Artists

MASTERCLASSlike his contemporaries Gauguin and Cézanne,Van Gogh was essentially self-taught. This meantthat as he developed his mature style, he was incommand of a unique approach to painting.Today, we know that he almost exclusively workedfrom life. His passionate involvement with the subjectis embodied in his direct, sometimes inconsistent, butalways dramatic technique. He was a confi dent drawerand worked boldly onto alla prima canvases toestablish the contours of his subjects. Most of hisportraits were created in a single sitting and we feelthat the person is present to us as we absorb the richimpasto handling and interpret the crescendo of marksmodelling the face.In this demonstration, I worked to reproduce thisdirect and vigorous use of paint, which is socharacteristic of Van Gogh’s mature style. He did verylittle modelling of forms in the conventional sense.There is only paint and light. Form is often re-enforcedby bold drawing and then contouring the thick paint toemphasise the fl ow of a form. In each painting he usedlarge quantities of high-quality artists’ oil paint and thisin itself presented technical diffi culties.In the midst of all that paint, the clarity of Van Gogh’scolour is never diminished by muddiness. Thejuxtaposition, rather than the blending of hues, keepsthe light and the form vivid and legible. The marks, thegestures and the heavy impasto give us a sense of thepainting being created before our very eyes.http://www.terenceclarke.co.uk(^1)Using a white primed canvas I used a combinationof Vermilion and Blue to boldly draw in the basicfeatures. Using a small hog hair to do a free drawing, Ilooked at the model. Van Gogh uses a brown paint butsometimes introduces a pure coloured line at a laterstage of redrawing.(^2)I continued to develop the line drawing, organisingthe main structural shapes and the generalcomposition. The expression is beginning to developeven at this early stage. I asked the model, my son, togive me a fairly strong expression.(^3)The bold drawing has to hold its own against theimpasto start to the painting. Van Gogh never heldback even at the start of a painting. His brush tendedto ‘place’ paint onto the canvas rather than brush itover the surface too much. Remember, I’m trying to letthe mass of the paint model the forms.(^4)The edge of the background creates theedge to the face and like VanGogh, I am using the thick paint to‘draw’ the image. The pace atwhich Van Gogh worked isoften in evidence in the wildgestures he used. Ultimatelythe background and the facewill bond together as oneimpasto surface.“Van Gogh didvery littlemodelling of formsin the conventionalsense; there isonly paintand light”1MATERIALS- LUKAS FINESTOIL PAINTSTitanium white,Prussian Blue,Vermilion, Ultramarine,Chrome yellow, LemonYellow, PhthaloViridian, Green,Yellow Ochre,Manganese Blue,Blue and Mars Black.- BRUSHESSeawhite Hog Hairfi lberts sizes 4,6,7,823460 Terence Clarke.indd 61 08/06/2016 12:59