Coming to fans in a variety of forms, from books to video games, and most recently a Netflix television series, The Witcher has been a pop-culture powerhouse for some time now. It has also inspired a vast array of fan creations, from cosplays and in-game mods, to professional artwork. One artist has taken Kaer Morhen, one of the most important locations in The Witcher series, and recreated it in the artistic style of Vincent Van Gogh, to great effect.
Kaer Morhen is a focal point of The Witcher, being the place where young Witchers were once trained and underwent their mutations. It is where Geralt trained Ciri in The Witcher 3 and where one of the game's major battles takes place. The castle of Kaer Morhen is likely the most well-known location in the franchise, and although it is yet to be featured in the Netflix series, the second season of The Witcher is looking to bring the fortress to life.
Polish artist Paweł Hudeczek has created a fantastic piece of artwork of The Witcher, digitally painting Geralt of Rivia standing atop a mountain, looking at Kaer Morhen. The piece has been stylized to resemble Vincent Van Gogh's famous 'Starry Night,' which makes use of thick oil paint to create swirls of pale blue in a night sky punctuated with deep yellow stars. Hudeczek has emulated this effect brilliantly, with the sky rolling like a wave across the Witcher fortress Kaer Morhen.
The reference for the image appears to be a photo of Henry Cavill as Geralt from The Witcher Netflix series, with Kaer Morhen added in by Hudeczek to create an original piece. Kaer Morhen replaces the cypress and steeple in Van Gogh's original piece, which was painted during his time at an asylum in southern France. The wave-like pattern and deep blues in the sky certainly feels fitting, given the castle's name meaning "Keep of the Elder Sea" in the game's Elder speech.
It's also fitting that a Polish artist would create artwork for a series with deep roots in the country, with the books' author, Andrzej Sapkowski, hailing from Poland, as well as CD Projekt Red, who adapted The Witcher into a number of video games. While Van Gogh's Starry Night has been a source for thousands of different artworks at this point, it seems to work particularly well here, with Hudeczek meshing the themes of Kaer Morhen and Van Gogh's original image impeccably.
Source: Paweł Hudeczek/ArtStation