Michiel Van Der Zanden

Oil paintings from video games and 3D environments by Michiel Van Der Zanden.

"In my work, I import the world of digital media into painting and vice versa. I’m using images from videogames and ‘3D computer graphics’. For years I’ve been fascinated by games and their specific visual quality.

As a starting point, I used to extract images from existing games, more like a tourist or reporter. These images were combined in collages, which functioned as sketches for my paintings. Nowadays I mostly use Blender 3D software to model my own (game-) settings. " - Michiel Van Der Zanden. See more;

"Ideas, stories and concepts coming from gaming and 3D culture, combined with situations and environments from my personal life, are converted to the intimacy of painting. And because I like to work in a collage-like way, the videogame is an ideal starting point: a game is a 3D (photo-) collage in its essence. I adjust my way of painting to the chosen subject. Sometimes very precise, to overemphasize the kitsch quality. Sometimes almost expressionistic, to enlarge the contrast between the different image elements." 

Painting LargeFlatMap100 (The Sims 3)

"In a self-created empty world (using 'Create-A-World-Tool'), I made a senior Sim paint the landscape. This landscape painting is a screenshot I captured within the same world. I replaced the original Sims 3 painting with my screenshot, using the 'S3PE' modding editor."

via | pietmondriaan