About the Artist
Painter and draughtsman — Leuven, Belgium. Working from life since 2007.
Hans van den Eijnde
Painter & draughtsman
Biography
From a young age I have been drawn to the visual arts — drawing and painting above all. During my studies and later in my professional career I took courses in both, which gave me a solid grounding in elementary technique. Yet my artistic direction and personal voice have been shaped largely on my own, through years of dedicated practice.
Since 2007 I have devoted myself intensively to developing this passion. In that period I completed the higher degree and specialisation degree in drawing, as well as painting, at the art academy in Leuven.
Drawing and painting from the live model is among the most absorbing and inspiring forms of art — and the activity I return to most often. It is not my only pursuit, however; I also love painting still lifes, landscapes, interiors, and more.
Artistic Statement
The art form closest to my heart is the Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Above all, conveying expression and the inner state of the person being drawn or painted is part of the challenge of creating a living image — without losing the truthfulness of the figure. A great artist put it well:
“A sketch like the one enclosed is simple enough in its lines, yet when one sits before the model, to grasp those simple characteristic lines is difficult enough. Those lines are so simple that one could trace them with a pen, but I say again, the question is to find those broad lines, so that with a few strokes or scratches one says the essential. To choose the lines in such a way that it goes without saying, as it were, that they must run that way — that is something which, however, does not come naturally.”
The Work
On this website I have gathered a selection of my drawings and paintings. The drawings span many techniques: crayon, ink, pastel, pencil, reed pen, quill, and ecoline. The paintings are executed in oil, almost all on canvas — with a few on paper or board. Every figure drawing and painting shown here was made from life.
The body of work to date comprises roughly 800 drawings and 200 painted works.
~800 drawings · ~200 paintings