Day: April 26, 2013

A picture is worth a thousand words, but a Spanish artist has turned that concept on its head with these images which each contain up to 200,000 words of varying lengths, heights and colours. They are so detailed that from afar, each simply looks like a picture  But on closer inspection hundreds of thousands of words can be seen making up every minute detail. Amateur Spanish artist Juan Osborne, who scours speeches, lyrics and books for the words used, creates the masterpieces dubbed word art.

Each one is painstakingly pieced together using home made software designed by Juan on his laptop – which he takes with him everywhere. He creates the images in coffee shops, on trains, in dentist waiting rooms and even on the sly at work. They take him three days to complete with larger ones taking up to a week. He first isolates the main image from its background on an image editor, then uses the picture as a template to spread thousands of words one by one across the image until every space is filled. By changing the size and colour Juan is able to create different shades and colour to bring the pieces to life.

Juan sais: ‘Words are powerful, they go straight into the human mind and really add something to my pictures that you can’t get from a regular picture taken with a camera. Mine have stories behind them that can be read, which is pretty unique. I’ve made so many now that I’ve got the process down to a tee and can churn out a lot in a short space of time – maybe just a few days each.’

He added: ‘People are surprised when I tell them that my work is created using a standard netbook and software that I built myself – which is very basic. There are no limits to creativity – if I need something or think of a new way to make something I just create a new application to do it. I feel free without the need for commercial software.’

The 40-year-old, from Madrid, stumbled across his new found talent while working at an architectural firm in 2009. He has since created more than 500 word art images in his spare time.