Daniel Edlen, from Phoenix, Arizona, is probably one of the world’s most patient artists. Using just white acrylic paint, he dabs thousands of tiny white spots on black vinyls to create amazingly-detailed portraits of famous musicians.
But why would an artist go through a painstaking process of dabbing white spots on records, instead of painting them the old-fashioned way, with a brush? Well, Daniel told My Modern Metropolis that “it’s challenging painting on raw records because the paint streaks if I stroke it. Dabbing is the only way it works, but consistency is hard because I don’t use any black and I can’t remove paint easily once it’s dried.” That means the talented artist doesn’t afford to make any mistakes during the creative process, and that’s probably why he can take up to a whole month to complete a single piece.
Talking about his unique art, Edlen says “The technique is kind of like Pointillism except it’s only white, with the density of the layers creating the shading. I came up with the idea after learning how to do rapidograph dot drawings, since I had duplicate records of my favorites.” According to his Behance Network page, the artist creates his beautiful portraits “to celebrate the object and the subject, to pay tribute to the cultural contribution of the music, and to spark conversation and questions.” Is that a REAL record? Is that ON the record? Is it done with a COMPUTER? Is it still PLAYABLE? are just a few of the questions people ask when they lay eyes on Daniel Edlen’s works.
Just so you can understand just how impressive and painstaking this painting technique really is, make sure you check out the video at the bottom showing Daniel as he dabs away at one of his portraits.
