Blue Boy Diggers

Blue Boy Diggers

After reading chapter one and reading the PowerPoint lecture, I am sure that the painting on slide twenty-nine was done by Vincent van Gogh. The way the paint is applied with a heavy hand and this is evident in the thickness and texture of the paint. The use of specific colors, which are not a realistic color palate, helps with the mood and the emotion of the work. There are some sharp and detailed lines that he uses with reference to the subjects in the field, but the rest of the painting doesn't have hard lines and that makes us wonder what they are doing. I think the subjects are digging in a Dutch field and they are either digging up food to survive or digging up something for profit.

The painting gives me some insight to who van Gogh was when he was painting. I see he was trying to express what he saw and not just something mundane. I mean he does use gloomy and dark earth colors in his painting, but these colors were the colors that were best suited for miners, weavers, peasants, and farmers. Colors such as olive green, hues of blue, raw sienna and umber were in his color palate. These people were his main subjects and he wanted to make sure that we understood that their work was tedious, but necessary for their survival at that period in time.

Anyone looking at this painting can see that it was not painted slowly and that is evident in the brush strokes. From what I have read about Vincent van Gogh, he painted extremely fast with a sense of urgency. You can tell that with this painting that he painted straight from the tube in what was talked about in the chapter as impasto or thick, graphic brush strokes. He painted dark outlines around the objects in this painting and then filling them in with dark colors and yellows, browns (sienna and umber), and olive green. It is shown on the pants of the farmers. The color palette on this painting is very restricted, but the one thing that makes it his work is the plain background of the mountains in the most intense, rich blue that is used.

There is balance and movement in this artwork, which comes from the where the subjects and mountains are in the painting. The movement comes from the waves of color in the sky, the field, and even the workers. I have to say that I have never looked so deeply into the composition of a piece of art and I am not sure if I am right. I really like this painting, but it seems