Joseph Roulin

a study from Van Gogh's Complete paintings
this is a study of one of van Gogh's sketches done in pen and ink of postman Joseph Roulin, 1888.

the style of van Gogh's sketches is something i find quite exciting, and in honour of inktober, i decided to give this recreation a shot.

this took me about 2.5-3 hours, and a lot more brain power than I'd imagined. from the reference, the pen strokes looked so free, but i was struggling to keep my pen strokes free too. i kept wanting to make cleaner lines, and define the outlines and make it look "perfect".

But! all that considered, this was really fun to do. as tricky as the pen strokes were to recreate, eventually i did in fact get the hang of it. leaving the idea of "perfect" behind, this was quite and interesting sketchbook page to fill :3