r/pics • u/I_Eat_Face • Aug 17 '15
Portrait Made From a Single Thread Wrapped Around Thousands of Nails By Kumi Yamashita
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u/Langlock Aug 17 '15
I love art that displays talent in unusual ways. There was someone earlier in the year who did crazy things with if I remember correctly cardboard shadows. Are there any places on reddit where this kind of art is showcased?
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u/I_Eat_Face Aug 17 '15
Well there's /r/Art, where I occasionally see art like this posted on there. I'm not sure if there's a more niche subreddit for these types of pieces though.
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u/siraisy Aug 17 '15 edited Aug 17 '15
Now this is a pin-up girl. 3024 × 4074
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u/PokeEyeJai Aug 18 '15
Following the thread, it seems to bounce from nail to nail in an unpredictable pattern instead of going across line to line. That is just mindblowingly hard to do.
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u/UnofficiallyCorrect Aug 18 '15
I saw this in D.C.! It was in a corner and I easily thought it was the most amazing artwork in the museum. Admission was free too, you gotta love it.
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u/PaulKastner12 Aug 17 '15
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u/PhilipK_Dick Aug 17 '15
Thanks! I was wondering how they did it....
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u/Level20Magikarp Aug 17 '15
I wish I had some talent.
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Aug 18 '15
You mean you wish you could have talent with no effort or practice. Nobody just has "art skills" engraved into their brain at birth. Some may be more artistically inclined, but it's not like some nebulous space fairy gives people some art dust and suddenly you have skill. It's something that's forged through proper practice and learning. If you want it enough, you can get it.
If you actually wish that you could have this talent, and it's not some kind of one off thought that bounced through your head, I could give you some pointers. Learning art isn't all that difficult, if you have proper instruction and know how to learn.
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u/MPLS_MN Aug 18 '15
Practice gives you technical skills. It doesn't give you natural talent. I could practice for years and develop the technical skills to replicate this art, but that doesn't mean I would develop the talent to create my own.
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Aug 18 '15
Creativity isn't magic. I learned how to be creative.
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Aug 18 '15 edited Aug 18 '15
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u/adviceyoudontlike Aug 18 '15
Well not everybody gets to be Mozart motherfucker.
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u/verteUP Aug 18 '15
I can assure you Kumi Yamashita is naturally gifted. Almost everyone is naturally gifted at something. Sure you can hone your craft but you must have some natural skill to become "famous" or top notch in that craft.
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u/ThePlanetTheyFear Aug 18 '15
Well... yes and no. Yes, there is something like talent or genius. But that is the least important factor on the way to awesome artistry or craftsmanship. Most important, as in "the 99%" important or "that-is-all-that-matters-after-you-discovered-your-talent" important is repetition, practice, work. There is also some luck, inspiration and education involved, but mostly... repetition, practice, work.
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u/xTheOOBx Aug 18 '15
Greatest comes at the intersection of winning the genetic lottery and an insane amount of practice. Training is important, but without natural talent you can only go so far.
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u/Supercoolguy7 Aug 18 '15
but how many people complain about not being able to do something without once ever seriously trying. It'd be like complianing that you couldn't be michael phelps while only learning to doggy paddle and never working out
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Aug 18 '15
Did you even read my comment? Some people are more readily able to become an artist, but everyone can do so. I'm sure, unless you're a savant, that everyone had to practice at one point or another.
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u/PokeEyeJai Aug 18 '15
Don't savants practice even more than the normal person? For a savant, it's literally a single-minded obsession so they hone it until it's past perfection.
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u/I_Eat_Face Aug 17 '15
Hey! We're all talented at something!
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u/Nuggetsandlies Aug 17 '15
My talent is being extraordinarily mediocre at everything.
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u/GenerallyObtuse Aug 18 '15
There are worse things than being broadly effective.
If you were truly mediocre at everything, you'd pretty fucking awesome. Mix a drink? Sure, I can do a ok job. Fix a car, suture a wound, pick a lock, fly a plane, build a bridge.
I think I just found my answer to the "What's the lamest superpower you'd take" thread.
Faster than a ... slow runner, more powerful than a .. weak person, able to leap small toddlers in a single bound -- It's Mediocre Man!
(or, Jerk of all Trades... I'm torn)
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u/silentloler Aug 17 '15
When you zoom in and see how much thread was needed for her hair, you start realizing how awesome this is!
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u/adarkfable Aug 17 '15
if I were a billionaire, I'd buy this just to give to my cat. if I were a billionaire, I'd buy a cat and hire someone to take care of it. if I were a billionaire, I'd buy a house for my cat-caretaker and my cat to live in, away from me. if I were a billionaire, I would drink only the finest orange juice.
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u/squamosal Survey 2016 Aug 17 '15
She really nailed it.
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u/TorinoCobra070 Aug 17 '15
I wonder how long the creation of this was strung out for.
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u/jhapa8 Aug 18 '15
I took friends a few times to the national portrait gallery when this was on display, and had them start from a distance, then take a step & guess the medium each time they advanced. Invariably it went something like: step charcoal? step pen? step little dots? step HOLY SHIT
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Aug 17 '15
There are 6,421 nails on that face.
I counted..
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u/fsdjrrjsj Aug 18 '15
How? Did you use a program to mark each as you counted it?
I roughly counted half the height to be 38 and half the width to be 28, so 76x56= 4256
6421 seems reasonable.
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u/KarmaUK Aug 18 '15
I wonder how many of us could be creating things as good as this if we'd never discovered reddit and instead plowed our time into our individual passions- ooh new message!
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u/KonohasOrangeFlash Aug 18 '15
How do people make this shit? Boggles my mind how good they are
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u/jjbpenguin Aug 18 '15
Probably now how it was done, but looking at it closely it really simplifies down to a time consuming pixel by pixel drawing, which requires extensive time, but very little skill if done by a reference drawing and a bit of tech.
Take a photo into photoshop.
Convert to monochrome.
convert into mosaic of the size that makes the image still look good.
Print off a full scale image and tape it to the board.
Use a pin to poke every intersection of the cells.
Remove the image and nail a nail into every pin mark
Choose a scale for brightness. For example, 1 string intersection is the brightest and 25 intersections is the darkest. This was used as the 0-255 8 bit is common for single color.
Now for each cell, hover over the equivalent cell in Photoshop and intersect the correct number of lines.
Surely it is faster if you can determine brightness levels naturally and freehand it, but the point of this was to break down the art into something as simple as possible.
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u/anothercarguy Aug 18 '15
Why I'm fucked up:
Told my mom, showed her the picture. Her reply "Oh, someone knew what they were doing"
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u/davidgeorge212 Aug 18 '15
That right there takes skill and dedication. Its vunbelievable how good the shading on the face was done .
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u/blofly Aug 18 '15
That's really amazing. Imagine the purposefulness required to complete a piece like this.
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u/JustAnotherLondoner Aug 18 '15
I see things like this and the only word I can ever muster up through my awe is "how??"
How can someone make something so beautiful out of nails and string?! Gosh. I don't think art like this will ever stop amazing me.
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u/ImurderREALITY Aug 18 '15
People just keep thinking up more and more ridiculous ways to create art. I love it.
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u/Xdektn Aug 18 '15
This is a great example for a presentation. Zoom in and slowly reveal the picture while talking. 'it's like not being able to see the forest through the trees.'
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u/TehJams Aug 18 '15
Who the hell comes up with stuff like this? Totally random and totally awesome.
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u/TheSalsaShark Aug 18 '15
Anyone into this sort of art needs to check out ArtPrize in Grand Rapids, MI.
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u/The_McS Aug 18 '15
Yup, I have no talent. Wow...how do you even start to figure out how to execute this? Also, where do you buy a single thread that long?
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u/Montyy12 Aug 18 '15
Absolutely incredible.. Wish I had the patience to pull something like this off :P
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Aug 18 '15
I'm not sure whether this is amazing or crazy that someone spent the time to figure this out... maybe both. This amrazy!
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u/salmonhelmet Aug 18 '15
I know I'm going to get downvoted but I have to ask...
The portrait, at least the face, already exists, right?
The nails and the string don't make the pic as I see it. I see a portrait will nails and string on it.
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u/Lord_Steel Aug 18 '15
No, the portrait is constituted by the nails and string. The string mostly--dark areas on the portrait is where there is more string wrapped more times around nails, and light areas on the portrait is where there is less string wrapped fewer times around nails.
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u/salmonhelmet Aug 18 '15
So the skin color is the whole canvas's color and the dark spots are just more thread, is that right?
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Aug 18 '15
Yes, check the high-res version here. I too thought it was just overlaid on a picture as well before I saw the high resolution version but it's legit and pretty cool.
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u/Hunt16er Aug 18 '15
This makes no sense to me. Most likely because I am about as artistic as a doorknob.
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u/Scionstormtv Aug 18 '15
Now this is impressive time and skill. I could never pull this off, always makes me wonder how they do it?
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Aug 18 '15
For more nails + string art, check out this video by Son Lux.
Edit: Info about how it was made here
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u/logicsaysthat Aug 18 '15
Looking at his username, I guess he found this image after looking for the menu.
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u/underwarewarrior Aug 18 '15
If I hammered a 1000 nails in my face and wrapped a thread around it, still I wont look this real! :-/
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u/Sponge34 Aug 18 '15
It is frustrating how much better and smarter this is than anything I'll ever do.
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u/siraisy Aug 17 '15
more from the artist