I created this project in the summer of 2024, while I was waiting for my master’s program to start. I wanted to make something that captured a very specific feeling I remembered from childhood: long, hot afternoons in the countryside at my grandparents’ home, where time feels slower, the light feels heavier, and everything becomes a bit too quiet.
Instead of trying to recreate that memory realistically, I wanted to stylize it. That summer, I had become interested in gouache painting, especially how well it can convey light and blends in a really beautiful way. I started thinking about how I could bring that painterly feeling into Blender, not by painting over the image afterwards, but by building the look directly into the 3D setup.
I experimented with procedural textures, a more complex post-processing setup, and a Kuwahara filter to soften the image and reduce it into more graphic, painted areas. The challenge was finding a balance where the scene still felt like a 3D space, but the final image had the warmth and looseness of an illustration.
The composition was directly inspired by a gouache painting I found online, although I sadly can’t find the original reference anymore. Even so, the project became very personal to me. It was less about making a technically impressive scene and more about translating a memory into an image. I was really happy to combine my two main passions with each other: painting & 3D.
