Giant Van Gogh paint by numbers mural
How do you turn a Vincent Van Gogh landscape into a giant paint by numbers mural? Take a look at one of the most challenging projects we've ever worked on, that brought thousands of people together to paint a masterpiece at the Van Gogh Immersive Experience!
In 1889 Vincent Van Gogh painted “Evening landscape with rising moon” at his asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. It shows a harvested wheat field, surrounded by a stone wall, in front of the Alpilles mountains.
Even by Van Gogh's masterful standards this is a beautiful painting! The colorful impressionist brush strokes trace the contours of the landscape, giving volume to forms that are lit by the rising moon.
From the start we knew that Vincent's painting style, that everyone loves so much, had to be the main feature of the wall mural. There was only one option to achieve this, we had to repaint the landscape!
We spent over 10 days creating a digitally painted version of the landscape, faithfully trying to reproduce its colour, contrast and feel, into a format that we could use to make a paint by numbers mural.
More studio time went into tidying our reproduction and creating outlines of each brush stroke. We assigned numbers to the colors used in the painting and painstakingly numbered each stroke. We then had to match 1000 paint pens to Van Gogh's palette, so with our characteristic commitment to the craft we custom mixed them all!
The next challenge in giving the giant Van Gogh landscape the right feel was to make some framing to display it. We designed the frame to look like one you might see in a gallery, but scaled up and enlarged just like the canvas!
We took our frame design into the workshop to fabricate a modular gold frame and display panel that slotted effortlessly together, making it super easy for the team at the Van Gogh Immersive Experience to install it.
The finished project then went on display at the Van Gogh Immersive Experience in Dublin, alongside their immersive projections of Van Gogh's work, a giant wall of sunflowers and a mirrored infinity room.
Everyone attending the exhibition picked up a numbered paint pen and completed a corresponding brush stroke. We were ecstatic to see how much everyone connected with the artwork, how well they colored it and how successfully the interactive mural worked.
The paint by numbers wall ran for 12 weeks, we supplied 12 canvasses that could be switched at the end of each week for a fresh copy.
Thousands of people contributed to these giant landscapes, getting a sense of how Vincent Van Gogh painted, with a close up view of his mark making and a feel for the way he used color.
Take a look at this finished canvas from the first week of the exhibition, we hope that Vincent would have loved people experiencing his work in this way!
"The colour by numbers wall was a big hit with visitors, I would highly recommend it for similar attractions."
Dan - Van Gogh Immersive Experience
