Van Gogh en Folies

What a productive day. My Sketching and Drawing class enjoyed working with landscapes, finding ways to interpret Van Gogh’s masterful drawings. The variation of his marks conveys such a strong sense of movement and freedom. These marks offer countless opportunities for students of the arts to explore drawing in a festive way. There is a tremendous amount of beauty in how he fills the space, all you have to do is work your way from the major lines of composition to the detail. The fact that he gives the sky such unexpected presence teaches them to appreciate negative space is a novel way.

These three drawings are particularly beautiful. They have captured the painters rhythm and musicality as the sky is signing a melody. Some bars are lighter than others which punctuates sequences organized in little rows. In one space, the bars come tighter creating drama and where they are spaced out, the mood gets lighter. What a great project to be expressive, something which landscape calls for. Each artist will find a way to depict how objects loose information the further back they read. It takes instinct to simplify these objects, no second guessing.

I love when intermediates join the class. They willingly share their knowledge with beginners which boosts their confidence and in turn makes my job easier. It is a journey of empowerment and everybody wins. We all have something to bring to the table and so intermediates are in turn inspired by the beginner’s tenacity. Such is the cycle of life.

These are the lesson for the day right before the warmup which was to draw a tree from memory. You need to start by blocking out a rough shape. An umbrella without the hook works best for most species of leafy trees.

As with any object, you need to determine your light source.

On the first tree, the negative space is in an X shape. It stems larger at the very bottom to depict the power of the roots.

The palm tree has natural movement yet keep in mind that more erect varieties also need a bit of movement. Instead of drawing the leaves too separate, fill out the point where the leaves emerge, you can also cut out a few triangles of negative space more or less randomly in that area, it will shuffle the structure giving it a more organic look. Just make sure to acknowledge the major leaves and not cut through where they would emerge.

In the bottom tree, you can see a point of darkest dark which anchors the composition. Charcoal in an excellent medium with which to use this strategy. A branch coming towards you with its foliage is perched up in the tree. When a branch is coming towards you we say that it’s foreshortened because you do not see all its length. By blocking out an egg shape for it, you can give it volume.

If you want to get carried away with detail, do so on the outline around which it is more likely to encounter small enclosed negative space. This is where you can study the shape of the leaves the most. For the center part, you will need to find a strategy to give a sense of the organized chaos as opposed to accounting for each individual leaf. This is because the leaves overlapping each other are too chaotic to render. Remember if I just want to take a picture I can do it with a camera; no offence to realists but that is setting the bar a bit high. Your job is to do your best. By depicting reality, you can come up with a reality amongst others.

This student is exploring the very basics of drawing, working on simpler trees.

This is not at all Van Gogh. I think she had an aha moment about negative space which is great. At first, she underestimated the size of the area where the branches split up but we fixed that.

A very strange drawing indeed. She worked from a photograph. I told her it was a mistake to use a printout where it is hard to tell what is happening but now I am not so sure. Maybe it was a good thing...

I have been digging in my archives and found this journalistic drawing of the West End Community Centre here in Vancouver. Great!

Ah how good it felt to be young. Not any better than it feels to be in the now but still, I can’t help but think: how time flies.