February 03, 2013

Freestyle Van Gogh Blanket

I love Vincent Van Gogh.  I think his art is amazing, and his personal history is intriguing.  You can only imagine how thoroughly excited I was to discover the Doctor Who episode Vincent and the Doctor.  Holy Moly. Yes, I know I'm a huge nerd for that admission.

My brother is also a lover of art.  He is by far my superior in skill, creativity, and sense of humor; he just rarely actually does it.  His ceramics and cartoons blow me out of the water and he barely even tries. So when I didn't get a birthday present done in time I knew I had to bring my A game for christmas.  I am a fast worker, but I started this months in advance and still didn't finish it quite in time for christmas.

Without further ado, here is the painting that acted as my inspiration:


I tried to pick a painting that I could simplify to a few colors and more simplistic shapes. I wanted it to be recognizable. So I ended up with this lovely painting of a wheat field with cypresses. I printed it out and broke it up into color shapes.  Basically a color-by-number kind of deal.





I started with the large cypress and attempted to make it proportional to my desired size (i.e. if I want the blanket to be six feet wide, make the tree about 4 feet high).


From there I built across with the green hills and bushes, and then up and down with the sky and yellow field.




And now for the finished product:




I attempted to get this whole thing into one picture, but it's way too big to fit.  I misjudged the width somewhere between the two bushes and made this things MASSIVE.  

For some more detailed views:

As you can kind of see, I tried to make the texture in the sky more swirled, and in the land more linear, with ups and downs for the hills.  








These might help give you a better idea of it's unreasonable size:



And lastly some pictures of it in use with my two most loved gentlemen:




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