Van Gogh began with black wax crayon,  pocket knife and tough cheap commercial wrapping paper cut in squares.  Equipped like that the young man taught himself to paint.  No, better if we say he let himself be taught.

He'd hire in old men from the pension house around the corner.  Each chosen one would climb the narrow stairs up to the flat the genius shared with a depressive sometime prostitute who was his Guenivere,

then sit there in the open window light with a threadbare black wool overcoat hanging from their shoulders, sometimes leaning forward on a cane.  A few copper sous which he could scarcely spare, that was their honest fee.

And this was Van Gogh's Paris.  No more the merchant's son he'd been in Amsterdam, no more the stiff and stilted peasant scenes he'd drawn on proper artist pads, for here and now the thing had come down to a nub.

And this ensued:  War veteran or horse drawn taxi cabman or carpenter or gardener or thief, each old man would open out the soul with which he'd learned to face the world.

And each immortal spirit, thus unfolded, a manifested work of art itself, would rush in through the staring eyes down through the arm down to the fingertips which gripped the hard wax stick which were let move,

so it might sculpt the likeness on the sheet tacked to a board held in the artist's lap.  A bit of careful scraping with the knife to catch the highlights right.

Sunflowers.