Courtesy Tadao Cern

If you've ever wondered what Vincent Van Gogh would look like in person rather than a bunch of impressionist-style swirling strokes of a paintbrush, look no further.

Architect turned photographer Tadao Cern, of Vilnius, Lithuania, used his friend as a model to re-create the famous painter's self-portrait as a modern-day photograph.

"The idea came spontaneously," Cern, 29, told ABCNews.com. "I saw my friend that has ginger hair and beard and thought that it would be very funny to make a portrait of Vincent Van Gogh."

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Cern's friend liked the idea, agreed to be his muse for the shoot and met one week later in the studio to get the project rolling.

"After some proportion we made a few shots and after a day of making the final image, I posted it on the Internet. Before the photo shoot I knew what painting I [was] going to mimic, so I asked a stylist to find the right clothes and other stuff," Cern explained.

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A lot of people are confused by the photograph because of its uncanny similarities to Van Gogh's original painting.

"Some of them keep asking me if there's really a guy that looks so like Van Gogh," said Cern. "Some of them don't believe that it's a photo at all. And some of them thought that I really took a picture of Vincent Van Gogh.

"People ask me if I'm going to recreate other paintings, but at the moment I have no plans to make something similar but who knows. I think that only this one image stands quite good as a project already."