogh used a technique called impasto in his paintings, where the brush strokes or palette knife are clearly visible. When I pointed out that the paintings mainly consisted of blue, yellow and green, I was told that it was because there were not too many colours during that time and Vincent was believed to have yellow vision. It was also because he was fond of bright colours.
During our class assignment, we were told to make a composition out of charcoal and shading pencils on a specific theme. My group chose the theme, landscape. At first, I ended up using strokes in an incorrect manner, not realising the amount of depth or softness an object requires and then I remade the composition with a better understanding towards shading and charcoal. The class helped me improve my knowledge towards strokes and shading in particular.
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