These Housemates Made An Instagram Account To Recreate Paintings During The Coronavirus Lockdown
"Damn the detail level is heckin good."
To get through the boredom of staying indoors, people have been finding some unique ways to channel their creativity. One group of housemates created an Instagram account called @covidclassics dedicated to recreating art.
The four housemates behind it are Max Sutter, a 30-year-old business owner, Jeannette Penniman, a 30-year-old architect, Cary White, a 29-year-old environmental project manager and Sam Haller, a 32-year-old writer. They're based in New Haven, Connecticut.
They told BuzzFeed News via email it all started with Sutter not being able to find a hat and using a towel instead for a video call. They said: "Max couldn't find a hat, so he put a towel on his head, and Sam noticed it looked like The Death of Marat."
View this photo on Instagram
They said: "We all love a creative challenge, so we decided to try to recreate the painting using just stuff we had lying around. It was so much fun that we did a few more, and we created the Instagram page so our friends and families could follow along."
So far they have recreated 12 paintings including René Magritte's The Son of Man...
....Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear....
...Jan van Eyck's Arnolfini Wedding Portrait...
And Caravaggio’s St Jerome Writing. They said they each have different favourites but they especially loved this one.
View this photo on Instagram
They said: "It was the first one we did with dramatic lighting, and it really came together. Jeannette really likes the composition of The Milkmaid, and Cary did an amazing job designing the floating apple in The Son of Man."
They said its been a lot of fun creating the photos and that the first few photos took about an hour to create but it has taken up to three hours sometimes.
They added: "The best feeling is when you spend three hours setting up a shot and get it perfect on the first try, though that's only happened once or twice."
Their Instagram account has now gained over 40k followers and their photos have been going viral on Twitter after being reposted. Everyone is amazed by their remakes.
Art lovers... This thread... Keep scrolling Down. 🎨👇👇👇 Fabulous! 😎 https://t.co/HIXfXqHqTU
To clarify, they are not in Iceland.
The quarantine done right. https://t.co/U3U5YXwZoQ
And people are seriously impressed with the level of detail.
Damn the detail level is heckin good https://t.co/aFiKegSMpD
I've never seen two photos so similar yet so different https://t.co/vIj6YwYxkD