CHERYL COLE
Hole Punch Dots (approx 59.000) on wood
size - 122cm by 105cm
Completed May 2010

Available for Exhibition

With all my dot portraits I like to have a challenge, and Cheryl was no different. All my portraits so far had been men, I wanted to make a woman and lets face, it Cheryl is absolutely stunning. I also wanted to try a smaller dot picture to see if it worked just as well. So far my dot portraits has taken on average 11 to 13 weeks to make, and at that rate it would take me years to acquire enough to show. However by making it smaller I was concerned I was effectively reducing resolution. Could I get the detail in with less dots?

I wanted to go for a natural look on this picture. I had to draw it from the television, as all the photographs of her are posed and seem to have a sadness in her eyes. I wanted to capture her truly smiling. But in order to do that I had to attempt dot teeth for the first time.

The things I learnt from this picture are as follows:
1) Just because it is a quarter of the size doesn't mean it takes a quarter of the time. Making it smaller made it more difficult as you have less dots to get the same effect.
2) Girls are hard. They ususally have exaggerated eyelashes and lots of hair. Not so easy with dots.
3) Dot teeth are verging on impossible. I spent almost a week, arranging, sticking and unsticking her mouth and teeth until they looked right.

I wouldn't make one this small again, but enjoyed the challenge of making it work and am pleased with it now. It took me two thirds of the time it took me to make Lewis except it was only a quarter of the size. This made me think that for my next dot portrait I would go somewhere in the middle of Cheryl and Lewis size. I had kind of jumped from one extreme to the other!