“You should never let your fears prevent you from doing what you think is right.” ~ Aung San Suu Kyi
Have you ever thought that real masterpieces, portraits and amazing landscapes could be created using unconventional but everyday items, including socks, coffee stains, food, sunflower seeds or even flowers and candles? Yeah, we can only imagine your astonishment! It’s really unbelievable, but a Malaysian artist-architect Hong Yi amazes the whole world with her artwork.
Still not sure what we are talking about? Take a look at the image below. It’s a coffee cup stain portrait of Lucio Dalla, Italian singer, created by Hong Yi. The whole work took about two weeks and evoked the admiring public views.
Lucio Dalla Portrait by Hong Yi
The next project involves four basic elements: fire, water, wind and earth. It’s the portrait of Adele, an English singer-songwriter and musician. The artist was mainly inspired by Adele’s song ‘Set Fire to the Rain’ when choosing candles and fire as her painting material. The candles (about 1500 of them) simply melt and flowed together, forming a striking masterpiece.
Adele’s Portrait by Hong Yi
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Hong Yi, who goes by the nickname ‘Red’, is an architect by day and an artist by twilight. Here are some short facts from her biography. In the ’60s her family left Shanghai and moved to Malaysia where she was born and raised. She studied architecture the University of Melbourne (Australia), then she continued her study at the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands where she got acquainted with European art and architecture. After graduation she accepted the offer of an established Australian architecture firm HASSELL to work in their Shanghai office. When Red moved to Shanghai, she was deeply smitten with the beauty of the country, its history and culture. And she started a project of creating portraits of famous Chinese people using different material (actually anything available) as her medium.
Below is a portrait of Zhang Yimou, a famous Chinese film director. At first sight it’s difficult to understand what it is made of. But if you look closer, you’ll see that the face is created, you wouldn’t believe, by means of… socks! The initial idea was to use shirts, but they appeared to be really hard to manipulate, and the whole project would be not budget-friendly at all. That’s why she decided to use the smallest piece of clothing – socks.
Zhang Yimou’s Portrait by Hong Yi
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The whole project took three weeks of work, about 750 pairs of socks and thousands of pins. The result is amazing.
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Below is Lee Chong Wei’s portrait. Lee Chong is a professional badminton player from Malaysia, a sports hero. And the medium for his portrait has been chosen purposefully. It is made of 110 shuttlecocks. Each shuttlecock has 16 feathers, so this piece was made up of about 1800 feathers! The whole process took about three weeks of planning, cutting and pasting shuttlecocks.
Lee Chong Wei’s Portrait by Hong Yi
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Hong Yi avows that coffee cup strain is one of her favourite painting methods. Just imagine the smell of these masterpieces!
A Portrait of Tan Sri Francis Yeoh, a prominent business personality in Malaysia.
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A portrait of Jay Chou, a Taiwanese musician, singer-songwriter.
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The story about the artwork of Hong Yi would be incomplete without mentioning some of her food art. Recently she finished the project “31 Days of Creativity with Food”. Each day she tried to produce something creative working within the confines of a plate with food. She created these “limits” intentionally because, as she admitted, her artworks were getting too big and too complicated. This was some sort of challenge for her. But a really great talent doesn’t mind any challenge and can be seen in the slightest things.
Field of tulips
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Cucumber landscape
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Tiny tutus
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Red cabbage Marchesa Salad
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Goldfish in my consomme
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Three little pigs
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A tiny garden with a lemon sun
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“All you need is love”
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Hong Yi is definitely blessed with the great talent. But talent alone didn’t make her a success. Unbelievable imagination, persistence, patience and faith make her that special!
About the Author
Tatiana T. is a blogger who cares deeply about creative and user-friendly ecommerce design. She thrives in working with clients as a part of TemplateMonster Team to deliver effective solutions based on Prestashop shopping cart.