Looking at the artworks bellow, you could swear they the charcoal drawings of a talented artist, but they’re actually not drawings at all, but hair paintings, and they’re hand-made not by an artist, but a skilled hairdresser.
Allen Chen, who works as a hairdresser at the XB Hair Professional salon in Changhua, China, recently became an internet sensation in his home country, after photos and videos of his incredibly detailed hair paintings went viral online. His latest masterpiece, a “hairy” portrayal of Romance of the Three Kingdoms heroes Liu Bei, Guan Yu and Zhang Fey has been massively shared on Weibo, and videos of the young hairdresser carefully arranging the hair trimming to create the three characters have already been viewed millions of times. And looking at the quality of these artworks, it’s easy to see why everyone is so impressed by Allen’s talent.
Photo: XB Hair/Facebook
Allen told TVBS that he usually starts the creative process by looking for inspiration online. After he’s found an image worth recreating out of hair trimmings, he gets a bag full of tiny pieces of hair leftover from his clients and begins to spread them on his favorite canvas, the floor of his hair salon. He first outlines the designs, then proceeds to fill them, making sure to adjust the amount of hair he spreads to create shading and the illusion of depth. He uses his hands as the main tools, but for the finest details he will arrange the hair with a credit card.
His Romance of the Three Kingdoms hair painting is Allen’s most complex one yet. He spent 6 hours working on it, and only shot a few photos of it, before wiping the hair off the floor. It almost seems like a shame, but it’s just the nature of the art from, I guess.
Allen’s impressive portfolio of hair paintings includes a scene out of blockbuster hit Titanic, a poster of Marvel’s ‘Venom’ movie, a detailed portrait of a lion, and a detailed scene out of the Monkey King film.
Speaking about how he got started with hair painting, Allen said that he was just looking for other ways to express his creativity and was inspired by the art of sand painting.
Oh, and while you’re here, check out Allen ‘s artistic haircuts:
