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In this video I try to paint one of Vincent Van Gogh's self portraits from his stay at the Saint-Paul asylum at Saint-Rémy. Materials used in this video: Oil colors(Titanium White, Lead White, Yellow Ochre, Raw Sienna, Burnt Sienna, English Red, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Lemon, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, Prussian Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Pthalo Green, Emerald Green) Bristle brushes and Nylon brushes, Linen canvas board, Turpentine, Walnut oil From a letter dated 6 September 1889: ...Thus I’ve redone the canvas of the Bedroom. That study is certainly one of the best – sooner or later it will definitely have to be lined. It was painted so quickly and dried in such a way that, as the thinner evaporated immediately, the painting doesn’t adhere at all firmly to the canvas. This will also be the case with other studies of mine that were painted very quickly and with a thick impasto. Besides, this thin canvas perishes after a while and can’t take a lot of impasto. You’ve taken some excellent stretching frames, damn it, if I had some like that here to work on that would be better than these strips of wood from here that warp in the sun. People say – and I’m quite willing to believe it – that it’s difficult to know oneself – but it’s not easy to paint oneself either. Thus I’m working on two portraits of myself at the moment – for want of another model – because it’s more than time that I did a bit of figure work. One I began the first day I got up, I was thin, pale as a devil. It’s dark violet blue and the head whiteish with yellow hair, thus a colour effect. But since then I’ve started another one, three-quarter length on a light background. Then I’m retouching some studies from this summer – anyway I’m working from morning till night. Are you well – darn it, I really wish for you that you were 2 years further on, and that these early days of marriage, however beautiful they may be at times, were behind you. I believe so firmly that a marriage becomes good above all in the long run, and that then one recovers one’s temperament. So take things with a certain northern phlegm and take care of yourselves, both of you. This bloody life in the fine arts is exhausting, so it seems. Strength is coming back to me day by day, and once again it seems to me that I already have almost too much of it. For to remain hard-working at the easel it isn’t necessary to be a Hercules. What you told me about Maus having been to see my canvases has made me think a lot about Belgian painters lately and during my illness. Then memories come to me like an avalanche, and I try to rebuild for myself that whole school of modern Flemish artists to the point of being as homesick as a Swiss. Which isn’t good, for our path is – onward – and retracing one’s steps is forbidden and impossible. That’s to say that one could think about it without getting lost in the past through an over-melancholy nostalgia.
