DHAR DHAR

In drawing and painting, the best way to learn is by studying the masters. All the great painters like Eugene Delacroix, Vincent van Gogh, Cezanne etc. found it useful to study the great masters in their formative years.

Claude Monet was one of the greatest French artists of the 19th century and one of the original founders of impressionism. He was also the most dedicated and one-minded of them all. His style of impressionist painting dealt with slabs of color. He never tried to show the exact form of the objects but instead used individual strokes or slabs of solid color to represent the form.

Recently I did a study of “The Cart: Road under Snow” by Claude Monet. This painting of Monet finished in 1865 is displayed in the Louvre, Paris. In this painting the characteristic style of Monet is clearly visible in the snow on the road and the trees. Shown below is the original painting by Monet. And here is my render of the same. The study is done using pencil on paper.
While doing the sketch I noticed a couple of things which are essential in photography.

First is the “Rule of Thirds”
It says that divide the picture horizontally and vertically in one-third parts as shown and place the important objects of the frame on the lines. Using the rule produces nicely balanced pictures which are visually pleasant.
In the painting by Monet the Rule of thirds is shown using the red lines. As one can see the great painter positioned the base of the house and the top of the right hill exactly on the one third line. Also the snow-line is also on the bottom one-third line. This creates an easy on the eye image.

The second thing is “Spokewheeling”
It basically refers to the lines which converge at a fixed point where you want the attention of the viewers. In the painting by Monet the spokes are shown in green. Here, the primary object of interest is the Cart. As can be seen most of the lines in the painting converge on that object.

More about Rule of Thirds
More about Spokeswheeling

CRY stands for “Child Rights and You”. It is a non-profit organization devoted towards improving the living conditions of millions of children across India. This banner has no commercial purpose at all.