Project: Making marks / Excercise : Mark making techniques # Vincent Van Gogh

I have decided to finally take a closer look at Vincent Van Gogh’s use of lines and have been trying to draw like he does. I noticed that I need to constantly remind myself  to draw waves, spots, curves etc or I’ll quickly fall back into my own drawing style. I need to “vax on vax off” until I have come out of my old habbits.

Here is one image of Gogh’s to study:

Haystacks near the farm

Few observations that departs from my own drawing style-in this image-he hasn’t drawn outer lines at all, for instance the houses in the background, there is no horizontal outer line at all, just the pattern lines.

Another observation is that when using such repetitious patterns it is easier on the eye to have few white plain spaces here and there or the stroke lines become too over powering and even messy and without intended impact. Varying thickness in lines also helps to read the image the darker thicker lines achieved with reed pen have been strategically placed to bring the whole image together.  It appears to be a method

to seperate areas of certain stroke lines and not to mix them together, the haystacks have only one kind of strokes which are wavy where as the grass area has only one type of strokes,dotted areas are isolated, white

areas are plain white….

HOWEVER

in this following image which has been drawn from the same scene, Van Gogh has been mixing the patterns, now there is more than one kind of line stroke within one area.  I don’t know if its intentional but

I get impression that its humid day, not raining but has just rained and the air is humid and the humidity has saturated the entire image the strands have straightened under weight of water.

Haystacks near the farm #2 

Here, in the image “Hill with the ruins of Montmajour” the only clear out line starts from right down corner of the first stone moves alone to bigger stone leading us to the castle which being white needs the outer

lines apart from that all the areas are isolated by the stroke line styles : cross hatching in the building next to white castle, the long grass and the sandy dotty areas and curvy lines in the bush, the little longer and

thicker strokes on the right side of the bush depicting some fauna

Hill with the ruins of Montmajour

La Crau seen from Mont Majour, another busy image which have been calmed down with the plain white sky and the dotted area.
La Crau seen from Mont Majour

Landscape near Mont majour, could the rule of thumb be 1/5 of the canvas area should be plain white when the rest is covered with busy texture ?

Landscape near Mont Majour with train

Landscape with a little bridge, composition is everything, that sure looks inviting !

Landscape with a little bridge

Landscape with tree on the foreground, in this image the tree is the centre of attention having all the decorative curves to herself the other strokes springled around are merely the

supporting actors.

Landscape with tree on the foreground

Landscape with cottages, the rule of thumb of 1/5 white space (?)

Landscape with cottages

1/5 white space

Landscape with the wall of the farm