Portraits of Black Icons Made With Thousands Of Colorful Thumbtacks.

Andre Woolery's work depicts his journey as an artist and reflects his personal cultural experience as a young black man. His current work, comprised of thousands of colored thumbtacks (not unlike Eric Daigh's pushpin portraits) combined with paint, is primarily portraits of black icons by design.


above: Artist Andre Woolery with some of his thumbtack portraits

Initially inspired by Fruit Loops, because of their bright colors, Andre considered using the children's cereal as a medium. He then found a package of multicolored thumbtacks and began searching for them in all the colors he would need (apparently trying to find "orange" was like searching for the holy grail according to Andre).

Thanks to Mike Jacobs of Jam Paper, he ended up a wide array of colors (including orange) that made the following portraits of Jay-Z, Kanye West, Jimi Hendrix, President Obama and All About The Benjamins possible.




Challenged to find a way of keeping the tacks in place on the canvas, he bought ALL of the hardware store's expanding foam to spray the back of the canvas. The rest of the piece was tack-by-tack trial and error. Every 'pixel' was a lesson in spacing, light, and color to create the vision of Mr. Sean Carter (aka Jay-Z).


Jay-Z "The Tackover," April 2010
7,633 thumbtacks in total
Price for the original: $ 7,633.00, 20% of proceeds from original piece go to Harlem School of Arts.




Kanye West "Tacks on Tacks on Tacks," September 2011,
Over 8,000 thumbtacks
Price for the original: $ 12,000.00, 20% of proceeds from original piece go to Harlem School of Arts.




President Obama "Wet Paint," November 2011,
Over 10,000 thumbtacks.
Price for the original: $ 15,000.00





"It's All About the Benjamins," (featuring Benjamin Banneker) November 2011
23,850 thumbtacks in total
Price for the original: $ 25,000.00, 20% of proceeds from original piece go to Harlem Children's Zone.




Jimi Hendrix "Electric Feel"
Over 2,000 thumbtacks
Price for the original: $ 4,250.00, 20% of proceeds from original piece go to Harlem School of Arts.




Artist Andre Woolery:


All the artwork in this post (and more) is available for sale as originals or digital prints, some pieces whose partial proceeds go to the Harlem School of the Arts and the Harlem Children's Zone, making them that much more attractive.

Andre's thumbtack portraits only represent some of his artistic work. Check out his website to see more.

His etsy store

Shop for Andre's work here

Nonpareil Pet Portrait. One Sweet Beagle Made of 221,184 Colored Sprinkles.

What began as a university fine arts project on Pointillism and Georges Seurat by student Joel Brochu, evolved into a remarkable artistic idea.



What looks like an image of a beagle getting a bath (above) is actually a 4’ by 1 ½’ high definition photograph covered in 221,184 nonpareil sprinkles, each placed painstakingly by hand.



At a distance of 16 feet, the sprinkles blur, tricking the human eye into believing that it is looking at a large photograph. Only when you closely examine the work do you realize that it has been created entirely with tiny spheres of rainbow nonpareils.







Meticulously placed by hand using jewelry tweezers, the sprinkles adhere to the board with the help of double sided tape and a thin layer of glue.




Using only 6 colors of sprinkles (Red, Orange, Green, Blue, Black, and White), a myriad of hues was created.




Joel used a customized computer program, in which a template was created from the original image which guided the placement of each sprinkle. Taking just under 8 months to complete, once finished, it was permanently preserved with a clear acrylic resin.

Sweet, huh?

A big shoutout to Betsy Wills and her wonderful blog, Artstormer, for bringing this unique piece to my attention. Most images courtesy of Joel Brochu

Eye Popping Pill Portraits of Celebrities Amy Winehouse, Heath Ledger & More.

Get a load of Jason Mecier's portraits of celebrities Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Courtney Love and Kelly Osbourne made with actual pills. While it's true that some of these subject's undoing was the medium itself, others, like Kelly Osbourne have successfully kicked the habit. Either way, these are interesting homages to them.






Be sure to check out the Red Vine, Candy and Junk mosaic portraits by this same artist, Jason Mecier and the self portrait comprised of Ecstacy tablets by bar code artist Scott Blake.

Mary Ellen Croteau Creates a Self Portrait with Thousands of Plastic Bottle Caps.

above: detail from CLOSE, a self-portrait of Mary Ellen Croteau made with plastic bottle caps

There seem to be an endless number of talented artists creating portraits using assemblages of unexpected items; licorice, junk, toys, pills, pencils, diamonds, pushpins and more. I have already featured nine different artists who create portraits from such items unusual work on this blog and now I'm introducing you to a tenth, Mary Ellen Croteau.

(click on each image below to see posts on each of these nine artists):



above: Top row. l to r: Bernard Pras' portrait of Bruce Lee, Zac Freeman's portrait of Garrett, Scott Blake's self portrait. Middle row, l to r: Jason Mercer's portrait of Kim Kardashian made with licorice vines, Christian Faur's portrait made of crayons, a diamond and sapphire gemstone portrait of Marilyn Monroe. Bottom row, l to r: Federico Uribe's portrait of a tiger made with pencils, Charles Manson made of rubik's cubes, and Eric Daigh's pushpin portrait.

Mary Ellen Croteau had been working with plastic bottle caps to create columnar sculptures, but while crafting these, she became compelled to create a large self-portrait with them.



She describes this inspiration below:
"Plastic bottle caps - like bags, a plastic product that can’t be/ isn’t recycled. I conceived of an “endless column” of these caps, after Constantin Brancussi’s (sic) iconic modernist sculpture. One became two, and two became many...:



...While making these columns, I noticed the smaller caps tended to nest inside one another, and the color combinations reminded me of Chuck Close’s painted portraits. So I got sidetracked and started on a large self-portrait made entirely of bottle caps. The piece measures 8 feet by 7 feet. No paint is used, except to delineate a few shadows where white board was showing through. In a few cases, the caps are trimmed in order to fit a tight space." - Mary Ellen Croteau



close-up of the nose:

close up of eye in progress:


The final assembled piece displayed for Art on Armitage:


Mary Ellen Croteau is an artist whose work directly addresses the absurdities of social norms, and lays bare the underlying bias and sexist assumptions on which our culture is constructed.
She lives and works in Chicago, IL.

See more of her unusual art here.

a shout out to This Is Colossal for bringing Mary's work to my attention