Human Dot Matrix Art

My wife and I are preparing for a short business trip to the US. Looking forward to visiting our friends in the Boston area (Wareham, Raynham, Plymouth). Rain has continued to be the norm this week in Suzhou. We did get some breaks, but the amount of rain has been intense. So much so that several areas around the lake across our apartment show different levels of flooding. In some rural areas in our province (Jiangsu) the rain has caused flash flooding that unfortunately have killed a couple of hundred people. Nothing that really affects us, but it is causing some serious issues and tragic human loss around us.

We are told that the rainy season goes from May through June, and that we were lucky May was not as bad as usual. After the rainy season comes the sweaty season; oppressive humidity and heat. That is why many of the expat wives go back home on July and August.

Have not been able to wander about as usual due to the bad weather so decided to show a few pictures I took in Shanghai of an amazing artist. I call him the Human Dot  Matrix artist because he is just like an old dot matrix printer with amazing accuracy to faithfully transfer what he sees in a picture to a black stone slab using his two hands and a rounded sharp chisel. See below for more details.

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It takes about two hours to do one person from a photograph. The only tool used is a sharp punch/chisel. The tool movement is controlled by the left hand, while the right hand pushed the chisel back and forth very quickly. As you can see on the shelf above, he is not restricted to people. It seems that if he can see it, he can faithfully reproduce it.
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The force applied by the right hand impacting the chisel on the stone determines the dot shade. Light impact dark dot to hard impact almost white dot. In this picture you can see that the similarity with the subject on the left is very good.

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A close-up of a very familiar face to most if not all Americans; can you guess who it is before looking at the next picture? This close up gives you a good view of the dot-matrix like system used by the artist.

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I assume most of you guessed it. The likeness of this work is fantastic in my humble opinion.

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The store was filled with portraits of many well know people, wish I took many more pictures. I am thinking we will have one done of our two girls before we leave.

Well, Hope you all have a great week and to all Americans a fantastic 4th of July. We will be returning from our US trip on July 1st.

 

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