Instead of using a pen and ink, artist David Foster hammers thousands of nails onto a canvas to create these incredibly detailed portraits. Originally an architect, Foster’s love for technical drawing translates perfectly into these meticulously produced arrangements. Each piece is based off of a photograph that the artist first reproduces with an ink pen. He then enlarges the drawing to use as his guide for the finished pieces.
Nail head by nail head, dot by dot, the pointillist images slowly emerge as Foster builds across the canvas. His smaller drawings average only about 5,000 nails while some of the larger pieces can include as many as 30,000! The artist says, “I have always been fascinated with how little information the brain needs to interpret a picture and love the simplicity of a picture made up from just dots.”
