Studying the Masters: The Life and Art of Vincent Van Gogh

1. Introduction: Welcome to Part one in a series where we're going to study the Masters, the artists of the past, who have created a legacy, either by their style or by their subject matter, and we're going to learn from them. We're going to study their work, their lives, and what made their art special, and how we can use that to become better artists ourselves. So, here we go. Today is all about Vincent Van Gogh. And I know I didn't say that probably very well because I grew up boys saying Vincent Bango. I don't know about you, but it's gonna take a little while to reformat that in my brain. It's a familiar artist. It's someone we can recognize immediately upon seeing most of his work. He has created a lot of work that maybe is not all recognizable to us. But today's lesson, we're going to focus a little bit more on the latter part of his journey and use that as our influence as we kind of dive in to some exercises that help us get to know Vincent a little bit. If you've never taken class with me before, my name is Christina Moyer, and I'm an artist specializing in acrylic paints. It's my favorite medium, but I love diving into other mediums, giving practice, and honing new skills and new processes to build up my own skill level. I've also been teaching for Oh, dear, more than two decades, I think, now. And I started teaching dance, I've taught art, I've taught at church, and I've taught ESL, and I just really love connecting with students. So I hope that I will see your project uploaded at the end so that I can give you feedback and we can connect, and I can see how you enjoyed this lesson. 2. The Project : Project for this class is going to be really fun because we're going to start with exercises throughout the lesson that will help bring you to the point of being able to create a project that is your own. So throughout the class, we're going to do, you know, studies of Vincent Benko' work, where it's going to feel more like recreating another work of art. With a few exercises, trying still life, portraiture, and landscapes, which Vincent is famous for doing all three. Then we're going to select our own subject matter to create our final project using the style and the things that we've learned in this lesson to create this project. You'll see me create mine, but I want yours to be special for you. The whole purpose of this lesson is to be able to give you the tools in your tool belt, as an artist, that you can recreate that style with your own subject matter. So that's why this is the final project. And that's why this is also more for intermediate students because you don't need as much hand holding at this point. You're diving a little deeper into what you want to create. But we will get you there with the other exercises, with learning the skills and the style of Vincent along the way to get to that point. So don't worry, you've got this. 3. Preamble to Exercise One: Let's get started with the first exercise, where we're going to take the Starry Night painting, one of his most famous paintings, and we're going to recreate it using whatever medium that you want to practice. I'm going to be using oil pastels, but you can use chalk pastels. You can use paints, whether that's acrylic paint, gouache, or oil paints, whichever one you want to want to practice, or just to get us a bit familiar with his style. Because he painted in oils quite frequently, I feel like I wanted to use something similar to that, so oil pastels gives you somewhat similar experience. Not the exact same, but I decided to go for that. So let's get started by getting out your materials, getting out your sketchbook, and follow along. 4. Starry Night Demo Part 1: Let's begin by labeling our page, giving it a little title. Put the date in whatever information will be relevant for you. You can put the title of this lesson in if that will be of use for you in the future. I think it's always helpful to add in a little extra information. Date. Absolutely. Title this, say who the teacher was. That helps you know where to return if you need to head back to this lesson at some point. So studying the masters, Vincent Van Gogh. That's how we say it in North America. But if you were Dutch, it sound more like and now I'm not Dutch, so I can't say it very well, and we've already gone through that. But Van is more like a F sound like Van. And Go, they pronounce it more like, H. And so because I'm in Canada, I'm going to say Vincent Vang. Hopefully, that's okay with you. So I've dated it, and I'm going to create just a little frame. So I'm going to give myself a little frame to work within on my page, and you could go large, small. This is just a small study, so I've decided to keep it pretty small at about, you know, like a six by four kind of size. So feel free to follow along the exact same as six by four or make it bigger, fill the whole page if you like. Then we're going to sketch the image. So look up the Starry Night, and you'll find all kinds of images. You can buy prints of this painting. Try to find one that you like and that you feel like looks good with good detail and that kind of thing to follow along. Something more original, not somebody else's creation of Starry Night, but the original that Vincent created is a little more helpful. So I'm going to use a pencil and sketch in the tree there and just my hillsides. I'm not going to go into deep detail, but just to give myself some boundaries as to where to begin, where to put everything. It's always helpful. As an intermediate artist, though, I'm sure this is familiar to you in terms of creating this. Also, just want to make note, I did frame this with a pen. That's totally up to you. You don't have to do that, but just you could use a pencil if you want. But for me, I just I didn't want that to kind of be something that needed to be erased or hidden. And so having a strong frame with a pen was just fine for me. So then I look for areas. If you don't have a lot of sketching experience, I look for areas of interest and that kind of Mark a location. So the tree. That one's pretty obvious. Then there's the horizon line. I don't know I had difficulty saying that word. And then I put in that church. And then that helped me to identify the location of other buildings and mark making. So look for areas of interest that are really strong visual moments. And if you can identify where that is within the frame. Is it centered? Is it off center? To what extent is it off center? Think of cutting a pie or cutting a cake, you're trying to cut equal amounts or cut the same amount that looks similar to what you're looking at. So that's how some of how I visualize things. If there's cake involved, I guess that can work. And then even marking in these little, I've decided to mark in the swirl and just very lightly, especially where it's going to be light with the particular material I'm using. And now, if you're using a material that might blend in with pencils, you just want to take that into consideration. Didn't recommend watercolor. I'm not gonna say you can't, though, but with the particular style, with this expressive short brushstrokes, I don't think that watercolors ideal for this. So, now that I have things sketched out, I'm going to take out my medium. So if you're using oil pastels. Now, oil pastels, you can blend them. I'm not exactly blending mine in a way like with mineral with oils or, you know, you can use you can use baby oil. You can use all kinds of things to blend them. I'm going to use just kind of themselves to blend and like each other, blend with each other a little bit and keep that expressive brushstroke look to it. So I'm going to make little dash mark. So right now I'm selecting my color. So If you can do this with your whatever medium of choice, grab all the colors that you're going to need in this particular study. There's a lot of blues, grays, purple, yellow, white, This is kind of a mishmashed bin of oil oil pastels. So I don't always have the exact colors. But what I want you to do is practice by making little marks. And if you don't have an exact color that you're looking for, see if there's two colors that you can kind of blend together. And you can use a finger to blend when you're actually blending. You can try blending. I like to blend a light color over a dark color. I find I need a white to kind of blend those light tones. But just keep in mind how it's going to function once you work on your actual piece. Why I like to do these little swatches on the side. Test things out. See if you can scroll in and see how the image really looks really up close, can help to determine what colors you might need. And it just depends on how well versed you are with your medium that you've chosen. Maybe this is really simple for you, and maybe this is a bit challenging for you. You can see I grabbed a red. There's just like some very small red marks, but it can also be useful in blending in certain areas. Like even in the green, if I had a bright green, and it was too bright, I could add red to it to kind of dull down that green, which sounds counter intuitive, but it actually works. Looking for colors within the tree that work nicely. And you can see if I were to blend these pastels as someone would want to kind of get that smooth look. You can see the tree that's not how that would work. So I want to kind of keep that as similar to this as possible, just for the sake of practicing who Vincent was. And we're starting out right now with a lot of talk about how to create this piece and, you know, my oil pastels, and just setting up my page and everything, and you can see my fingers are getting a bit oilly from touching all these things. Is there oil pastels? So that's to be expected. And still just make sure I have my color is correct. So right now, you know, we're setting things up. I'm hopefully helping you to get things set up properly so you can get get started, and so here I go. But further along the way, we will definitely talk about Vincent's life, do a bit of an overview. So You know, probably or possibly you don't. That's okay if you don't, that a lot of his work has this expressive feel to it. It's very a bit loose feeling with the brush strokes because you can see them. They're not all blended together with transitions that are really smooth. They're a little more harsh looking with really strong outlines here and there. And as you learn about his life, you're going to learn why he paints this way. At least to some extent, we might not have all the answers, but luckily, we do actually have quite a bit of information. And we're going to go through some of this as we go through this lesson. So you're going to learn some of his life. And for me, it was very impactful studying about his life in preparation for this lesson. As I learned more about who he was and what he went through, and, you know, the challenges he faced and really the short lifespan that he had I did affect me. And and in creating these pieces, it was a way to, like, honor him in some way, but also try to gain what I could from his years of experience. And even though he didn't have many years, he created a lot of paintings. And so there's lots we can learn from that, if nothing else, persistence, and just sheer effort, like, work ethic, to create so many paintings in such a short period of time. It's just very inspiring to me. So hopefully, learning about his life, as well as c, recreating his work will help to influence you, as well. And then when you go to create the final project in this lesson, you will have a good experience, something that is more personal and be able to think about his life. If you haven't heard the song, Starry Night, I think it's called Starry Night. Josh Goben sings it. And I never really thought about it before, but it's definitely one I would consider after, you know, studying his life. Definitely, go listen to that song. You know, if you're working on this piece while you listen to the song, It's even more special. It's very relevant. So go ahead, put it on. So, as you can see, I started with a light blue. And then now I'm going in with this darker blue, and filling in some of the areas that require that color, and then I'm going to be blending on top. So sometimes it makes sense to start with a lighter color and sometimes it makes sense to start with a darker color. In any area where it's supposed to be really light, I'm not going to put a dark color to begin with in that area. But with oil pastels, it works pretty well to start kind of with your medium dark and then add on the lighter tone. It actually works pretty well. So if you haven't tried your medium before, I definitely recommend practicing a little bit before diving into this, but this could be a practice for you, and it doesn't have to be perfect. We're just going in our sketchbook and using, you know, this master artist, their work as, you know, this influence and practice. So Even if it doesn't turn out nicely, don't worry about it. This isn't the final project. And even you get to that point. That's shouldn't be a stressful moment. This is exploitative and just something that should be enjoyed and trying to you know, trying something different. And that's part of what it is. So we're at the end of this part one, we have three parts in this demonstration. So continue on and keep carrying on. You got this? 5. Starry Nigh Demo Part 2: Part two of this demonstration. Alright, sorry, if those too loud. Excited, excited. Continuing on with those kind of mid tone ranges in this particular section, in this part two. Part three will take us into the darks, the outlines, that kind of thing, although I'm getting a little outline in there. We're going to darken that up later too. So getting those mid tones getting the thing started. It's kind of like starting with our base in a painting where we, you know, cover the whole canvas. This is a little bit different because I'm not just covering the whole frame. I'm starting with you know, I started with my sketch, and then I'm building in areas. So working in sections, filling in with these little dashes, that became part of Vincent's style. This is important to his style. So keep working in those colors. And let's get started with talking about Vincent's life. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with a quick overview version of Vincent Vang's life, okay? And why I'm doing this is so that if you want to refer back to this video, you can get the quick overview version and get, you know, the summed up version of things. And then we will go into further detail into future lessons. So be excited for that. So if you didn't know already, Vincent Bango grew up in the 19th century in the Netherlands. So he's a Dutch painter. And surprisingly, he didn't know what he wanted to do. For a long time, he didn't really he didn't, you know, wasn't a 5-year-old, like, I'm going to be an artist. Like, that was not, you know, something that was very clear to him in the beginning. But he did enjoy drawing, but he just didn't know what he wanted to do. He tried a bunch of careers, and they didn't really work out for him. Had a pretty good relationship with his brother Theo, and his brother said to him, you know, you're good at drawing. So why not do something with that? Why not you know? And so he decided he's going to be an artist. And he really took that to heart, and I'm really impressed by that. Oh, we're adding in that golden color. Sorry, just excited going back to the picture that we're working on, just for a moment here as I start adding in some yellows, because when you have cool, cool colors to begin with, which we started with these cool blues. And then we start adding this warm golden color, it's just very exciting because it creates that balance. And Yep. Okay. So what's interesting is he preferred drawing and painting the lives of ordinary people, for example, farming, family. And you can see that in evidence from one of his earlier works, the potato eaters. This is a pretty famous painting. And it's very dark. And it's interesting that someone would want to paint this. You know, you think about what people paint now or what you want to paint now. What are the topics that you like painting? And he liked painting, you know, just kind of everyday things, which I find really pretty interesting. He was proud of his work. He was, you know, but others didn't seem to like it too much. He just wanted to be a good artist. And he worked really hard to become one. You know, he just kept practicing, practicing and practicing. He made a lot of drawings, a lot of paintings. He moved to Paris to be with his brother, where his brother lived, Theo. There he was able to meet other artists who inspired him. He was inspired by some of these painters who painted these peasant type of paintings with workers in the fields and that kind of thing. He started with bright, cheerful colors, bright, primary colors. He did not have very much money. He's kind of the stereotypical, we talk about the starving artist. And I think a lot of people think about Van Go because he didn't really succeed in his life. And then as I hear this a lot, you know, people will say, Oh, you know, when you're dead, like, that's when you'll have success. Well, this was an example where yes, this was the case for Vincent. Like, he didn't really have success in his life, spoiler alert. But, here's a close up. But he created works that are, you know, world famous, right? So it's very interesting, but he was low in cash. So a lot of artists would hire models to paint from. You know, they didn't have what we have now in terms of, you know, I can search on Pexels for a model and paint from that. You know, if I had to try to get a friend to sit there and paint that would allow me to paint Them at that time and everything. I don't think I would have much success in that unless I paid them. So he couldn't afford models. So that's why you see a lot of self portraits. He posed for himself. I think that's pretty ingenious. And he clearly wanted to be an artist. He was going to make it work no matter what his circumstances were. And that inspires me. He just posed in front of a mirror and paid it himself. And there are a lot of self portraits, and I hadn't thought about this before. Like, Was he just a conceded man? Oh, back to the painting just for a moment. I'm going to call it a painting, even though it's I'm using oil pastels, but as you can see, I'm using this white to create the softness in the blend. And so rather than maybe using a finger or oil to blend it, what I love about blending with a lighter tone or blending with another color. Sometimes it doesn't work because you can if it doesn't take if the paper won't take enough of the material with oil pastels, you're going to have some issues with that, but like, it'll just kind of build up and it won't blend. You'd have to use maybe the palett knife to blend it if it started to get too much material on there? What you can do? The white blending on top, if I haven't made too many marks, or there's not too much material on there works pretty well to kind of blend that in. Also found that the quality mattered a lot. Some of these had pretty good quality, and then, were really good quality, and then like this white was not the best quality, so it was really pushing to try to get it to blend. All of the thin oil pastels that I have are of that lesser quality. The thicker ones, those ones are I think all better quality. Maybe not all of them, but I found that there was a big difference in how it blended and just the pigment, the way that it went on the page. So sidetrack. But I just want you to get the information on what I'm doing with the material, as well as this history that I'm finding pretty exciting, pretty interesting. So low on cash. So another thing he did to save money. You know when you're trying to figure out color scheme, working the colors like I did with little swatches and we'll do little swatch work to make sure like practices in the practice studies, like even, you know, this is a practice. Instead of using his paints, his art material to test it out and see what worked and what didn't for coloring and that kind of thing, he had balls of wool and used those to see how the colors would look together. So I find that just so interesting. And you actually can go to the There's a ngo Museum, by the way, and in the Netherlands, and you can go there. And now that I've learned about his life, I want to go. And not only see some of his work, learn more about his life. Listen to some of these stories that I'm going to share in a more interesting way. And also sees. They actually have some of the wool, those balls of wool, which I find that would be interesting to me. I am not a history buff, but definitely studying about his life. I found really quite neat, and especially when you connect on a certain level, like, I felt like there are ways that I connect with him. And I thought, you know, that always makes a story more compelling when you feel a connection or you can relate in some way to an artist. So hopefully you can find some ways that you relate to Vincent that are positive that even if it wasn't a negative thing that you relate with, or even if it was a negative thing that you relate with, it can still teach you something and still motivate you and inspire you. So that's my hope. So He was smart with his materials clearly. So he was in Paris, right? And when he was in Paris, it's a busy place. And no one wanted to buy his paintings. So he moved further south. And the other thing, too, it was just too busy. He was tired of city life. So he moved to further south of France, and this is where he painted the night, the sea, the fields. He wanted to paint life as he saw it and felt it. But not everyone understood that. So he had some heated discussions with another artist. He connected with other artists in that area. And I would I would like to do that more. I don't think I do that enough. Sometimes it feels very separate or elitist in some ways, the art world. And I want to be somewhere. I guess I don't want to be somewhere where I'm too comfortable because you want to be able to grow, and sometimes it's where your discomfort where you grow, but somewhere that is not toxic anyways. So he did not see things the same way that Paul Gugin who he connected with in the south of France, We'll go into more detail about this, but he did have heated discussions about how one should paint. And one night, they had a big argument so bad that Vincent got confused and injured himself. This is when he cuts off his ear. What I think is really interesting is how he actually paints himself, like self portraits with the bandage over his ear. I just think that's really interesting. I don't know exactly what that says about him, but I guess it does say that he's quite. So he's admitted to a special hospital for for his mental health issues, the things that he's going on, this confusion he's experiencing. And he continues to paint. I love that, that he continues to paint regardless of the situation that he's in. And he paints a special piece for his new nephew that Theo brought into the world. So that I love that he created something special for him. And when he got better, he moved back up north to the countryside near Paris, and there, guess what? He painted continuously. Yeah, you guessed it. But once again, he became confused and found life to be very hard. It was difficult for him. And so when he was 37, the summer, when after he turned 37, he enters a cornfield, and there he dies by suicide. And what a difficult, sad way to end this beautiful story, this beautiful life of creating hundreds of paintings and drawings bringing so much to the world that we all value now. So that's just a little summary in our part two. Hopefully, it didn't bring you down too much, but if you didn't know part of his life already, that's a part of his life he can't deny. So we'll get into part three right away. 6. Starry Night Demo Part 3: Okay, we're in part three of three for the Starry Night study. And I'm starting off with this outline with this black, and it's pretty exciting. I mean, I already like the look of my piece, if I just look at the piece alone, but now adding this in, it's a little scary because it's very dramatic. But we're going to go ahead and not be afraid. I was going to create the outline that he was part of the style and and then kind of fill in these gaps. So we're blending in with these other tones. See that happened there when I added that purple on top. So let's get into the tree, this kind of Cypress. I think it's a cypress tree right here. And starting with not the black this time. I know. I've been saying you can start with the darker and then colt lighter, but I think with a black, things can sometimes be a bit different. I'm just trying this out. And what's cool about the oil pastels is the way that they kind of blend in like oils do with other oils because it doesn't dry the same way that, you know, acrylic paints do. So when I was when I'm drawing on another color, I'm blending in a little bit with the preexisting paints, so long as things are still wet if you're using paint. With oil pastels, they don't really ever dry. You could use some kind of fixative or something, I believe. I'm not super familiar with oil pastels. So it's not my forte, but this is what I'm studying his, you know, Vincent's life alongside this material. So something I can learn about anyways. I haven't felt the need to use a fixative or anything like that to then work on top of oils. Don't think there would be something when you're dealing with an oil type of material that you'd want to use another material on top. But I could be wrong. And in fact, I think I can think of one instance where we did something similar to this, where we actually an art project way back in the day, I think, grade five or four, and I had this fun art teacher, and we covered a whole page with red oil pastel, I believe it was. And then she used, I don't know what kind of paint she used on top of it, but she used some kind of black paint, I don't know if it was temper paint or something. But then we used a tool to scratch off, and we kind of created a scratch art piece with that, and we were studying, I think, pottery or something, because we were doing these kind of designs with scenes that were, like, pottery style. Anyways, so I guess there are instances where using another material on top of oil pastels could make sense. So I guess I shouldn't say the whole never say never type of thing. Anyway, as you can see, I'm continuing just outlining starting to add depth to these areas. Kind of like how we started out this piece. You start out by mapping things out and then you start filling in. When you have more confidence that you have the right position. That's why I personally don't like to finish off one little section of my painting before I go on to other parts, unless it makes sense to do so. Like the whole sky. You could work that in together. But I've sketched things out first. So I guess if you feel confident in your sketch, then you can kind of work in that way. But I kind of like the method of working all over the piece with the color or similar type of method that I'm using. And there are reasons as to why Vincent paints the way he does. You know, at this time, you've got these impressionist painters, Monet and those types that are painting with these bright colors that are happy. And why does he bring in these dark tones? And, you know, in part, it could be because of his emotional side. But he's also interested in him and Theo both collect. And you can see him using that's the inexpensive oil pastel right there. No, don't get inexpensive ones. Just get a few really good ones over over, you know, a lot of cheap ones that are just very low quality. I love right here, where I'm adding in this other tone, it's creating a nice blend. It's actually, you can hardly tell what color I'm putting on there, but what it's doing is blending for me. So I'm creating some blended areas, so that it doesn't look too rough looking, because his work doesn't look necessarily super rough. There is kind of some blended quality to it, especially because he's using paints, but to achieve kind of that in between a rough and smooth, that's what I'm doing here. So, anyways, going back, him and Theo, they would collect these Japanese woodcuts. So that's what they collect. You can see that these contours kind of reflect that. So I think that's quite interesting to note because sometimes we think that people just do something for no reason. And I think sometimes we think artists do everything for a reason, and maybe that's true. But in this case, it is true. He's inspired by those Japanese cutouts that him and Theo collect. And I think his relationship with Theo is super important to him. And so I think it's quite interesting that that's what he feels to paint. Especially because he paints what he sees. So I find that really interesting how it has a bit of a cartoon like method in some ways, but he's painting what he sees, even if it's not something necessarily beautiful to the eye, you know, he's painting it. Like I said, with painting is self portrait when he had his ear cut off, and he had a bandage over it. Like, to me, that's really interesting. You know, if I have some kind of wound, I you know, or don't look my best, I'm probably not going to, you know, grab my camera and start taking pictures or, you know, use that as something that I would think people would want to buy. I just find that really quite interesting. So here, I'm trying to just get more blending in, just trying to follow the painting that I'm going off of and make sure that it feels like that. So we're getting into the final touches, the finishing touches of this piece by examining, reviewing, and making changes accordingly. So look at your piece and see hopefully you're doing well, no matter what medium you decided to work with. And if you did need any help, you can always create a discussion in this lesson that we can help one another out. So right now I'm adding in some black in areas that maybe seem like I shouldn't, but they just weren't getting dark enough with the blue that I was trying to add in. It just wasn't I just don't have the right color, so I have to add in some black to get darker tones in those areas that I want to, to create some contrast and maintain those last little brush strokes that are super visible in his work. So, just we're getting really close to being finished here. Trying the purple. Again, those skinny ones are the inexpensive ones, and I really had to hammer them down to put a lot of pressure on them to make them really work. And that's not how it should be with pastels. So Definitely recommend getting a few nice ones, trying it out, see if you like the medium. That could be said for most mediums. There's some that you can kind of try with lesser quality, but even in the art studio I worked in, we used good quality for young kids. And maybe for the background, like, think of the areas where you can use the lesser quality product, and then make sense of where you can use the higher quality. Because if you always practice with low quality, and then you go to make a nice finished piece with, you know, professional quality. Then you're going to have some new experiences. Maybe it'll be easier, but at the same time, you're going to be learning new things on your, you know, final copy type, so to speak. So definitely recommend doing some practice with the quality of something if you're working on a commission or you know, just a piece you want to hang up in your own home. You definitely want to consider practicing with the actual thing you're going to be doing. Just like in dance, we would practice our dance in the place we're going to actually perform. And the times that we didn't get to do that, I was a little nervous because you're not used to the space in the same way. And so there's variables that come up that affect your performance, and that can be said with art as well. Your whole environment can change things. So I don't know, how did you enjoy doing this landscape piece, recreating a piece from the masters. Have you ever done something like this before? How did yours turn out? How do you feel after learning a little bit about his life. And are you ready to move on to a new genre? So we've got landscapes down. He did lots of landscapes. Some of my favorite things to do. Let's try one that I don't normally go towards, which is still life. Still life is not my preferred genre of artwork, but it's always good to push yourself. So I'm excited to see what you come up with and see you in the next lesson. O. 7. Sunflowers Demo Part 1: Let's get started with our next exercise, which is a still life piece, and I've selected sunflowers. It's a very popular piece. And something I never thought about, and as I'm getting my colors ready, which is our first step, get all those colors ready, find out which colors I need, and then I can keep those and not searching and searching for colors. Is that these sunflowers are not all in their first full bloom, which is often what you'll see artists do is paint flowers in their best form. But you can see, these are sunflowers that some are, I don't know, are they going to seed? They've lost their petals. So it's quite interesting what he selected for this piece. So, I'm scrolling in zooming in, I should say, zooming in to see what colors will work for those little sections that are quite small that have a bit of difference, and also figuring out what yellows will be right for this piece, because there's a lot of yellow. It's a very yellow painting with just minor areas of darks that are creating a balance. So it's very interesting to me the way that this painting works with using so much yellow. Again, another lesson we can learn and especially when you see that the piece doesn't have a lot of varying tonal values, which I talk about a lot in my lessons, is creating that balance with tonal values. But by having just these small, minor areas of really extreme darks, it does create interest. So he knew what he was doing, I guess. He was pretty clever, and do. Appreciate his work. So working on those yellows. And I'm trying to create the yellow I want when I'm using those little thin ones that probably less than student grade quality, it seems. It's just not giving me the outcome that I like. It's just not pleasant to work with. It becomes a challenge. And you can see I'm working on the same page where I have my starry night piece. And that's okay. It's just because I had so much space at the bottom. I didn't want to go on to the next page yet, because, as you'll see soon, I have decided to go a bit bigger on this piece. So I'm going a bit bigger Feel free to stay within the same size as the previous one or go bigger. And I was considering doing, you know, initially, I was planning to do my three exercises potentially on this page. But because my oil pastel has made a little bit of a mess on the page, I didn't want to taint my piece already to begin with. So take your time selecting your colors, making sure you have what you need. Do a little practices as you're blending. I'm finding a color I'm happy with. Very good. I searching through the mess of an oil pastel bin. And you can practice your blends on this page, not just one color, but, you know, how are you going to create these other tones, especially these kind of greeny yellows and just subtle changes. It's the time to practice is now. And if I'm pressing really hard, I might get that excess oil pastel coming off. And in the future, what I would do is I would try a palette knife to see if I could blend it with that. And then I could try something else like one of these other methods like using an oil to blend them, which I haven't really explored very much. All my time in using oil pastels has just been using the oil pastel itself, maybe a little bit of blending with the finger, but otherwise, there were no other tools that I used. I don't think we did a lot of oil pastels. I did more chalk pastel in my day in my day. Exactly. So I've already created my frame. It's quite large this time, and I just didn't want to have to do small flowers, I guess. I wanted to give myself a little bit of space. It's like, like giving your yourself space to breathe. And just because we're going bigger doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be harder. In fact, sometimes making a smaller piece is more challenging. So I'm just going to Sketch out the sunflowers. Gently. You can barely even see. We can kind of see the previous page better than the actual drawing that I'm doing right now. But as long as you can see, that's all that matters. So just lightly sketching. And I don't want to draw with any pressure because that will create dense in my page, and when you're using an oil pastel, especially or any really lots of other mediums will be affected by this too, is you're going to create dents in your page, and that will create an unwanted texture. Unless it is wanted, and you're doing it purposely. But I don't want that personally. So just going to sketch out the vas. I started with the vas, brought in some of the flowers, and then I brought in the table edge. And then we can add in a few more details. Start with the flowers that give you a sense of the whole composition. For instance, what's in the center, what's at the top? What's the highest flower? What's the furthest flower from the right? Those don't necessarily have to be the very first flowers that you draw, but sometimes indicating where those might be will help you to draw these other ones in. For instance, if I just draw from bottom to top, I might not give myself enough space when I get to the top, I might have to scrunch everything. And we definitely don't want to do that. So if you can kind of give yourself license to either just make a small mark, that can be really helpful. And now to actually get in once I've sketched out, and I'm happy with it, you can start coloring things in with these. So I'm starting with the base here. And you can start wherever you feel comfortable. You don't have to follow exactly how I'm beginning or anything like that. Even if you're using the same material as me, if you feel like you should start with the flowers first or the background, go with it. So even though I did some color prepping and planning, I'm still kind of figuring things out sometimes. So I'm just trying to get that yellow, and I think I was more focused on getting the flower yellow color than this particular yellow on the base. So I was trying to figure out. And you know what? This part here would be a good opportunity to use a blending technique with oil pastels. So if you're using oil pastels, maybe try blending with your finger. Try blending with some baby oil or mineral spirits, types of things, something that you would use with actual oil paints if you have that material. And if you don't, don't get stressed out by not having a material. I'm not blending in with those techniques, so I don't feel like you have to. And hopefully, you have a finger that you can bond with. And so I'm lightly building up layers because I found with trying to create my layers with oil pastels. If you go with too much pressure, you're just basically creating little shavings of excess oil coming off your pastel. So then you have to try to blend those in, and sometimes I kind of use the stick of color that I have, as you can kind of see what I'm doing right now, to blend that in. And that's okay. That's almost like using the palette knife method to blend. Give it a try if you're still working in learning the medium that you're working in. If you're not, if you're just using a different medium and you're comfortable, think about the composition, the type of thing that he's painting, the colors, focus on colors, focus on technique in terms of the brush strokes that you see. One thing when I'm using another artist's work to do a study, especially, you know, those who have long past is, I like to look at how they created something, like, kind of the method. Not necessarily copy every single brush stroke, because I feel like when you're trying to copy like, recreate someone's brush stroke. It's almost like trying to recreate someone's signature. You definitely can do it, but I think it's more about how they did it than getting exactly those same brush strokes. Now, we're not in reproduction here. We're just you know, the key thing isn't that we're reproducing the art to its exact. We're practicing the actual style with the you know, visible expressive brush strokes. That's the key that you should focus on, not copying the exact brush stroke he made with every single brush stroke. I think that wouldn't be very fun, either. So I think it is good to have some fun when you're doing this method as well. So right now, it doesn't look like much. It's a little messy. And the other thing we could potentially do is tape the edges of our piece if you're wanting it to look a bit nicer. So here we got a little pop of color happening, and I'm trying to create a nice kind of shadow there. And just to make it darker, I added in that red and with that yellow, it kind of gave me an orangey brown color just with what's going down there. So, oh. We have a little excess there. Try to get it off. There we go. I don't want to smudge it. I have to be careful. Alright, so that this is a conclusion of part one of this exercise. We have three parts to complete our sunflower piece. So I'll see you in the next one. A. 8. Sunflowers Demo Part 2: Carrying on with part two of three of the sunflowers piece. So I'm still working on the Vase area, the lower part of the piece. And then I think we'll get into the flowers next. One question I have for you to consider, do we need to approach still life differently than we do landscapes? If so, what are your thoughts on that? That could be an interesting discussion to create for this lesson. I don't know. I think that Yes, there are different ways to approach paintings. Every single piece might need a different approach. But I wonder what your thoughts are on approaching landscapes differently than still life. Is there something we need to consider? Or is there just a one size fits all method for painting in general. You know, start with the background, build up from there. And maybe it's more about which material you're using, because this is quite different than my approach to painting. If you've taken any of my painting classes, you'll notice that I often will start with a background and then build up from there. Whereas in this piece, no, I'm not doing the background first, although, you know, you could maybe consider the table as background, but I'm not actually doing like, if I was painting this, I would start with a wash and then build up from that. And this is quite quite a bit different. But would I approach something differently, you know, landscape versus oil pastel? I mean, landscape versus still life with oil pastel. Is that going to be a different you know, structure? Am I going to follow a different step? That's maybe more of the way that I would assume things. Because if I'm using a certain medium, I'm going to approach a piece differently and follow kind of a system within that medium's rules, t. So that's kind of my thoughts on it, but I'd love to hear your thoughts because I don't know everything, and I love to hear other people's perspectives to learn more myself. So if you have a different perspective or the same perspective, feel free to share. And let me know your thoughts. Do we need to approach still life differently than we do landscapes. Food for thought, anyways. And when I'm creating art, I think it's nice to have sometimes these questions in my mind as I'm learning and growing and creating new strategies. And the way that I'm approaching this particular piece, and maybe it's not exactly the same. I mean, with a landscape, you have different elements than you do in a still life. So perhaps, you know, there are different approaches to some extent. But for instance, with my landscape piece, the Starry Night. I started with the sky, and that's pretty typical for me with a landscape. So I don't know. It's hard to say. I like to confuse myself, and that's why I was terrible at multiple choice because I can often find a way to make sense of both answers. I kind of think, Okay, well, yes, you know, we should approach them differently, and then no we could approach them the same. Guess it depends on what those differences are that you are referring to. But I think that with a particular medium, you might find certain rules of that medium to follow. So for me with this particular medium, I'm starting with kind of a lighter feel and more medium tone, sometimes the darker tone, but right This particular one, I it is kind of the medium tone of the yellow, and, you know, I don't have this exact color that is very prominent in this piece with these kind of it's kind of this almost dirty yellow. Kind of a yellow ochre, but mixed with a little bit of green. So it's a bit muddy, let's say. And so you're trying to create that with colors that you might not have purchased to be muddy, because you want some versatility with your materials. So it'd be really interesting to see if we can create a discussion on this and how Is it any different to approach different genres of painting or art? Is there any difference really? Like, in some way, I think when it comes to drawing, for instance, drawing a person versus a landscape, the only reason really, in my mind, that they should be approached differently is that it takes more effort to put away that to work with the right side of our brain. I think it's a bit harder to not see, especially if it's somebody you know, that's even harder because it's so easy for us to see if something's wrong in that piece, then it's less acceptable. You know, if you make the eyes too far apart in a portrait, if you make all of that. And for this piece, you know, if I made the flowers too small or too big and maybe the vase got cut off or flowers got cut off, that would just look so wrong versus in a landscape, Yes, you do need good positioning for a good composition, but you can also find a lot of leeway with the landscape. You can you know, if you don't get things right with lighting and that sort of thing, it won't look real. But it's a bit different than, you know, somebody saying looking at a face or looking at you know, this thing of flowers here, and being able to tell that, you know, proportions are way off. I think proportions is part of it that really influences that right side, left side of the brain where we see something that that's familiar to us. We see faces all the time. We see faces and things. And so it's easy for us to recognize what's wrong with that. Almost like how everybody, no matter their skill level, can tell when a painting that's hung on a wall is just the slightest degree off. If it's just off a little bit,'s off. It's totally off. So I wonder if that plays into this whole idea of whether or not you can approach a still life the same that you would a landscape. I'm not as intimidated by a still life as I am a portrait because you can play around with some things, like in here when I'm working with these flowers. I don't have to do the flower, 100% in order to help you see that it's a flower. Still, I can do that with a person. You could tell it was supposed to be a person, but it could look just horrible in comparison. I feel like But I'm approaching them somewhat similarly with the tools I'm using, you know, mapping things out, using light, brush strokes, and then now using a little more pressure as I build up on the piece and start to bring in some of those iconic type of motions and mark making that you see in the piece. And We're also studying at the moment. In this particular instance, we're studying an artist who did have some variety in this work. It wasn't all the same method of those small brush strokes. This piece did feel a little more fluid and less visible brush strokes than the previous one. Maybe this was more developed, and the first was a little more loose. I don't know. But it does seem like this one has more blending to it and that sort of thing. So I'm just bringing in that first layer of green, and then I'm going to build on another color. And I did the same with landscape. So I feel like in a way, I am approaching it the same. But, again, I am curious to hear your thoughts on this topic. So we're approaching the end of P two of this demonstration. And let's finish up this sunflowers piece with the detail. Don't stop right here because it's not quite finished. We want to get those finishing touches. Remember those really dark moments that really make it stand out. So see you in part three. 9. Sunflowers Demo Part 3: Let's begin the last part of the sunflowers, Let's finish it off. So in the previous one, we did some of the sunflowers, and now I'm creating my layer of green over top of that bit of yellow like tone. And it's almost like a brownish yellow, kind of like a sienna. We mentioned. And now I'm doing a bit of green to kind of recreate the color that I see in Vincent's piece. So now that we've done a summary of his life, we did that back in the Starry Night, Section two of that. What do you feel when you look at his work? Do you see anything different or even just knowing about his passion for the Japanese cut out woodwork? What do you think of that? Does that make any difference to how you see his work? Does any part of his life, maybe the shortness of it, maybe how many paintings he created, does it change, how you feel when you see his work? For me, it does make me think a little bit more when I'm looking at his sunflowers, for instance, and and I'm seeing and I'm thinking about, you know, they're not all happy. But overall, it does feel happy. But in a way, I would interpret it as an emotion he's trying to share. Maybe he's trying to express some of the feelings he has that this confusion, you know, the struggle, and sometimes that's even more beautiful when an artist does that. You know, if you experience something traumatic, sometimes you feel to create, sometimes you want to express it in a song and in something creative. So, this kind of depicts that. Yet, at the same time, to me, it's holding back because he wants to be this great artist, and he sees what great artists are. And we'll dive into a few more details about that in the more detailed version of his life that we'll discuss in the portrait section is when we're going to dive into that. So, um, Going back to the art piece itself, you can see now I'm kind of creating that blended look with the flowers by adding in this other color back on top. So I started with that color, went in with this green tone, now I'm back with this kind of beige kind of tone. It's kind of this wish I had the name of the colors. But as they are all quite well used and hand me down materials. Sometimes you don't have the names of colors. So you just have to go with the flow and do little practices, and just appreciate what you have. And that that was given to you and you didn't have to buy it. But I'm creating these blends, and then we can address some of the edges if we need to, as well and start diving into some of these other detailed spots that that need our attention. So we'll start applying. I like to use one color and kind of navigate multiple areas of a piece with that color. Within reason, I don't necessarily use that color to its full extent throughout the whole piece and then return to it. I will use that color here and there where it makes sense, and then maybe add on as needed later on. So I find it's helpful, especially when I'm using like acrylic paints to use that color where it's needed in the beginning, unless I need to blend it with another color wet and wet. So for the background, I'm going to just use the side of one of the colors, and I'm using this pale light yellow. And I'm just going over the whole piece. What's nice is because it's this pale yellow, it's okay if I have bits of white showing. It kind of works for this particular piece. If we had a dark background, you know, maybe I would need to approach this piece differently. And I would probably find it difficult to use oil pastel to do so because you're not going to be able to you know, start with a black background and then use a light color on top of that. That's not really going to work if you need to have a pure, bright white or any color that's pure, bright. It's just go to muddy it and give you a really moody piece, but not really diverse when it comes to tonal values anyways. But, hey, if you want to try it, by all means, go for it. Go back in with the white, and this is going to blend it out to soften some of those rough marks and help tone it down just a little bit. Give us a lighter even white. A lighter yellow even. This I really love. I love these moments. Now, some people might hate this. And there's possibly times in my own history when I have hated this. But these strong lines that it's just here, let's just put some strong blue. Like, it just seems a little jarring, but it somehow works. Somehow it does. And Sometimes you have to kind of push beyond those boundaries that people say, this is how you do this. Even as a teacher that seems kind of silly to say, because then you're like, Well, should I follow anything you say then. But obviously, when you're learning, there's valid things and things we can learn from people. But you know, that doesn't mean you shouldn't experiment or somewhat question some of the things that you've learned and try to play and explore, because you might discover something. And maybe it works for the composition you're working with or your style that you develop. So don't be afraid to explore. And you know, maybe maybe people might not like it, and that's okay. But I think it's important to go for it anyways. So you can see how fun it is when we're adding in these colors, there's something more harmonious with the piece, I think, because it's creating a balance that wasn't there before with just kind of a one tone piece. And now we've added these bright bold moments that keep the eye moving around the piece. They have those brush strokes that are more expressive and those short little dash marks that that became his style. So maybe by trying this style with these small brush strokes. Maybe you're like me, and you tend to have very blended artwork, and you don't have very many visible brush strokes. Maybe by doing this practice, you'll find moments to be able to explore that more and have confidence to do that. Not that that is the right way always, but maybe it's right for you, and you just haven't allowed yourself to explore that enough. So so satisfying to blend in with another color as I'm doing right now. And that's giving myself those moments of of shadow and kind of also just reducing some of that jarring moments. I don't know if you just heard my dog bark. So just blending them in, but still allowing areas to have some of those marks showing, or if you don't like them, blend them in. But I do think that it's good to have some of those moments where the strokes are showing. And you can always add them in afterwards if you want to have kind of a blended look and then sections where you see it more visible, right? So I can go back in with those marks, and it will look a little bit more natural, more realistic, more developed piece. And by adding some of this blue, it gives even it kind of helps to reduce the strength of that red. It takes away some of the strength that red has by adding some of the blue in there. So we're reaching the end of this Sunflowers demonstration. How do you feel about your piece? I hope that you're learning some valuable lessons, getting some valuable tools for things that you can utilize for your own style if you're still developing your style and your own practice. And maybe it's something you like so much you want to put up somewhere. Who knows? But at least we can appreciate ango's work and this piece that he created. So I'll see you in the next exercise where we look at portraits. So don't be afraid. You can do it. If you've never done portraits before, hang in there. We'll have some fun with it. We'll see you in the next lesson. 10. 1887 Self Portrait Part 1: Alright, let's begin our third exercise, studying Bango with a portrait. Now, you can use this portrait, or you can use a different one if you'd like. You don't have to use the same one that I'm using, but feel free to follow along with this one. It's from 18 87 self portrait is the name of it. Just no fuss kind of title Love it. Just self explanatory. When you hear the title, you understand what it is, even with Starry Night and sunflowers, just pretty simple. That's what it is. But there's I think more that we can find from it, but I think it's interesting as I like to create all kinds of creative names for my art pieces at times. So I think it's interesting to just have, here, this is what it is. So I'm just going to sketch out the piece first. And with portraiture, that can take a little more effort than it did for the landscapes, like I mentioned, So I'm using all the tools that I have in sketching. So I'm going to use my pencil in different ways in terms of how I hold it. And because it's nice and long, I can use it to help me know what the angles are. Now, if you're really struggling with drawing, maybe try some drawing classes first. I do have some drawing classes and then get into this. Or you can find coloring pages to just color in if that's what you're interested in too. So I prefer to practice the drawing skills and have those further develop. So I really encourage you to give it a try, even if it's not perfect, and mine certainly isn't. Give it a try because the more you practice this skill, the more your hand will understand what the brain's communication with it is. It's getting used to that. And obviously following not just randomly drawing, but understanding, practicing certain skills, like just getting the distance of things, the angle of things, practicing shapes, if you really don't know how to draw, practicing shapes is huge. That will take you so far. So that's something to consider is really give it a go. Take take an extra 10 minutes before diving into the medium and practice your drawing skills. Look at the shape of things in terms of objects that are familiar to you that you've drawn before. Do you see circles? Do you see rectangles, triangles? I see a triangle when I look at the nose, but I also see some I imagine it in its three D form in some sense so that I can try to create that shape in a better way if I give it enough space to be what it is is part of the key thing. Measuring the distance, if you see from the farest side of the head, like the outer sides, what is the center? What's in the middle of that? That can help you in drawing just to identify those things? Like where is the center? How far down is the ear compared to the eye, you know, so establishing some of those points can really help you sketch it out more accurately. And once you get it down and you feel pretty confident with it, then you can go in with your medium, but do take the time. You know, take 10 minutes. Or longer, if you need to, but this isn't going to be a finished drawing. We're going to draw things, and then we're going to use our medium on top. So just remember that. This is the sketch part. But having said that, you also want to give yourself the best start possible. When you can start it out really great, then you can continue then you have a good head start when you're starting to actually put in the marks with in my case, oil pastels. If my nose is out of place, and I've already started placing my oil pastels, I'm not going to do so well. So you can see that I'm holding my pencil in a different way. You can try this method. There's other ways to hold a pencil as well. But this one offers an interesting advantage in some ways for certain shapes, and also just in terms of filling in areas really lightly, like when I'm filling in the hair, if I hold my pencil perpendicular, like how you might write, Which we don't technically, typically, people don't write with a 100% perpendicular, but we don't want that. We want to give ourselves the best angle possible. And this is just something to try if you haven't yet. So I'm just filling in, especially because I've got all this facial hair to deal with. And all of that. So I am implementing some total values. It doesn't need to be perfect in regards to that, but it's just helping me understand for the future. Like when I start putting in the oil pastel, I know what point of reference I'm referring to when I do that. So you can kind of see how I'm holding my pencil over the image, my reference image, and then bringing it back. And onto the paper. And I'm using my finger to smudge a little bit or make some erasing marks. Oh, that's an interesting thing to say. Make some erasing marks. And you can draw with an eraser. And for me, getting the eyes is one of the most important things. I mean, you could have great eyes, and the rest can be horrible, and it's going to not look great. But getting the eyes wrong and having everything else great is just it doesn't work. So just everybody looks at the eyes, and having those correct can really help the rest of the image function well. So, as you can see, I am taking my time to complete this, and not worrying about perfection, but would like to get a semblance of the real thing. I am trying to get it more realistic looking, and this time without using a grid, which I'm not against using a grid, but I would like to try and practice the skill. It's a good skill to have. And if you can draw quickly, without using a grid, hey, save yourself some time. I want to make sure I get that nose shape correct with the nostril. There's certain areas that are just hard to get right because we're so we know what a nose looks like in our mind. We know what what its function is. But that's part of the problem, too. We don't necessarily see it in the shapes that make up a nose. We think of a nose a certain way. And we've probably practice drawing them as two parts of a triangle, like two sides of a triangle. You know, the dirt, dirt. Looks like an that has a little bit of a more acute angle. But so that's just something to think about. But bringing the forehead in, making sure you can see I'm kind of sectioning things, making measuring. I'm using my own measurement skills here. So if you use something that doesn't change, I mean, my fingers can easily creates an error. But if you have something even part of the pencil, where you can use a measurement of it, maybe it's the back end of the eraser. Maybe it's the metal part, maybe your pencil has little lines on it. You can use that as a measurement and see how much you know, spaces between the bottom of the chin hairs to the nose to the eyes, kind of see how far that is on the image. And then that can help you get better proportions on your drawing as well. So you just use that. And then obviously, my drawing is bigger than the reference image. So you have to scale it up to what you have. But you just use that in terms of, let's say, it's the same distance from, you know, the chin is the same distance as the nose. Then you can use that length as your little measurement. It's a really good tool for drawing. And also using the pencil to get the angles, correct? If you hold the pencil over top of your reference image, you can see what the angle is and then bring that over and mark it down on your page. Now, one thing with my particular medium, I'm using with so much pencil, how I'm adding bits of shading and just the way I sketched this on. It's going to muddy things a little bit for me. And I'm just testing it out anyways, and I'm just going to see how it goes. It looks like this piece was created on a tinted canvas. I could be wrong, but it looks like it's on some kind of beige type of canvas or it had maybe a wash on it beforehand. So I feel like having dirtied my page a little bit with pencil marks isn't going to affect the result in a negative way, but it's worth noting, depending on what medium you've chosen to do. Just don't want something that's going to bleed into it. So good to review and see how things are, and if it's the way you want it to be. Just step back for a moment and say, Okay, did I put things in the right spot? And if it's really off, then now's the time to change it. Don't wait till you've started putting your material on. And I decided the eye was not quite in the right place. And so I needed to move it in a little bit. I kind of use smudging to kind of erase a little bit, but it doesn't always work. Mark, indicate anything that will be of use to you for your chosen medium. If you feel like you, you know, a simple sketch can do it, then don't need to add more. So we're just about to get into the actual adding in the medium. So we get in her sketch down, finally. You did it. Yes. Good job. I hope you gave it a try sketching in this manner, and that you are happy with your outcome. We'll see you in the next part of the lesson. 11. 1887 Self Portrait Part 2: Let's add some color. So let's get out our medium and pull out the colors that go along with the reference image. So have that reference image nearby zoom in to find the right colors that you need, and start going for it, start using scrap paper to make note of it. Might be nicer than just making marks in the sketchbooks next to the work that we're creating. But at the same time, it doesn't bother me because I know this is practice, and this is just you know, in my sketchbook, I'm not worried about that. So depends on what kind of sketch book you want to have. Maybe you can just have a sketchbook, a separate sketchbook, just for making marks in. That's what you want. You could totally do that. That actually could be pretty interesting. So I'm just going to keep the ones that I want. Now, I'm trying to find ones that I want, and it's just too difficult in this little container, so go to dump them out. But if you're doing something like that, just make sure you don't have carpet on the floor or anything like that that might get ruined. So be mindful of that. And I have you know, a vinyl flooring, so I'm not worried about it. And I'm just going to keep finding and selecting my colors in this bit of a mess that I'm looking through. So you can do the same. Mx up some colors if you're using paint, and we can get started on coloring. I'm going to start with the eyes. And what's really cool is he has green eyes. So I'm going to grab some green. I love the way that he uses color in his pieces. And the expressive mark making just gives it this emotion. So one thing I'm battling when I'm trying to get this bright, if I want it to be bright green. Now, when I look at the reference images, not really that bright, but sometimes we perceive things to be a bit brighter just because we're looking at that one little spot. But I want to try and get that to be a little bit bright green and then using a bit of a teal around it for accenting it, and some black that I was adding in to start the process of kind of blending the shadows in. We're going to start getting the color in there. When I find a color, I think might work. I'll start inputting it. I'm starting with this gray in the hair and just finding places where that color fits, and then swapping it out when I feel I need to switch things up. I didn't do a lot of preliminary, you know, blending for this particular piece. I'm going a little bit with the flow, but we just did two pieces, so I feel a little more confident in some of my mark making, but also in my decision making for color blending. You can gain confidence in the first exercises and feel a little bit more free. And that's why I suggested, if you don't want to do this particular portrait, he has other portraits you can follow along with. But if you're still at a stage that you need a little more guidance, feel free to follow along step by step as I go. So make sure you take a look at the direction of the lines that he creates in his piece, and see how that flows with different parts of the face. And this is going to help you when we get to our final project. And just thinking about how you can use this for your own projects in the future as well by moving making the marks in the direction, kind of like cross hatching, that type of thing when you're shading. So it makes a lot of sense to do it this way. If I did them in the opposite direction, it probably wouldn't show the shape of the item. It gives it an understanding of of three D effect and kind of where it actually lives. Is it, you know, sunken in, or is it kind of bulging out? You know, as the nose, especially around the nose, around the temples, you can see at directional line making. And so make sure you take note of those things. Try to be very observant. And as you can see right here going into the ear and then now into this chin area. The ear, especially, I had so much of that pencil that it's causing a little bit of muddying up of my color. If you did want to avoid this, you could erase those marks and just leave a fine line Where you're, you know, sectioning off things like the chin and the ear, and then add in those details with your pencils or your pastels or your paints or whatever medium you're using, that kind of thing. So I'm just going to keep making marks, adding in the colors as I go, slowly, but surely creating the tones and the transitions correctly. And I kind of like how it turned out with the pencil blending in. I know it's, you know, there's still color I need to add to it, but I do like so far what that's kind of doing. At first, it seems like I don't know if it's going to be a good thing, but Yeah, it might be interesting to try it without that and erasing most of the marks, even using a netable eraser to kind of stamp off some of that, so it doesn't bleed into your color as much. I love adding this orange in. It's very exciting. And it can be a bit scary, but to avoid that fearful moment of making a bold mark, start in the least conspicuous area. Start in an area where you're confident that color should be. At least partially confident. Start somewhere. You have to start somewhere. So I start in the places where it's the brightest orange and where it's obvious that that is going to be orange right there. You know, if it's a tiny bit of orange up at the upper cheek area, maybe don't start there. Maybe start with the mustache where the whole upper lip is, you know, mostly orange or on the chin, or on the corner of the cheek bone. You know, find the area that feels certain and start in that spot, and that helps in any situation where you are afraid to get started. That's what I do. And it does help because once you get started, then it's less scary. You just keep going with the flow. Okay, I'm going to allow you to continue working on your piece, follow along. And as I said before, I was going to go through a more detailed history of Vango. And you can also check out Online, more information about him, researching yourself. You can go to the Vango Museum and and learn a lot about him. Even online, they have resources from the Vango Museum, and that's where I acquired much of this information. So you can get it here, and I can get it to you, and you can dive deeper by going to that site. And experiencing some of his pieces in person. That's what I would love to do. There's nothing quite like seeing original art by some of the masters. It is really mind blowing. It really is. If you haven't experienced it yet, if you've only seen this type of artwork at this caliber, just online or just, you know, digitally or in print, it's not the same as seeing the original piece that you know that artist created. It's something magical, 100%. Okay, let's go back, before he decided to start making art and making that his career. And you know before really diving into this, I want to say that a lot of artists that I've met. Maybe not a lot of them, but there's quite a few that I've met who say, you know, art shouldn't be something you try to do as a career. And I completely I don't really agree with that. You can make it a career. You can decide that this is going to be how you make your income. But we're going to have to save this information for the next lesson. So we're going to actually go on to P three to discuss some of the jobs that he did prior to becoming an artist deciding that art was his thing. So join me for P three to get that info. 12. 1887 Self Portrait Part 3: Okay, P three, we're diving right into the history in a little more detail than we went in previously. So that was kind of the quick summary. So hopefully I can give you more in depth information and a few things that help you understand more about Vincent and that hopefully will help you as you step into doing the project. And this is our third piece. So maybe at this point, you're starting to feel some connection there with him and how he created things, and it'll be really interesting to hear more about him. So, let's get started with before he became an artist, he was struggling to find a place and Religion actually became a thing where he thought that would be his calling. He started as an art dealer that really wasn't his thing. He admired the work of peasant painters like Francois Milette and Jules Breton. He became a schoolmaster, then a bookseller at 24 years, and then a lay preacher, but his contract was not renewed. And so he's not feeling very confident. And can anyone relate? Hands up. His brother, Theo, said, You know what? Why not be an artist, you know, or do something with your art. You have drawing skills and you love to draw. Why not give that a go. And he went fully in dive right in and dove right in and just said, Yep, I'm going to be an artist. Okay, I'm doing this. What's really interesting to me about that is I've met other artists that one specifically that I remember, so I'm not saying every artist I've met says this, but that person's belief was that you don't work to become an artist for pay, which I think is a really interesting thing. Whereas, most other you know, even in the arts and whatnot, if you want it to be your profession, you work it a bit differently than if it's just a hobby or just something you enjoy doing on the side. So I found that quite interesting that for Vincent, he was like, Okay, he made the decision. It wasn't necessarily, you know, he was born into this I'm going to be an artist kind of scenario. This was a decision he made, and he felt that he could still do God's work through being an artist. So very interesting to me to learn that because that actually connects a little bit with me and some of my beliefs. So I thought that was very interesting. So, in 18 81, he moves back in with his parents. His parents, they're not happy about his choice of profession. Can anyone relate? I think our parents want us to have security, and, you know, it's not super secure to have your own business per se. So he worked in a lot of drawings. He did a lot of drawing. It's really the foundation, the fundamentals of art. And if you can hone those skills. It's a communication between your brain from what you observe to your hand and creating that muscle memory so that you know how to create shapes that you see or that you're imagining, and that's really what it is. So Anyway, so he works in a lot of drawing working in open air. So Plan air is another word way of saying that. And so that means you're looking at something outside. You're you're drawing it. I mean, it could be inside as well. It's also known as observational drawing. So it's something where instead of drawing from a photograph, now, they wouldn't have had really access to those back then. So the things that we have access to, you know, we have a different life now. So it's okay to try things differently, but feel free in your project to work in open air if you like um, and one thing I really, really love about history is his brother Theo. His brother Theo is throughout the whole story. And I think, too, because he writes, they write to each other. So we have that history and knowledge to be able to share with the world, you know, through that writing and through that communication they had. So when Theo receives a promotion, and he's working as an art dealer, which is really interesting, too. But that might be why he suggested that because of his experience working as an art dealer. When Theo receives a promotion, he's doing pretty well financially. So he tells Vincent, Look, focus on your art. I will take care of you financially. That really touched my heart when I heard that. What a beautiful gesture and confidence to say something, like, to give that kind of offer. And then, you know, Vincent has falls in love with his cousin, who's a widow, and that's kind of interesting. But she was not interested in Vincent. And then there's this artist, Anton Move. And this is Vincent's cousin by marriage. And this person he does not fall in love with. But Anton finds out and Anton's well known artist does really well. He paints peasants working in fields. It's kind of his main thing, these beautiful, you know, realistic type of paintings. And Anton Move finds out that Vincent decided to, you know, when he learns that Vincent's, like, I'm going to be an artist, he gives Vincent painting lessons watercolor and oils. So, you know, it wasn't just, I have all the talent I need. I'm going to be an artist. I'm an artist. Here we go. It was I'm going to work on the skills I need. I'm going to work hard every day, creating, creating, creating and getting the inspiration, getting the support, getting some support. You might only have one person supporting you. The parents aren't supporting him. You know, but getting, you know, this cousin by marriage, that support through mentorship there is very helpful. I'd like to find more of that myself. And you can find that here. Myself as your teacher. So I hope I can offer some of that to you. And that's partly why I enjoy doing this teaching because you're able to share knowledge that others may not have yet, and help them grow and learn, and seeing them flourish is so exciting. Anyways. What's really cute is his first paid commission. So it's not that he never sold any art, okay? It's just he wasn't as successful yet. I think if he lived longer, he would have seen the success. That's my belief. But his first paid commission was from his uncle. It was 12 drawn cityscapes of the age. This is a good practice in perspective for him. And then he was, you know, he fell in love with this prostitute. Who already had a child and was pregnant. You know, Vincent's life choices sometimes are questionable, but I think we all make mistakes. This one's a little bit strange, but it was Vincent's model and his lover. So that was in 18 82. They were together for a year and a half. He was determined to take care of her. You know what? It shows the kind of man that he was, you know? Then he realized, you know, she was too far gone. You know, you can't change people. You can't live your life like that, and, so that ended. So Vincent gave Theo paintings to sell in the art dealership. Theo said, Hey, come on, let's try this out. But unfortunately, nothing came of it, because Vincent's paintings were too dark compared to what was popular at the time. You know, if you think about some of the bright, happy kind of feeling paintings by some of the impressionists that kind of had this romantic vibe to them that, you know, idyllic kind of lifestyle and that kind of thing. It just wasn't what he was offering. So he would live with his parents until his father died, and then he lived in the studio. And then he spent a short time at the Antwerp Art Academy, and he would never return to the Netherlands after that. He spent the rest of his time in various areas in France. And he found the drawing lessons at this Antwerp Art academy to be too traditional, so I thought that was interesting. So he went to Paris and had lessons in Fernet Common Studio. So 1886-1888, he has the, you know, switch from these dark, you know, paintings to like the potato eaters of 18 85, to these light, you know, paintings like the Hill of Mont Mart with Corey in 18 86. So from just one year, you know, a lot of a big change. So it was in Paris that Vincent developed in this time period, his own recognizable style with the bright colors. But after two years in the city, it was too much for him. It wasn't inspiring anymore. So Theo, being the manager of art dealership, introduced Vincent to the work of Claude Monet. He also got to know Henry D Talus Latrec and Emil Bernard. So these, you know, successful artists that he was learning from and being inspired by and that impacted his work. That helped him change from works that are popular, like the potato eaters, to, like I said, that the Hill of Mont Mart with rey 18 86, they were lighter tones and just more fitting for what was kind of, I guess, trending at the time. But he developed his own style with these short brush strokes. And that's kind of what we're working in here, right? These brush strokes that are visible in these short kind of dashes. And his subject changed to cafes, boulevards, countryside, flower still lifes. And he tried sellable subjects, such as portraits. So he was trying to make a living as an artist. And I commend him for that. That's what I'm doing. And so I appreciate that. And I feel like there's nothing wrong about that. It's honorable. And, you know, he was like, I'm willing to create subject matter that is of interest to people. But he still had his style. He still kind of stuck to his style. And like I said earlier, he was inspired by Japanese woodcuts. Him and Theo collected them. And so you would start to see, like these contours that influenced Vince's style. So it's really neat to see that it was from something that he was interested in, not just a random occurrence, but something that he was interested in that influenced. So from Paris to Provence. So he moves away from the hectic life of the city into Arles. So the South of France is our next venture. So we'll talk about the South of France where most of his most famous paintings were produced in P four, where we finish off this portrait and discuss the last bit of his life, the last few years. And we'll see you in that next lesson. 13. 1887 Self Portrait Part 4: Alright, in the South of France, which kind of seems an exciting time. He's really looking forward to this He has this vision of, you know, bringing artists to the South of France away from the city. And this is where his style becomes looser and more expressive. I feel like he's becoming more confident, and it's pretty exciting. He has blossoming orchards, bringing in harvest, boats, all of these paintings that come about in this area and time frame 1888-1889. So he tried to create a studio of the South in Arles with bringing a group of artists to a house, and then they could sell this work in Paris. There's a quote by Vincent that was from May 18 88 that says, You know, I've always thought it foolish that painters live alone, et cetera. You always lose when you're alone. M. I thought that was quite interesting. And he really believed in kind of a community of artists. And that would be another great thing to be able to create. And I think as you are true to yourself, and as you share what you've been given, whether that's the ability to teach others or the ability to inspire others with your work or whatever it may be, and freely sharing that and not holding on to it and keeping it hidden, you build a community. Offering others. You're welcoming them to join you in that. And I think that's a beautiful thing. So he was so confident in this idea and this vision that he had that he rented what is known as the Yellow House. And he rented four rooms there. He anticipated more artists that would be joining, but unfortunately, only one did, and that was Paul Gogan. So then becomes a struggle with we enter the struggle with mental health, and I'm not going to assume that up until this point he didn't have any struggles with that, but this is where we see that more obvious. Also, let's just go back to this piece of art at the moment and acknowledge the fun clothing that he's wearing and notice how when you have the close up, close together marks that are lined up, how that really gives a sense of what the article of clothing is versus those kind of loose, more random parts that kind of try to give you the sense of what type of fabric it is. Okay, back to the mental health. So what's interesting is they were quite different artists, Paul Gog, if you know any of his work. He worked mainly for memory and imagination, whereas Vincent preferred to paint directly what he could see, and that caused tension between the two of them. So Gogan threatened to leave, and that created a lot of pressure for Vincent. And this vision that he had, you know, it's about to, you know, explode and and end. So he threatened Gaugin with a razor. This is a really great way to keep people in your tribe. Later that evening, he cut off his left ear, wrapped it in a newspaper and delivered it to a prostitute in the nearby Red light District. Okay. Yeah, you've got issues. So he was admitted to the hospital in Arles. And Gog left Paris. Surprise, surprise. That didn't entice him to stay. So he was out of the hospital in 18 89, and he was painting again. His mental health was up and down. You know, he was afraid. So he admitted himself. So that's really interesting. He recognized that he was struggling and to the point where he was able to admit himself. So I admire him for that. So he admitted himself to St. Paul D Mosel psychiatric Institution in St. Remy. And that was in May. And he was there for a year, and he makes 150 paintings in a year. I don't think I've ever made 150 I don't think up to this point, I've made 150 paintings. So shame on me, because in one year, he did 150 paintings. That's incredible. Despite that illness, he continued to work. So from February 18 88 to May 18 89, he makes a over 180 paintings. It's incredible. So he copied prints by artists like Rembrandt and Millet. And Like, we're doing now. We're taking some of the grades and working on making art like them. He painted in the garden, and for a while, he was only allowed to draw because he was so confused that he ate oil paint. So he was clearly struggling with issues of the head. His brother, Theo, in 18 89, married Johanna, and they had a birth announcement in January of 18 90. They named their son after Vincent. So you can see that Theo and Vincent had a bond. And so Vincent creates a painting for him called Almond Blossom, and it is one of his most famous paintings. It's a beautiful, happy kind of feeling painting. So six of Vango's paintings were shown in Brussels in 18 90. And one painting sold. It was the red vineyard. So that's pretty exciting. And, you know, sometimes things start to take off, right? Maybe it just takes a moment and things start to move forward, right? But we're talking 18 90. And as we know already, he didn't live past 18 90. So it was just as things to me, he was starting to get there, and it just He just didn't have enough time to get there, you know? In March of 189010 works were on display at an annual exhibition of the Salon Des en Ds pardon in Paris, and he had very positive reactions to his work. So this is what leads me to believe that he was on his way to success, but the mental health issues he was dealing with were just too much, and that breaks my heart. Really does, because Probably all of us have somebody in our lives who struggles with mental health or died by suicide. And it's a very difficult issue that if you personally are dealing with, there are resources to consider and not just consider, but if you are really struggling, there are people around you to help. So I encourage you to get the help you need and don't be alone in this because we're not meant to be alone, just as Vincent was saying, like, how artists are meant to be together. I think that's pretty insightful advice. The last months of his life, he was in A Curse, a village near Paris. So it was in May 18 90s that he left the asylum, and that's when he moved to that small town. It was peaceful, quiet, but still close to Paris, so he could be close to his brother Theo. There was a doctor that was keeping an eye on Vincent's health named Paul Gachet. He was an amateur artist, Paul Gachet was. Some may say that Vincent was also, but no, we're talking about Paul Gach. He encouraged Vincent to focus entirely on painting. And at that time, he made almost one painting every day. That's impressive. That's something to try and live up to. But early in July, You know, he visited Theo, and Theo was considering resigning from the art dealer to start his own business, which was a financial risk. And remember, Vincent was being taken care of by Theo financially. So that added worry to this whole mix of everything else that you know, Vincent was dealing with in his head. We can't fully realize what that is. So he was worried. So he returned back to O. And regardless, like Theo and Joe, they really tried to reassure Vincent that, you know what? Things are going to be okay? Like, we're still going to support you. Don't worry about it. Unfortunately, soon after that return, he took his life. He shot himself in the chest with a pistol, Wounded, returned to his room at Rav inn where he was staying. And Theo hurried from Paris and O. He was there when his brother died of his injuries on July 29. And that gives me a little bit of comfort that his brother Theo was with him. Whereas the shortened version, we just get that, you know, he was in a field and shot himself, to know that, you know, well, it's quite sad that in a way that he had to suffer, but, you know, knowing that his brother was able to be there and say goodbye does offer some comfort. And so he was buried in O on 30th of July 18 90, and he left behind a large number of works of art, as you can imagine, more than 850 paintings, almost 1,300 works on paper. Sadly, only six months later at 34-years-old, his brother Theo dies. Nervous breakdown, syphilis. There's questions about that. Vincent's paintings then are in the care of his wife, Joe. And in 1901, Joe remarries, and she remarries a painter, Johan Cohen Gaslhak. And Joe dies at in 1925. The paintings are then passed down to the son Vincent. Who loans the work to a museum in Amsterdam. And this gains popularity. His work is gaining popularity, and they're loaning this work. And it just increases in popularity. And as you can see, now to this day, some of the works have sold for millions and are just, you know, he's a very well known artist. It's just an incredible story to me. And, you know, it's quite heartbreaking. I was quite It kind of brought me low a little bit. But at the same time, look at what lives on. He left this legacy of work and these things that we can learn and apply into our work and not just the works that he made, but the way that he approached being an artist. Like, I'm going to be an artist, and so this is what it takes to be one, and I'm going to work at it. And here's a quote by Vincent on 25 October 18 88. Can't help the fact that my paintings don't sell, yet the day will come when it will be seen that they are worth more than what we put into them for the paint and my altogether very meager livelihood. That was something that he wrote to his brother, Theo. So very interesting, very I don't know. You let me know what you feel from that. I think each person's gonna have a different experience hearing that story based on your own perspective and the things that are happening in your life right now. But my thought is that we can always take the lessons from others' lives and their artwork as part of it. So I hope that this has helped you to see more than just the artwork, but the person behind that. And that this will help you as you step into your project, which is coming up next. Yeah. 14. The Project Demo Part 1: Okay, it's time to select the project. What are you going to choose? You have landscape, still life, or portrait. Which one are you feeling like working on? Go with your gut. Maybe it's something you want to practice more of. Maybe it's something that interests you. Maybe you have a specific subject in mind. Maybe you want to take what you learn from and do something kind of different, like an animal's portrait or something, you know, a dog portrait. Give it a try. It could be really interesting in the style of ang, especially with all the fur. So you don't have to stick within those genres per se. You could even go into cityscapes. He did, you know, the cafes, boulevards, types of thing. Maybe a city city scape. It's exactly what I just said. Maybe an ocean scape, a sea scape, that kind of thing, like, find a genre that is of interest to you. I love the idea of something kind of in the everyday life type of scenario. Is me with a selfie. You can use a digital image, like I am. It's a little hard for me to use a mirror while filming. I guess I probably could have figured out a different setup, but I wanted you to see what I was drawing. So it's kind of maybe I could have figured something out. I'm creative. Come on. But select something, find something of interest, and whether it's a challenge or just something you love to draw and you've drawn before. I could even be something that yeah, you've drawn frequently. It's something that you often create, maybe you're kind of known for, and you want to try it in a different style in this Van goo style. So that is another option as well. Sketch it on, whether you want to create a grid, whether you want to practice the same way we've been practicing, just using the pencil as a guide, you need to decide. And you can erase some of the pencil marks or keep them in, depending on whether you liked the outcome of what happened in the previous one. The previous three exercises. We learned from those. Now it's time to step up and take flight. This is your time to make it your own a little bit, and that doesn't mean you have to be perfect at it or anything like that, but it's time to take a little bit more ownership in terms of selecting the subject matter. And then how are you going to use the tools that we've, you know, worked on to make your piece successful for you, whatever that looks like for you. Going to start out a little strange looking, and I find there's always strange parts in when I'm working on my art. There's certain moments that I'm like, this is horrific looking. It's kind of creepy. But that is just part of the process. You just need to keep that vision alive and understanding that it will get better as I apply my practice. The things that I know, the things that I've learned because right now we've just got that single layer down, and I'm decided to kind of start you know, not finish an area and then move to the next area. You know, I'm adding just a win won base layer of skin. Now adding some color in the eyes. Now I might finish a section, like if it's a small section in the eyes or that kind of thing, but I might leave some of the details til a bit later, especially when you're working with something that messes up your fingers, your hands, and you don't want to smudge that in the wrong area, right? So that's something to consider, like, adding the black right now, Mmm. I wanted to blend is a good idea, and if I don't want it to blend, I might might be smart to wait till closer to the end to add those kind of details. But let's get that hair started. And with this method, sometimes it does feel like, Oh, this is taking, you know, a long time to fill this in. If I could just do one long mark for each hair strand. Maybe it be faster, but I want to follow the techniques that we used and that we've learned from Vincent and see what I can create that's different, new, exciting, and challenging. And sometimes that can be exciting too when it's challenging because you're learning new things, and you're growing as an artist when you learn new things. So first, I started kind of just putting it anywhere in the hair a little bit systematically, but then here I really start following a system because I want the hair to have that kind of rippled effect that I have in my reference image. So I've started that and then I don't want it to look like a zebra, either, so I've starting to add some other lines in there to make sense of it. And because his style has that contouring look, I can have that in there, too. So it all works out when you follow the system that you have in place. Create the system, follow it. And then it can work out. And if it doesn't work out, that's okay, too. It's just a practice. It might not be your favorite of all the pieces that you created. That doesn't mean you're not making progress. Just remember that. Just because you make a piece of art that doesn't feel like you're best, it's not necessarily going to be every single piece of art is better than the next. Hopefully, we have progressed, like, over the years, if you keep working at it and keep learning new things and practicing new techniques that are shown to be successful, and putting those into practice, you will see growth. You will. So you just got to keep at it and take what we've learned from this incredible artist Zenvango, because No one can say that he didn't try. He really tried. And for what? Barely ten years. That doesn't seem like a ton of time really to become a truly professional artist, and yet he had already seen some success right near the end. He just needed a little more time. So going to honor honor him while I create this. And as I was creating it, I couldn't help but think of the song, Star Starry Night. It just went on replay in my mind. So hopefully, you're having positive thoughts about what you can become and where you're at now, it doesn't, you know, necessarily mean too much from where you can become, where you want to go. Whether it's just, hey, I'm happy to make art as a hobby, and I don't really want to make it my career. That's fine. You don't have to make it a career, like Vincent wanted to. So make it you make your own decisions with this. But it's fun to learn, and it helps us to grow as we find out what works, and then put that into practice. And see the growth happen over time. You will find it easier to do this kind of sketching if you stick with it. If you don't try it, it's not going to happen. And if you don't experiment, you might just stay the same with your work. Even if you make lots of paintings. Remember that Vincent did take art lessons. He had mentorship. He had collaboration with other artists in terms of, you know, discussions and that inspiration of just being close to them, seeing their work. I know I'm inspired by that. So this part is a bit fun because I'm adding in this golden tone into my hair. And then I can add in darker tones over top to get that more realistic look of the color that I'm going for, but adding in that highlight gold really will help when I want to add in some darker tones, and don't be afraid to add in color on the skin. It can really create a dynamic skin tone that looks more realistic because we think it's just one color. But when you look at all the shadows or your look up pixelated image of face. Every pixel almost is different color. Like, you have obviously repeats of the same color throughout, but you don't just have massive sections of one single color. So that's something to keep in mind if you've never seen that zoom up on an image that you can get to the pixelated portion of, if you have, like photoshop or something, and it's quite an interesting experience. And this is starting to come to life for me as I start adding the blues and the pinks and yellows and really finding those moments where the color ought to be. 15. The Project Demo Part 2: Welcome to part two of the Project demonstration. Of course, yours is going to look a whole lot different than mine because I'm assuming you're not going to be creating myself portrait, but something that is meaningful for you. So congratulations for making it this far. I hope that you worked on something that is meaningful for you, whatever that may be, and that you're willing to expand your horizons through this. And I think just by taking this class, you've already set in your mind to do so. By studying the life and the work of Vincent, it's been an interesting journey and enlightening for me. I think there were things I knew that maybe I just either didn't listen to when I was, you know, in art history classes through the years, or you know, I just looked at the art and didn't think about the person or the time that they were alive or the place that they were living, you know, to have so many artists that we see as influential, you know, impressionists, for me, have always been some of my favorite artists. I also love the work of Renoir and Monet. Be really exciting to create more lessons to studying the masters. So this is just the start with this Vincent piece, and I hope that there's something that you even if it's one thing that you've learned that will influence your art going forward. I think that's going to be powerful. And sometimes we know of one thing, but we're influenced in ways we don't realize fully. So that's why it's important to, you know, be very intentional when we're selecting media that we're watching, and the things that we're consuming for our brains, right? That should be intentional just as we should have some intentionality when we're putting what, you know, consuming food, that type of thing. We what goes into our brain will affect us. So just by watching this class, there's going to be things that influence you that you don't realize it until maybe later on you'll realize it or maybe you never will. And that's okay. But Our brains are smart, and we don't always have to be fully aware of everything that's happening. That could be very exhausting. So we can take in things without realizing it. So here's where I left a little bit of space for myself to blend the skin around the eyes before inputting this, you know, eyeliner type of scenario. And and all of that. If I had put this in first and fully developed the eye and then worked around it, I might end up having smudging or that kind of thing happening in areas where I don't want it to be because I tend to wear an eyeliner that's very, you know, precise type of eyeliner, not like a smudged look eyeliner. So that's what I see, and I'm going to paint what I see because that's how Vincent painted. And a selfie is kind of an everyday type of thing, especially in our world now. So I wonder what they would say looking on us now with a the technology we have and how we use it and how we create art similarly and differently. And what he would think about us, using him as a study point as a reference for his style and his body of work. It's kind of interesting to think about that. And Another thing I found interesting as we're getting close to the end of this. I'm, you know, pondering my experience and all of this is just even using a material that I don't use very often to create these studies and to create this examination of somebody's life in this study. It's an interesting process, especially not having appointed, you know, I like to work with brushes that have more precision. And so this is forcing me out of that, which is really a learning place to live. And that's where learning happens, that's where growth happens. You know, if you want to grow, you kind of have to get a little uncomfortable and try something you haven't tried before. If you Always stay in your comfort zone, where are you going to learn, where are you going to grow? It's those moments for me when I think back to my like all the experience I've had so far in my life. It's those moments that have been most uncomfortable that have taught me the most. So I tried not to be too upset when I'm in those moments, or I have those opportunities, and I'd love to get to a place where I'm even almost welcoming them. Here's something. I don't know if you do this already with your art, but I want you to think about eyes, and we think of the whites of the eyes being so bright. But in reality, when you look at the piece, the brightest point is the shirt in areas of my shirt in the reference image. White in my eyes, there are highlights, but it's actually not a bright like, I'm not having like light coming shooting out of my eyes, you know? L so that can really change the realism of your piece is to be able to look at it differently. And if you're struggling with that, and all you see is, I see an eye, I see lips, I see this. Instead of shape, instead of color, instead of tone, try turning your piece upside down or on its side, try different directions that force the brain to look at things differently. And that will help to push to turn that off because we don't see faces upside down as often or from a sideways. We do see some sideways, but upside down, definitely not as frequently. So it's a great exercise to try. Even if you're pretty sure you're good to go with it, you've got things down pretty well. Try flipping the upside down and see where things are not quite right. And or just give yourself some space. Put it away, come back to it later the next day, a couple of hours later, take a break from it when it's not in your mind, because when you come back to it, you're going to see what's wrong. As right now, I'm seeing it. I'm seeing the angle that I put the head on isn't quite right, and that has messed up some of the other points, especially when you're using certain points as reference to other aspects of the piece, that can really mess it up. Here's where I get really excited. Adding that teal into, like, the contouring of the teal, It just adds a layer that was missing, and it makes it really exciting. And just see what happens when I kind of create this contouring with it and the deepening of those areas. There's that curl getting in there. I got to have a few strays. It's not perfectly affed. And just a bit chaotic with some of those squiggles, but that's what I'm going with. And so it's really fun to add some color where you think, maybe there's not color here. But it just felt too sometimes a brown can feel too bright, and so by adding another color to it, already takes away some of that vibrancy. If you've never realize that, give it a try, practice mixing more colors. How can you make a bright color a little bit duller or a duller color a little bit brighter? However, when you when you mix a color, it's going to make them a little bit less vibrant. But if you have kind of a dull color and you add something really bright to it, it can help with anyways, like the vibrancy to some extent, but it's not going to get it to brighter than the colors you're using? Definitely not. So we're approaching the end of this piece now. We're almost done. We got to add in a few details here. As you can see, I'm adding in some reds, and I'm going to have some fun with the background. So select what kind of background you want, whether that maybe you've already done the background, actually, but whether you want it to be kind of a more smooth one, I'm following a similar pattern to what was done in the portrait that we followed. But you can certainly play around. I feel like I could have added even more to the background and had more fun with it. And who knows? Maybe I'll try another Vincent Vango inspired piece with a different medium. So now that you've tried it, you know, the three exercises and now this project, now it's time to see how else you can utilize these skills, these insights into your work, and your life. What can you learn from it? How can you make it better or make it your own? We don't want to fully copy, but what are things that you love And how can you incorporate that? I in other ways I think also about how can I be part of an artist's community and, you know, support like, in ways that I'm not already doing in new ways within, you know, in person. You know, I often paint alone. I don't usually have an audience, but maybe I can connect that more in this digital age. You know, people are going live and that kind of thing? Maybe there's opportunity to expand in that way and take that leap, which is a little scary. But here it is The final piece. The finished project. Don't forget to upload it to the student gallery. 16. Congratulations!: Congratulations for making it to the end of this lesson. Give yourself a little pat on the back. You deserve it. Gave yourself a little rewards. You accomplished. This lesson. Well done. Thank you so much for being part of this class. I hope to see your work in the gallery. And if you don't mind, just taking a quick minute to submit a review for this class. It really helps me know how well I did in what areas did I do really well, and what areas can I improve? Your feedback is so valuable to me. Thank you so much. And I hope to see you in the next class. So we'll keep this up with learning from the masters. Let me know in the discussion, create a new discussion and let me know which artist you'd like to see and study. Thanks again. We'll see you next time. Take care. Bye now.