Artwork: Redhead Girl
Artist: Samuel Silva
About the Work: Samuel Silva is a Portuguese-born, UK-based lawyer, whose realist style captured the attention of the mainstream media in 2012.
Why? Because Silva’s work is composed entirely from a pack of eight Bic coloured ballpoint pens, not any different from those sitting on your desk or in a drawer at home right now.
The pen ink dries instantly when it touches the canvas surface, so Silva uses cross hatching – a process through which parallel lines are drawn in close proximity to give the impression of shading – in order to produce the meticulous detail you see here.
Redhead Girl took 30 hours to complete, but he says that some projects can take up to 400 hours.
To those who judged that his work drawing such detailed copies of pre-existing images could not be considered art, Silva graciously responded: “…there are as many concepts of what is art as there are humans on earth, so what really matters is what art is for you, in your heart, not what others think it is or what others think it should be.”
For more details on Silva’s work, as well as to purchase prints, visit his DeviantArt page.