Almond are the first flower of spring - Van Gogh's almond blossoms

Almond blossoms are the first flower of spring here - or, more often winter.  They can open any time after Christmas and make me so happy!  

Some of my favourite paintings are of almond blossoms by Van Gogh.  From his letters, we know he painted them in a hurry and often painted several in a day.  He was just that excited about these flowers.  A sign of renewal and vivification after the darkness of winter.  

Part of my own revitalization is painting.  It's helping me recover from injury and other issues that stopped me doing the one thing I did best - yarn.  And one of the ways to get better at painting is to make a Master Copy.  A master copy of my favourite painting would be lovely to hang on the wall.  

Spoilers: it's not going on the wall, but there's at least two chickens.  




click here to watch the video of me painting almond blossoms After Van Gogh

Vincent painted  a lot of almond blossoms in a few short weeks.  Big trees, orchards, close up branches, even cutting a branch (and I suspect, hiding it from the farmer so he wouldn't get yelled at) and placing it in a glass.  The two paintings he painted that afternoon are by far my favourite.  

For this master copy, I choose the simple branch in a glass version.  Well, it looked simple.  

Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890), Arles, March 1888

oil on canvas, 24.5 cm x 19.5 cm

Credits (obliged to state): Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam (Vincent van Gogh Foundation)

A red line divides the picture plane. Van Gogh used the same red to sign this small painting of a sprig of flowering almond. Almond trees are the first to blossom in the spring.

When Van Gogh arrived in Arles (FR), there was still snow on the ground. On 2 March, a little more than a week later, he wrote to his brother, 'There’s a hard frost here, and out in the country there’s still snow — I have a study of a whitened landscape with the town in the background. And then 2 little studies of a branch of an almond tree that’s already in flower despite everything.'

After that, Van Gogh began work on a large series of paintings of flowering orchards: almond, peach, plum and pear trees.

But it's not a style I normally paint in, as I'm leaning heavily towards realism and paintings that are done in layers.    So it's a good exercise for me to paint this way as it's basically the opposite of my normal.  

The almond has a special meaning for me.  I have one lonely almond tree who finally made the first nut last summer.  I'm often out there on cold days with a paint brush to pollinate it as the insects aren't always keen to come out in winter.  

From the little I've learned of Vincent, and reading translations of some of his letters, arriving at Arles and seeing the unexpected snow covering the almond orchards (groves?) in full bloom was a spiritual expierence.  I fell that moment is a huge turning point in his work.  It's from there that what he paints is recognizably Vincent Van Gogh.  Before that, it feels like he was stumbling around with the paint brush, following other people's styles and ideas.  But here, Vincent becomes truly Vincent.

Even if he looses himself later, he has a moment of clarity that most of us miss out on during our journey through this world.  That's the part of his story that I love most.

The painting in the video isn't my first attempt at a master copy of this painting.  It's my third.

My first try was a simple value study in pencil.  



It turned out pretty good for a quick study.  So last winter, I decided to try a copy in oils.  



My colours are fewer but basically the same as in the video.

And I work hard to match the colours in Vincent's copy.



Okay, so perspective is wonky, but it's Van Gogh, that won't matter (spoiler: it matters).



By this time I feel a bit weird about it.  Like I'm not painting a painting of almonds.  I'm painting a painting of brush marks of some dead guy.  There's no life to the painting and although it looks close to Vincent's almonds in a glass, it is a world away.



The brush marks turned out okay.  But they are just marks.  Not almond flowers and the hope that spring brings.



So I made a plan.  I would wait until spring and pick a branch off my own almond tree.  I would paint that, trying to follow the style of Van Gogh that I learned with these first two attempts.  And that is what we see in the video.

All that waffle, and what I really want to know is what is your favourite van gogh painting?  

I don't know much about Van Gogh, but this is one of my favourite photos of my old 'Valentine's Tree'.



There are a load more of that old almond tree in this thread, though I did get a bit weepy reading it through - Under the Valentine's Tree

I think you obtained your objective with the live model.  The essence of what you saw without adhering to an exact copy of reality.  The way the blossoms developed at the end was very satisfying , I think because it was what you saw instead of someone else's brush strokes.

I know nothing about art. I can't draw for pictionary, never mind display! I look at all the variations and see talent. I think it's a matter of personal preference of style, colours, medium, compositio, subject etc. We all like what we like, regardless of value. Who knows, maybe in 150 years an R Ranson lifestudy of a rooster will be just as valuable as a Van G's study of almond blossom!