This work is for sale at € 150,-. The proceeds will benefit the Vincent van Gogh House Foundation. For more info and contact: info@michielvanderzanden.nl or vincent@vangoghhuis.com.

Van Gogh's birthplace

Riding my bike on a spring morning, I noticed this beautiful Neoclassical front of the Town Hall of Zundert. I immediately thought of an old postcard. Zundert is a small town near Breda and known for being Vincent van Gogh's place of birth.

The Town Hall was built between 1830 and 1840 and designed by the architect Pieter Huyser from Breda. It's located directly opposite Vincent van Gogh's birthplace. From his bedroom window, the young Vincent looked directly at the facade.

Building Blocks

When I was asked by the Van Gogh House (www.vangoghhuis.com) to make a multiple artwork, I decided to make an interpretation of this Town Hall by using toy (building) blocks. Blocks which Van Gogh may have played with in his youth: the type of classic toy which by definition has nostalgia in it: Research showed different variations and origins. One pioneer was educationalist Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) and his construction sets ('baukasten') by which children could train their spatial aptitude. Later in the 19th century, with these first constructiuon sets as an example, Richter's Anker Steinbaukasten were produced.

3D

This print 'Town Hall' shows the building stone facade as a construction plan. The image is a 3D Computer Generated Image therefor I used Blender, by which highly realistic lighting and material expression can be achieved.
Later on, the model will also be made out of hard plastic.

Art Amsterdam was one great experience! Thanks to all my friends who helped out, everybody at HEDEN and those who dropped by!

View/read MORE

Inspired by Faller's HO 'Kartoffel Mühle' model, I modeled this thing digitally in Blender 3D. Soon available - numbered and signed by the artist - price on request :)

In line with the vision of Magritte's surrealism, this cool Blender 3D tutorial about DupliVerts (duplication of objects) by wiki.blender.org. You can find it here.

My new video, based on traditional landscape paintings. It also shows my painted-over farmhouse model.

Some while ago, I was caught by a romantic landscape painting, which represented a watermill in a picturesque scenery...Because I had just started to work with the digital 3D creation program Blender 3D, I thought it would be a nice idea to re-create a traditional landscape painting: In a digital form, but with using painted parts.
I decided to realize a part of this idea by making a model, typical for the landscape were I'm from: Noord-Brabant. So for a starting point, I took an old “kortgevelboerderij” (farmhouse with a short front: characteristic for this part of The Netherlands). In Blender 3D, I made a simple digital model of it, inspired by traditional landscape paintings. On this model, I put textures, all cut out from pictures of different paintings. This process of 3D-modelling resulted in several ‘rendered’ images.
These images of the digital model were used as sketches, and translated into a real-life model in wood (Thx MU project-team!). The dimensions of it, are about 110 x 120 x 100 (h x l x w) in cm's.
The next step was to paint the model, first with universal primer, and then with acrylic paint plus a 'thickening' medium. Because I also wanted to scale up the brushstrokes, I spent at least 15 liters of this thick paint, applied with big brushes.
(See picture, and June 18th post: Hier & Daar exhibition, MU, Eindhoven and Kop Foundation, Breda).


The photos I made, of my finished, painted farmhouse, I put back on the original digital farmhouse model, in Blender 3D. The rest of the Romantic scenery was also built in Blender, by using different images of paintings I found online. By doing so, I completed my ‘painting’.
Blender 3D is also ideal for making animations and interactive applications. So I showed the different elements in the painting, as single objects. These objects are displayed in a rotating manner, as in a showroom, or on a (market-) stand: The objects slowly rotate 360 degrees, and turn the other way around, into their old position. The video is looped with the intention of being an film equivalent of a painting, which is always a still representation: There’s only one camera position, no start or end.
Also, there’s no sound in the video, the choice to do that, is a conscious one, I didn’t want to add too much ‘effect’ to it. The total silence is strong and present in its own way.

Michiel van der Zanden, 2009

New stuff i'm working on. Finishing my Evoluon painting (see post March):

I grew up near the city of Eindhoven, in the south of The Netherlands. It’s one of the bigger Dutch cities, and much of the it’s growth is due to electronics company Philips and Daf trucks.
Philips used to have their own science museum called Evoluon. Back in the 80’s, this was the ultimate school trip. The building was like an UFO /flying saucer which had landed in the city.
The Evoluon as a museum closed down in ’89. But I like this idea of outdated futuristic technology (I love retro stuff). And the Evoluon brings back memories. Also the Evoluon being a museum gives it something extra. So, right now I’m modeling some new stuff based on the Evoluon, in Blender 3D.

I found this pics and video’s online, also check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evoluon and http://www.dse.nl/~evoluon

The study (image 2) is based on the Military Museum in Caïro. I modeled it in Blender 3D software, using pictures I took visiting the museum in 2007.

Renders of my first homemade models made in Blender (work still in progress). The museum setting is based on the Military Museum in Caïro, Egypt.
In the near future, the renders will be used as sketches for my paintings.