Loving Vincent

We had some very exciting news today from Royal Talens who make the Van Gogh watercolours in our sketching tins. Their oil paints have been used for a groundbreaking animation project celebrating the life of Vincent Van Gogh:

Loving Vincent, the worlds first fully painted animation film, was hand painted with Van Gogh Oil Colour. This astonishing masterpiece about the life and death of Vincent van Gogh is made using 12 oil paintings a second. Royal Talens will demonstrate how this unique film was made on its booth on Creativeworld in Frankfurt, where artist January Misiak will paint a scene in an original Painting Animation Work Station (PAWS), for the first time since this film has been completed. With Van Gogh Oil Colour of course! Vincent van Gogh’s broad, oil brushstrokes convey a sense of movement - especially in paintings like A Starry Night - so much so that a team of artists and filmmakers have brought them to life in a feature film. The film brings the paintings of Vincent van Gogh tot life to tell this remarkable story. Every one of the 65.000 frames of the 90 minutes lasting film is an oil-painting hand-painted by 125 professional oil-painters who travelled from across the World to the Loving Vincent studios in Poland and Greece to be part of the production. As remarkable as Vincent’s brilliant paintings, is his passionate and ill-fated life, and mysterious death. Directed by Polish painter and director Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman (Oscar winner for producing Peter and the Wolf), the first of a kind film has landed a stellar cast that includes Saoirse Ronan, Aidan Turner, Douglas Booth, Helen McCrory, Chris O'Dowd and Jerome Flynn.

Hugh Welchman: "In 2014 we researched and tested 9 different brands of paints from 6 manufacturers. We took into consideration quality of the paint, viscosity, how the colours came across, range of colours, and price. Some of those tested were rejected because of viscosity, others were rejected because a particular colour that was important to us on the film wasn’t right, others because the oil and pigment were separating. The colour that mattered most to us was yellow. We needed a brand that had a good range of yellows, and for the yellow to be very saturated. The tests consisted of applying paint to canvas boards and photographing them under different lighting conditions. There were 3 brands which passed our tests and Van Gogh was the obvious choice from these three because it had the greatest range of colours, and additionally it was the cheapest of the 3. Price was very important to us as we would be buying over 1,000 litres of paint! The fact that the brand we chose was called Van Gogh was just a happy coincidence." “Royal Talens is extremely proud that Van Gogh has been chosen as the exclusive paint to create this amazing film”, says Harold Kruis, Manager Marketing and Product Development of Royal Talens. “The fact that Loving Vincents Head of Painting Piotr Dominak did an extensive, thorough selection before they decided for the final oil paint, proves the undisputed quality of our Van Gogh Oil Colour. It is the result of years of paint development and production experience, craftmanship and dedication of more than 117 years in Apeldoorn, The Netherlands. Which is coincidently also the home country of Vincent van Gogh! We are working on a promotion program with Loving Vincent for our customers in close cooperation with BreakThru Films and Trademark Films. More details will be available at our booth on Creativeworld” Loving Vincent is an investigation delving into the life and controversial death of Vincent Van Gogh, one of the world's most beloved painters, as told through his paintings and by the characters that inhabit them. The intrigue unfolds through interviews with the characters closest to Vincent and through dramatic reconstructions of the events leading up to his death. It features over 120 of Vincent Van Gogh's greatest paintings. The plot is drawn from the 800 letters written by the painter himself...Vincent wrote in his last letter: “Well, the truth is, we cannot speak other than by our paintings”, and that is what we are doing - letting his paintings tell the story of what the painter had inside his heart, and ultimately, what happened to him.

This BBC video features some of the artists involved including Cornish artist Sarah Wimperis (http://www.sarahwimperis.co.uk/home/4591295831)

Loving Vincent is expected to be launched the first half of 2017. www.lovingvincent.com Royal Talens will be present on Creativeworld in Frankfurt in Hall 4.2 on booth D70 from January 28-31.