Russian artist Konstantin Khlanta creates intricate portraits of celebrities and fictional characters by wrapping colored string around strategically placed nails.

27-year-old Khlanta, who hails from the Russian city of Tula, only started doing string art in 2018, when he created a portrait of Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park, who had passed away a year before. Interestingly, it was Linkin Park who inspired Konstantin’s artistic career, as he only took up drawing back in 2008 after hearing their son the music video for Linkin Park’s ‘Numb’ in which he saw a woman drawing and decided to give it a try himself.

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Hong Kong-based artist Alfred Chen takes a single thread of yarn over 5,000 meters long and weaves it around a frame made up of around 300 metal nails to create stunningly realistic celebrity portraits.

Chen starts the creative process by selecting a digital image he wants to recreate. He then changes the color version to grayscale, adjusting the brightness and contrast to better expose the shadows and highlights he will have to recreate with thread. Finally, he relies on an algorithm that tells him exactly how to weave a single thread around the 300 metal nails in order to recreate the picture in real life. Then the real work begins.

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