The Scream

My favorite drawing medium is Oil Pastel. For me, it's the most direct way to paint landscapes, but in my country, it has a bad name. Almost everyone seems to think it is an amateurish way of painting, they say the colors fade with time, and the most professional way of painting according to everyone seems to be Oil Painting. It is such a strong belief held by so many that I believed them for many years and threw away almost all of the drawings I did. But one day I found that one of the most iconic images in the world of art "The Scream" done by the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch was done with pastel in 1893. This painting sold for nearly 120 million dollars in 2012.

The agonized face in the painting is said to depict "The Anxiety of the Human Condition", something that seems to have been always present in Munch's life. With a childhood of illness and bereavement, Munch always dreaded getting a mental condition that many of his relatives had. No wonder he drew such haunting paintings. He later described his inspiration for the painting as follows:

"I was walking along the road with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature".

I liked this painting so much that I decided to draw it without copying it. Halfway into the painting, it went terribly wrong but I managed to salvage it to an extent. The result is given below together with the original painting.

RJX