Let It Be

The Beatles!!!! Arguably the most influential band of all time and on May 8, 1970 the Fab Four released their 12th and final studio album “Let It Be”. I have always been a HUGE fan of the Beatles and absolutely love this album cover. It seemed a perfect place for the Push Pin Project to start.

Each piece is about 2 feet 9 1/2 inches (75 pins by 75 pins) and contains a total of 5,625 pins. For those of you with a keen eye you will notice that John Lennon is just slightly larger than the other three. What can I say, I am new at this whole thing.

Georgia On My Mind

After starting with the Let It Be album, I realized that while the smaller pieces allowed me to complete them fairly quickly, I wasn’t able to get as much detail as I would have liked. I decided to try my hand at a piece a bit bigger. I chose this one of Ray Charles Robinson a.k.a. Ray Charles.

After searching through what felt like hundreds of photos, I finally landed on one that I liked. Where the previous Beatles album that I had done was made from a color photo, the photo that I found of Ray Charles was made using mostly sepia tones. I wasn’t sure how the brightly colored push pins (Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, White, and Black) would play out. After about 4 weeks of work I was SO pleased with the final product. I am still amazed at how such bright and bold colors can create such a different look.

The piece is 3 feet 7 inches by 3 feet 7 inches (104 pins by 104 pins) and is made up of 10,816 push pins total.

The King of Pop

Michael Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009)

Michael Jackson is probably one of my favorite musicians of all time. I will never forget going to Disneyland with my family and seeing him in “Captian EO”. I was hooked.

The portrait of the King of Pop is taken from his 2005 greatest hits album “The Essential Michael Jackson” and is the biggest piece I have done to date . It is 4 feet by 4 feet (112 pins by 112 pins) and is made up of 12,544 push pins.

The thing I love most about this piece is that the original image I used to create the portrait is black and white (no pun intended). I was uncertain how well the bold colors (Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue) would work in mimicking a black and white piece but found that a black and white image is almost easier to replicate than one that is in color. In fact, I liked the final product so much I decided to try it again with my next piece. SO… stay tuned for future portraits.