At art school yesterday one of the guys showed me this amazing artist. Paul Chiappe studied at the Edinburgh College of Art and gained two of the prizes from the College for his graduation show, including the best graduating work. He works from old photographs, vintage portraits and school photographs, and old-fashioned postcards he purchases, as well as images from Google, reinventing them as tiny pencil drawings. He creates amazingly beautiful pencil drawings from these, built up literally dot by dot. He can spend up to six months working on a single image, often only half a centimetre wide. They are so incredibly beautiful and detailed, but have a slightly sinister edge to them; the scowling children in the photographs, the sneering grin of the boy in Untitled 23 (far right, top row), the frightening Humpty-Dumpty costume in Untitled 45 (far right, bottom row). He previously worked by eye with a magnifying glass, but invested in a microscope in order to be able to produce even smaller drawings. I'm sure it's some kind of compulsion, which seems simultaneously attatractive and mental. Either way, his work is stunning, and I look forward to seeing his new website, which is set to launch in April. He is featured here on Mint Magazine and The Scotsman.
the things that some people can do is breathtaking! xxx
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