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DPChallenge Forums >> Challenge Results >> Van Gogh's Bedroom - The Making of
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06/14/2017 06:26:50 AM · #1
Very happy this image won the blue with a very high score.
I want to share the HUGE amount of work spent to get this done.

I was lucky (or unlucky) to have plenty of time revalidating, after I got my motorcycle accident few months ago. I wanted to make some dioramas. First one I made was Van Gogh's Bedroom, I wanted it as accurate as possible from the original painting.
I started with making the chairs from small wooden stick and cut all with a special DIY cutter.

From then on I could size the rest of the furniture I had to make.

After the little table and chair was done, I had to make another chair exactly the same as the first one.
Time spent already 20-30 hours
Then I started with the bed and wanted to have the same amount of panels on the bed as the painting.
This cutting process was very time consuming and did spent almost a week for the bed only.

I used a Christmas hat to make the bed cover and wrap it around the German foam cut as a mattress

Now it was time to build the room from A4 sized wooden panels.
I painted the walls with acrylic paint and closely analyzed Van Gogh's painting strokes and colors.
Cut out the hole for the window and build the window, used a colored plastic bag for the window glass.

Assembled the whole using strong glue

Time for the doors and wall decoration.
Made the cloth hanger, shaped the clothes and hat from angel clay, etc..
The floor is printed paper with a wooden floor pattern. (not clear on the painting if it's a wooden or tiled floor)

I started taking pictures to get the right angles, add photoshop filters, but nothing would look great. I opted to paint the furniture as it was like a painting.

Drew the small painting and framed them with small wooden frames.
This setup took me almost 1 month (counting few hundreds of hours work)



Did the final touch the week the challenge was announced
Van Gogh's painting doesn't have shadows but this was looking more like a doll house than a painting, so I changed a little the look of it by adding a light coming from the outside through the window.
Put things on the table, like a water pitcher and other toiletry tools. The glass is a tiny little Pokémon ball from my son :)
Final picture is finally finished.
MAny thanks for the high votes and I felt/feel disappointed for the few low votes I got for this INCREDIBLE time consuming setup.



Thank you all.

Message edited by author 2017-06-15 09:10:32.
06/14/2017 06:33:33 AM · #2
Impressive effort! Glad you shared your methods since I was curious myself :)
06/14/2017 07:24:33 AM · #3
Wow, this is... WOW!

Blue ribbon deserved for sure, maybe a higher score would have been deserved as well. :)
06/14/2017 08:02:01 AM · #4
The whole creation is awesome, Georges. Thanks for showing us the process. As to the low votes - who can explain? You got 9 from me but if I'd realised that the whole set-up was created by you, from scratch I'd have definitely given you 10.

Message edited by author 2017-06-14 08:10:33.
06/14/2017 08:02:46 AM · #5
Mannnn.....this is really cool!!!!!

Thank you for sharing!!!
06/14/2017 09:42:28 AM · #6
Georges this is incredible. I am in awe of the project & your amazing luck at the challenge coming up just as it was completed. Great timing. I think it is your lighting choices that bring it all to life & make it look so believable. In fact, it's possible that your few low votes were from people who jumped to the conclusion that you had 'merely' photographed a museum exhibit. When I was admiring it in voting I never even considered it might be a diorama. Congratulations on the Blue & on this amazing project. Hope you are fully recovered from the motorcycle accident & riding once again.
06/14/2017 04:17:43 PM · #7
hell that puts my puny effort into perspective
06/14/2017 04:22:53 PM · #8
It's fantastic what you did and how you did it George. I am in awe. I know how much hard work and effort you put into it as a few years ago here on DPC there was a challenge where I decided to try and do a van Gogh so I did a set-up of the potato eaters. I set it up in the dairy shed of some friends who owned a dairy farm and purchased a lamp and a chair similar to the ones in the original painting in a 2nd hand shop. I rented some period clothes for the occasion. I It was a mission to get the lighting to look like it came from a single oil lamp and I placed about 200 candles all around the scene to get enough light for taking a decent photo. The candles alone were not enough and unfortunately I had to add an electric light in the background to give me enough illumination to be able to take the shot. That messed up the light in the final result quite a bit and I had to use editing to try and correct it but I didn't really succeed quite succesfully in that. I had my camera on a tripod and shot with a timer as i myself had to appear in the photo too. Me on the left, my now ex girlfriend next, then the older gentleman and his wife (they own the farm) and then the adopted daughter of the farm owners daughter.


I also took the same image and applied some filters to try and give it a slightly Van Gogh type painting affect.


Message edited by author 2017-06-14 16:34:26.
06/14/2017 04:40:30 PM · #9
Super job George -- you might send Langdon a ticket or PM and have him move/copy your post into the "How'd They Do That?" section of the Learn menu ...
06/14/2017 04:56:01 PM · #10
Absolutely terrific, a true labor of love :-)
06/14/2017 06:27:49 PM · #11
It surely was a labor of love and perfectly timed with your convalescence. Did you use balsa wood?

As to the subject, Van Gogh's bedroom (or sun flowers or irises) was so much copied in so many ways and materials that it lost interest. At least for me. I was one of your lower marks since, as much as I appreciate your dedication and ability, the image did nothing for me.
Why would I like to see an imitation of Van Gogh's bedroom? It was done on T-shits, on match boxes and even in real life/actual size in parks and gardens.
Truly, the amount of work spent for a work of art is of no importance for the viewer (in your case, it was important for us to know after the challenge the way you did it, but we are colleagues here).

Personally I was disheartened by this challenge. There are a few artists whose body of work is so personal that "in the style of" would create only poor pastiches. Van Gogh is one of them, so is Mondrian or Antonio Gaudi or Morandi. None of them created a school, they remained totally uniques and inimitables.

I couldn't come up with anything honoring this amazing artist.
06/14/2017 08:09:27 PM · #12
WOW, GEORGES!!!

WOW!

I have been rendered speechless...

But, I'm gonna say more anyway, ha!

This is amazing! The detail is so precise that I never dreamed it was smaller than real life!

Wow!

06/14/2017 08:13:48 PM · #13
Absolutely incredible Georges. You may be in contention for the most work every put in on one DPC entry :-)
06/14/2017 10:27:33 PM · #14
Originally posted by kirbic:

Absolutely incredible Georges. You may be in contention for the most work every put in on one DPC entry :-)

Be interesting to see if Gyaban has ever spent as many hours on one...
06/14/2017 10:46:14 PM · #15
Originally posted by kiwinick:

hell that puts my puny effort into perspective


+10 (and I did not look at your entry, kiwinick, I'm talking about mine.
06/15/2017 02:12:14 AM · #16
You're nuts.

But also remarkably good at reproductions.

Congrats on the blue.
06/15/2017 05:03:27 AM · #17
Originally posted by Bear_Music:

Originally posted by kirbic:

Absolutely incredible Georges. You may be in contention for the most work every put in on one DPC entry :-)

Be interesting to see if Gyaban has ever spent as many hours on one...

Not comparable; Gyaban only had one week to get his image done. So relatively, yes I think he spent as many hours as George this for this challenge. But lots of respect for the dedication of both members!
06/15/2017 10:25:02 PM · #18
Originally posted by GeorgesBogaert:

I felt/feel disappointed for the few low votes I got for this INCREDIBLE time consuming setup.


I was your 2. Keep in mind that the challenge thread included the creation of that exact same room, set up by a museum. I thought the photographer just went to the museum and snapped a photo. That's the risk you take when you exclude originality.
06/15/2017 10:37:24 PM · #19
I'd have been impressed if Georges had "only" found a reproduction of the room and then gone and shot it.

That would be hard to do and get it with the perfect light that his image has.

06/16/2017 06:39:11 AM · #20
Your creativity, dedication and skill is amazing. Truly a work of art.
06/17/2017 10:30:37 PM · #21
I don't think I would ever have patience to recreate something so beautiful as what you have done. This type of work takes a steady hand and great imagination. I'm very impressed.
06/18/2017 01:14:02 PM · #22
Massive effort, truly well deserved Blue!!
06/19/2017 07:17:45 AM · #23
Originally posted by posthumous:

Originally posted by GeorgesBogaert:

I felt/feel disappointed for the few low votes I got for this INCREDIBLE time consuming setup.


I was your 2. Keep in mind that the challenge thread included the creation of that exact same room, set up by a museum. I thought the photographer just went to the museum and snapped a photo. That's the risk you take when you exclude originality.


Yes, it needed Barbie in the bed at the very least :)
06/19/2017 12:39:59 PM · #24
Great example of photo-realistic artwork. Fooled me.

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