There are many different mediums with which to create art. Some of those art constituents include various types of paint, chalk pastels, charcoal pencils, mosaic fragments, metals, and the like. But would you ever imagine that hole punch dots could be used to craft incredible portraits? An artist from the United Kingdom is proving to the world that these dots are definitely a worthy art medium.
Artist Nikki Douthwaite has made a practice of collecting hole punch dots for the past three years. After sorting them by shade, she uses the dots to create portraits, which are “inspired by magazine photos,” of pop icons. The artist was led to use this particular medium after studying Gorges Seurat (pointalist artist) in school.
How exactly does one craft a large portrait out of hole punch dots? The answer is, with patience and very carefully. Douthwaite uses tweezers to place the dots onto her canvas. She commented, “I use the dots like paint. I do different colors for the feel of the picture, and there are thousands of colors in each piece.”
According to the artist, the most time-consuming aspect of the portrait process is composing subjects’ hair. Facial features are reportedly “easy.” Oddly, Nikki Douthwaite admitted that “the younger and prettier (a subject is), the harder I seem to find it, as there seems to be less distinguishing features.” Douthwaite reported that each of her works of art takes 6 to 15 weeks to complete.
Some of Nikki Douthwaite’s portrait subjects include Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Jemi Hendrix, and Simon
Cowell. Monroe’s portrait required about 100,000 dots, whereas Cowell’s took an amazing 189,000 dots. The artist spent a liberal amount of time on all her pieces, include the portrait on John Lennon, which demanded 140,000 hole punch dots.
More and more artists are bringing art out of the box and demonstrating that the sky is truly the limit when it comes to art mediums. If hole punch dots are being used to create attention-grabbing art, imagine what other elements could be used to compose art that makes the world turn its head.
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Outside The Lines 
There is a lot of talent out there! Thank you for featuring these remarkable artists in your blog!
very very cool
Nice, I love the scale of the pieces.
Thanks! Glad you like this article and my blog! Thanks for sharing.
Ever since 9th grade biology when we had to make stipple drawings of the ten things we disected, I’ve loved stipple drawing. It’s pretty much the only form of drawing I can do with any degree of success! This reminded me of that…the dots, forming the gorgeous art. Very cool
Totally cool! Love it. Thanks for writing me back!
What a fabulous idea! I can’t imagine how meticulous and time consuming this work would be–but what fantastic results! Thanks for sharing–and for stopping by quietambitions.wordpress.com today, as well! Blessings!
I love your blog Becky. Very inspirational and today it was a great start for our day!
Thanks! One of the things I’ve put on the back burner this past year has been my own art–I’m creative in my business, but I’ve not taken time to just ‘create’ just for me. I miss it. I’m determined to find time for it again–once I get that schedule thing worked out! LOL Your site may be just the inspiration that I’ve needed to get me going in that direction again. I’ll be back. Enjoy your day!