Loving Vincent

January 20, 2017 10:24 PM

Six years, 62,450 oil paintings by 115 artists, 94 paintings (Colossal), 600 letters (Slate), 3,000 litres of oil paint (great overview), and one movie about the life of Vincent Van Gogh (trailer). Loving Vincent was first filmed (behind the scenes feature), then artists painted every scene in his style, to create a loving homage (BBC) to the artist's life and work. IMDB -- Loving Vincent's website.
posted by Eyebrows McGee (7 comments total)

And for your listening enjoyment while reading the post, maybe try Don McLean's Starry, Starry Night (or check out the live version).
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:29 PM on January 20, 2017 [3 favorites]

That is absolutely amazing
posted by not_the_water at 10:43 PM on January 20, 2017

Not really related to the film, but still related in more than one way: Kristen Stewart's directorial debut Come Swim, which features impressionist sequences produced by Neural Style Transfer. Music by St. Vincent.
posted by effbot at 11:32 PM on January 20, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm not understanding how there were 62k paintings done and about 2 dozen of them for sale. I figured with that volume, I might save up a bit and buy one, but on the website there only appear to be a few and the ones that are available are either ~$3k or $8k. :/
posted by efalk at 2:00 AM on January 21, 2017

I'm not understanding how there were 62k paintings done and about 2 dozen of them for sale.

They didn't paint an entirely new painting for each frame.

The Paintings

We painted the first frame as a full painting on canvas board, and then painted over that painting for each frame until the last frame of the shot. We are then left with an oil-painting on canvas board of the last frame.

So each frame is counted as a separate painting even if they just raised someone's left eyebrow over a number of consecutive paintings/frames. In the end, all that is left (besides the film, of course) is the last version of each painting made for each scene. (Probably not the best paintings, unless they wrote their scenes to finish with a big ta-da.)
posted by pracowity at 2:42 AM on January 21, 2017

> I'm not understanding how there were 62k paintings done and about 2 dozen of them for sale.

As Pracowity said "They didn't paint an entirely new painting for each frame. ..."

and the website notes that

"200 PAINTINGS WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE FOR SALE......over the coming 2 years. 42 have been made available for sale now. The next selection of paintings will be posted for sale in October."

So there's an intent to monetize too, no price-cuts likely
posted by anadem at 3:48 PM on January 21, 2017

Well if there's an upside to that information, at least I have time to save some cash :)
posted by efalk at 1:35 AM on January 22, 2017