In our last Kick-About, the humble polka dot gave rise to play, repetition, and festive rhythm. This week, the mood softens. Our prompt looks to Vincent van Gogh and his vision of almond blossom — an image of quiet optimism, fragility, and renewal. As always, the works that follow were made in a short time—and for all previous editions of The Kick-About, go here.
Vanessa Clegg
“I think you can see what I was attempting but couldn’t get it to work the idea was to cover them completely). Trying not to laugh, and anyway who can compete with the Andrews Sisters?! Had fun though.”
vanessaclegg.co.uk / vanillaclegg
James Randall
“I began late and found myself against the clock so I didn’t really finish this one, but maybe this is close enough. Needs help!”
Charly Skilling
“This prompt made me think of fresh, clean beginnings — a sweeping away of the dirt and debris of 2025. New beginnings are such ephemeral concepts, and yet we yearn for them so often in life. An image of crocuses breaking through pristine snow, drawing every eye with the perfection of purple and gold, seemed to me to encapsulate everything we hope for in a new beginning — even though we know that someone’s mucky boots will stomp across the landscape, small animals will dig and snuffle around the new shoots, and children will roll around in the snow, fling snowballs at each other, and pick the crocus to decorate the hat of their snowman. I can’t make the moment last forever. I can’t even paint it particularly well. But I can suggest this one moment in time and place, before the muck and chaos break free again, for you to hold in your mind until you need it. Happy New Year!“
Kerfe Roig
“I haven’t painted in a while, so I decided to simply play with the beautiful colours in Van Gogh’s painting. Then I took three small mandalas and cut them up — as you know I like to do — and rearranged them in a few different ways.“
Lewis Punton
“This past weekend I sat down to watch Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams, a beautifully shot film exploring the themes of impermanence, friendship, and death through the life of a logger living through the turn of the 20th century in the Pacific Northwest. The film is stunningly to look at, so much so that I couldn’t believe that this wasn’t shot on film when I stopped to look into which DP had brought these gentle moments of a man’s life to screen. Shot in it’s entirety at 4:3, with the intention of evoking the feeling of looking through treasured family photographs, Train Dreams inspired me to pick up my own camera and shoot in a similar style for this week’s Kick-About outing. Hoping to evoke a similar feeling of impermanence whilst keeping our collective Almond Blossom prompt in mind, my chosen subject was a small collection of stumps and fallen trunks that I absolutely adore near our house in Kent…”
Graeme Daly
“I enjoyed delving deeper and learning more about Van Gogh and his fascinating life for this Kick About, with Almond Blossom in particular being his most cherished piece. All I want to do is paint at the moment so I painted these landscapes with Van Gogh’s renowned use of blues and yellows in mind.”
@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.ie
Gary Thorne
“Van Gogh produced a shimmering delight with his Almond Blossom so it’s a hard act to follow. This deconstruction hopefully isn’t seen as an act of vandalism. The tree trunk floats on-high like the puppeteer, while branches twist and turn at random below, and peppered throughout drift pink blossom. Another enjoyable KA prompt.”
Phil Gomm
“These hazel catkins were the earliest sign of things to come I could identify at the outset of the new year—lovely long tassels with their acidic yellow-green pollen. To create these images, I scanned the catkins face-down on the scanning bed, but then laid two layers of organza down on top of them as an in-scan backdrop. I left the lid of the scanner up, and scanned the images in the dark. The resulting scans were then inverted digitally, with the catkins themselves then ‘un-inverted’, to return them to their natural state. It was all bit trial and error, but I got to these old-fashioned illustrative results in the end.”
philgomm.com / behance.net/Phil_Gomm
Next time, our prompt turns to the invisible made visible — those flickering halos said to surround living things, hovering somewhere between science, belief, and image…
Red's Kingdom 
Leave a comment