Lego builders all over the world will soon be able to recreate Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 masterpiece
Vincent Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” painting is now being reimagined as a Lego set. Yes, with about 1,500 bricks!
Lego builders all over the world will soon be able to recreate the 1889 masterpiece, all thanks to a 25-year-old PhD student named Truman Cheng from Hong Kong who developed and submitted the kit to the Lego Ideas website.
“Van Gogh’s work has always fascinated me… One day, I was just playing with Lego parts, and I realized stacking Lego plates together in random intervals, look a lot like van Gogh’s iconic brush strokes,” Truman tells Lego Ideas.
With his PhD studies still ongoing, it took quite some time for Truman to finish the model before pitching it. Recreating the painting sure is a tough task, but what challenged him the most is the scaling of the elements.
“I based the model on the original painting and added my own imagination for the 3D aspect of the design,” he says. “It was a good brain tease to come up with tricks and techniques to capture the look of the original painting. The brushwork goes into many directions in the moon and the swirling cloud, so there was some creative use of bracket and clip elements involved.”
Apart from the swirling clouds filled with stars and the hillside with the cypress tree, the set will also feature a Vincent van Gogh mini figure. The figure will also come complete with a paintbrush, painting palette, an easel, and a canvas featuring the “Starry Night.”
Through its Lego Ideas site, Lego has been producing kits conceptualized and designed by fans from all over the world, including two from the Philippines—a Voltron Lego concept and a Sesame Street kit.
“To me, Lego is more than toys, it’s something similar to painting,” Truman says. “I can express myself, create characters and sculptures from my imagination. It’s a very relaxing experience where I can forget about the petty troubles in daily lives, and get lost in my own imagination. Yeah, very much like painting.”
Check out more of Truman Cheng's Lego works here.
Visit Vincent van Gogh: The Starry Night on Lego Ideas for updates about the new set.