I Used 75,738 Staples To Create A Portrait Of The Family Dog.

Utilizing non-traditional art materials like staples was a natural evolution. Previously, I employed non-standard approaches like meticulously drawing thousands of repeated single stroke lines to slowly build up light and dark areas in my etchings. Staples, just like an etched line can be bold and graphic or soft and muted. When I use various colored staples placed beside one another, each one acts like a dash of paint in a painting but when viewed from a few steps back is mixed optically to create new tantalizing colors that fluctuate due to the metallic nature of the medium.

For my latest work, Doxie (Canis Lupus Familiaris), 75,738 staples were used, the largest amount I ever put into a single piece. This piece depicts a dog, and I searched high and low to find the right colors for the fur. Over two dozen colors were arranged side by side so that I achieve optical blending. As with all of my mosaics, this is a painstakingly slow process, but I'm extremely proud of the results.

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