BlenderNation

Advertisement

You're blocking ads, which pay for BlenderNation. Read about other ways to support us.

Weekend Contest: Famous Paintings

79
By on Contests

Old Masters Unveiled

Image: Old Masters Unveiled, by Rob Tuytel.

Eric Varela won last weekend's contest with his image 'Balloon Ride at Sunrise', so it's (once again) his honor to pick this weekend's topic. And it's going to be a tough one - read on!

Eric Varela writes:

Coming from a fine art background, a common exercise is to reproduce a work of art from one of the great artists who came before you to hone your skills and technique. This weekend we are going to extend this classic tradition into the realm of 3D. Your challenge this week is to take a famous painting and reimagine it as a 3D masterpiece. There are a lot of ways to interpret this challenge, everything from a highly polished photorealistic copy of the scene in a painting, to a super stylized low poly version, to doing some really interesting things with textures, or use of the added dimension of depth, so I encourage you to really take this opportunity to let your creativity shine.

I realize not everyone out there has an art history background so if you need a little help getting started I'll throw some names out there that I think may be well suited to this task. I've included links if I could find a good collection of their images online, but a quick google search will turn up just as many if not more paintings by all of them.

These three have very strong geometric forms that I think would translate beautifully into 3D space, the last one in particular is a lot of fun:

These two are much more abstract and could lend to a very fun piece using very simple shapes:

Here is some non western art that could have some very gorgeous stylistic interpertations:

Also take a look at the still life paintings of the following three heavy hitters here, they have done some gorgeous things with very simple compositions:

  • Edgar Degas
  • Paul Cézanne
  • Vincent van Gogh

And finally be sure to include a link to the painting you're referencing with your post! Good luck and happy blending to everyone!

Post your work below (attach an image and a screenshot if you like), and vote for your winner. The winner will get a post on monday, and will get to pick next weekend’s contest theme. Have fun!

About the Author

Avatar image for Bart Veldhuizen
Bart Veldhuizen

I have a LONG history with Blender - I wrote some of the earliest Blender tutorials, worked for Not a Number and helped run the crowdfunding campaign that open sourced Blender (the first one on the internet!). I founded BlenderNation in 2006 and have been editing it every single day since then ;-) I also run the Blender Artists forum and I'm Head of Community at Sketchfab.

79 Comments

      • maes thierry on

        thanks I only see the errors now but the goal was no more than 2 hours...
        I like your render (even if I've never really understood abstract paintings ;-) -edit- btw I don't think I understand Magritte either :D )

        Reply
        • Eric Varela on

          Lol I don't think anyone understands Magritte :p
          The funny thing about abstract paintings is that they came about, in part, to make art much more accessible to everyone. So much of art history is just dripping with symbolism and political and social history of the time that being able to interpret requires a degree in history as well as art to fully appreciate it. But when you paint something simple like a red square, it is the same red square to everybody, and everybody's opinion on it is equally valid, because it is after all just a red square.

          Reply
    • Ryan on

      This is awesome, honestly one of my favorite works. Magritte was a genius and you're interpretation is just, wow. Well done!

      Reply
  7. Kyriakos Tsilavis on

    This ia a rendering that i made some months ago. It is from my favorite Artist Maurits Cornelis Escher and it's called Relativity.

    Thanks

    Reply
  9. aliasguru on

    Here's my go: The all known and very famous "The Scream of Suzanne". Not sure if the artist was Edvard Munch or Ton Rosendaal, the Wikipages are unavailable at time of writing.

    Reply
        • Eric Varela on

          Oh yeah? Do you remember the name of the doc? I really love everything about Andy Warhol, from his art to him as a person to the philosophy behind his work. Also David Hockney's work has always resonated with me. A lot of his work I think pulls at the same thread that Hoppers work does, but in a very different way. There's always such a sense of being an outsider to the scene that hes painting, like you are there but don't really belong.

          Reply
  11. Ben Burckel on

    "Low poly night"

    Original: Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh

    This work was challenging for me because I limited myself to only using cubes, All was done in blender internal with lots in the compositor. I am happy to answer questions!

    Reply
    • Eric Varela on

      Very nicely done. You know I never noticed it until now, but I have no idea what that is on the plate with the apples, curious as to what your interpretation of it was.

      Reply
        • Philipp Holl on

          I interpreted it as a peeled potato since nothing else came to my mind. However, the thing in the render is modelled to look like the one in the original painting rather than like a real potato.

          Reply
  15. Abner S. N. on

    Hi, everyone, here's my render based on a painting of the brazilian artist Tarsila do Amaral, called Abaporu, hope you enjoy! :-D

    Reply
  16. fernanbop75 on

    Wow, what a stimulating topic this week! It was difficult to choose just one picture. Here's my choice.I didn't find the same map as on Vermeer's wall, so I used another one similar. I hope you like it.

    Reply
  20. Spyros Toufexis on

    Hi guys ive got a lot of work this weekend and i dont really make something special.. i render my scene with 50 samples and then i export the png to gimp. In gimp i use liquify filter and then colour balance where i tweak the mid-high tones and shadows.Hope you like it

    Reply
  21. Michael Kubinyi on

    My tribute...to a hungarian artist who worked a lot with color gradients and was somehow previsualising CG...

    About one hour to render with cycles, simple cube with cast, the new wireframe and subsurf modifier.

    Reply
  23. Joshua Luther on

    Here's my version of Kazimir Malevich's painting The Red Cavalry Riding. (Sorry if it posts twice, can't seem to get just one)

    Reply
  29. Vincent Holzborn on

    Even if I`m much too late and sadly someone already had the same idea, I would like to post my result. I didn`t have any time at the weekend so took this morning and after 2-3 hours I had this result.

    Rendered in cycles, post in PS. Actually I didn`t want the paint effect, but it came out like this just with the reduce noise and sharpen filter:-)

    Reply
  30. Guest on

    Here my try, its a model of a robot based on Eric Joyner paint.

    Original ref picture:
    ericjoyner.com/wp-content/gallery/2008-gallery_1/detained.jpg

    Reply
  31. Pablo Petzen on

    Here my try, its a robot model based on a Eric Joyner paint.

    Ref:
    ericjoyner.com /wp-content/gallery/2008-gallery_1/detained.jpg

    Reply
  32. Pablo Petzen on

    another render from the scene.
    now on hd and with more contrast colors and activated legs.

    "Here my try, its a robot model based on a Eric Joyner paint.

    Ref:
    ericjoyner.com /wp-content/gallery/2008-gallery_1/detained.jpg"

    Reply
  34. Bart Veldhuizen on

    By the way, I think some of the entries here would be really interesting to watch in full 3D on a site like Sketchfab or P3d.in - being able to look around could give a whole new meaning to these paintings. Who wants to give it a try?

    Reply

Leave A Reply

To add a profile picture to your message, register your email address with Gravatar.com. To protect your email address, create an account on BlenderNation and log in when posting a message.

Advertisement

×