Discovering Line with Vincent van Gogh: How to Draw, by Rob the Art Teacher

vincent van gogh is such an excellent artist to learn from because his drawings combine close observation inventive self-expression look at these drawings they are truly inspiring they teach us so much about the descriptive potential of line and the expressive power of line we see the artist's passion for the beauty variety and energy he saw in these scenes also notice how he uses line drawing as an all over medium that is his line work fills every space and goes from edge to edge of the paper just like oil painting goes from edge to edge of the canvas he treats every object every surface as an opportunity for texture pattern contrast and liveliness his line drawings give us an encyclopedia of mark making so if you want to learn something about line drawing study vincent van gogh and here are some activities to help you unlock your own line drawing potential our first warm-up activity is to gather all your drawing tools so we can start with the obvious things some b pencils i've got a 6b a 12b and a 1b i've also got an hb pencil if you have charcoal sticks or charcoal pencils collect these as well i've also got a black wax pencil and i've brought together a variety of colored pencils black colored pencils from the sets of colored pencils i've got as well as some graphite sticks if you have black marker pens use those i've also got a brush pen so you're looking for any black drawing tools that you have in your studio or at home or in your art kit don't forget your brushes thin watercolor brushes or even cheap watercolor brushes are fine for sketching and drawing what i've done here is partly destroyed a brush and the ragged bristles will create a different texture when drawing with ink or with a sepia wash there's a paper stick for smudging the charcoal and here i've chosen a kitchen brush because it might be possible to do some stipple effects with ink or sepia wash now for some unexpected things i've got a fountain pen if you have one of those at home it would be great to use i've also made a very rough dip pen out of a piece of plastic packaging i've collected a twig from a tree a dead twig so it's quite stiff and bristly also a piece of string to dip into ink and watercolor and some cotton buds one of them i've trimmed the end off so the cardboard stick will act as a dip pen as well so think creatively look to see what you've got and then also look if you've got some ink or maybe you can mix up some watercolor i've mixed up a sepia wash with watercolor [Music] our second warm-up activity is to experiment fill an a4 sheet of art paper with as many different types of line and as many experimental marks as you can while trying out all your drawing tools [Music] [Music] our third warm-up activity is to copy a very small section of one of vincent van gogh's drawings if you like any of the drawings i've shown you'll find links to many of them in the description below so take a fresh piece of paper choose the section of the drawing you want to copy and then use whichever of your drawing tools you think will create the marks that you see in the drawing by copying a small part of his drawing you will experience how he creates his marks and how he creates a contrast between each section of his drawing [Music] you only need to do this activity for about 15 minutes or until you've copied a square about this size now it's time for our main activity your own line drawing in this activity we aim to combine your own creativity with the line techniques you have learned from vachoch [Music] first think about the types of images and subjects you like doing you could do this activity with landscape an interior a portrait a still life or even an abstract composition now think about the size and format you feel comfortable with i recommend either a4 or a5 choose a way of composing your subject so that your mark making creates an all-over composition try to fill the whole paper with different line effects avoid creating blank spaces and most of all have fun discovering your style with line thanks for watching if you enjoyed this video be sure to click like and share it if you want to see more short videos with art tips art projects and lesson ideas please subscribe to my channel rob the art teacher

Channel: Rob the Art Teacher

Views: 15,867

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Id: C61w5O-3PRg

Length: 11min 13sec (673 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020