Find your own way

Born in 1979 in Ba Vi district, Hanoi, Le Vinh had a passion for painting since he was a child. After graduating from high school, Le Vinh entered the Central College of Music and Art Education (now the Central University of Art Education). After graduating, he returned to his hometown to teach with the hope of passing on his passion for painting to studious rural children.

But with the desire to improve his skills, and also to create works according to his own preferences, in 2008 he decided to take the exam and study at the Vietnam University of Fine Arts. After leaving school, he began to pursue his passion for painting, but at the same time, continued to teach.

Instead of maintaining and developing himself in the traditional style of painting with watercolor, oil, lacquer... like many other artists, Le Vinh decided to follow the style of painting with ballpoint pen - a new material that no other artist had tried. Le Vinh shared: "When I was still in school, in my free time, I often sketched, I could draw anywhere, whenever I saw something I liked, I would take out a pen and paper to draw. Sometimes I forgot to have a pencil, so I could draw with a ballpoint pen. Therefore, gradually using a ballpoint pen to draw fascinated me and I suddenly realized that the color of ballpoint pen ink has something both familiar, close and extremely attractive and appealing.

After graduating, with the desire to have a certain success in the painting profession, I thought that I needed to choose a new path different from other artists to create my own style and personal appeal. Meanwhile, the ballpoint pen material was a new material that no one had pursued, so I decided to delve into exploring and researching this material."

Because it is a new material, and no training facility has taught ballpoint pen painting, on the journey of creating art with this material, Le Vinh encountered many difficulties. "Because, painting with a ballpoint pen is not like drawing with a pencil, but it requires meticulousness and high concentration because the ballpoint pen cannot be erased. If the drawing is messed up or gets ink on it, it will have to be drawn again from the beginning. The artist also cannot stand at the easel because the ballpoint pen ink will not flow down the nib, but must bend over the flat surface when drawing...

Moreover, ballpoint pen colors are not as diverse as powder colors, mainly red, blue, black, so the color range is limited. Therefore, when I first started drawing, I mainly used blue ink. It was not until a student I taught in middle school (studying abroad in Japan) saw that my paintings were very vivid and bought more than 1,000 ballpoint pens of various colors to give me that I began to learn how to create ways to draw, mix colors, and create blocks for the work to produce works with a full range of vibrant colors" - Le Vinh shared more.

Create new art

The special feature among the myriad of painting materials, Le Vinh shared: "When painting with oil paint, the artist will paint with a stroke, the stroke here is the freedom of the pen, can be big strokes, can be small strokes and when painting, it is very fast. But when using a ballpoint pen to paint, it is different, the ballpoint pen has a very small tip, so to cover the entire 1.5m painting with ink, the artist has to spend a lot of effort... However, that is also a special point when painting with a ballpoint pen because with a small tip ballpoint pen, I can draw every smallest detail, draw many strokes, thereby creating a more vivid and profound painting. Moreover, when finished painting, use a white cotton to rub on the surface of the painting, the ballpoint pen will fade into resin, spreading on the surface of the painting, creating a beautiful dark and light color effect, attracting viewers".

To date, Le Vinh has nearly 300 extremely unique, colorful and emotional paintings. Each of his completed paintings is the result of his hard work and love for his homeland and country, so the main characters in his paintings are mainly young girls and children from the highlands wearing traditional ethnic costumes.

Le Vinh said: "Each ethnic group such as Mong, Dao Do, Dao Khau... each place has its own customs, costume designs, and patterns, but the common point is that those girls are all beautiful, full of life, innocent like the mountains and forests, so I want to express that beauty in my paintings. And through my works, I hope to contribute to promoting and conveying the unique cultural beauty of the Vietnamese people to friends around the world.

However, to draw portraits of ethnic girls, I have to go to the field, to experience in mountainous villages, remote areas, such as: Cao Bang, Son La, Lang Son, Ha Giang, Yen Bai, Lao Cai... I have to go to the village, to their families to learn about the customs, habits and ethnic costumes, as well as the typical motifs of each different ethnic group to understand them before I can draw them. And the more I go, the more "gaps" I see for artistic creation because there are images, moments that only ballpoint pens can clarify to create appeal for viewers."

After more than 10 years, with diligence and tireless pursuit of artistic creation with ballpoint pens, Le Vinh has also achieved certain successes in the painting world. In particular, in 2020, when he participated in the National Fine Arts Exhibition, his paintings left many impressions and were highly appreciated by experts. Thereby, this new art has spread to more people, and has been favored, admired and paid high prices by many art collectors.

Through that, we can see that ballpoint pens have always been used for writing but now they have become a material for painting. This shows the endless creativity of artists. However, in Vietnam today, there are not many professional artists who draw with ballpoint pens like Le Vinh, only a few young people draw following the trend with small-sized paintings used for decoration and gifts, which are not very professional.

Therefore, Le Vinh hopes that ballpoint pen drawings will be increasingly accepted by the public and that ballpoint pen will become a popular material in painting. "As a teacher, within my ability, I will try to spread more passion for ballpoint pen drawings to young people" - artist Le Vinh expressed./.