Take a closer look: the artist paints pictures using thousands of letters

Artist Phil Vance creates incredible portraits consisting of thousands of letters. Talking about the drawing, texture and color, the artist describes the process as "drawing a coordinate grid, or cross hatching." Each portrait of famous people in the "In Their Own Words" series, from Einstein to Mark Twain, becomes a tribute to a cult historical figure.

For contours, shadows and details, Vance writes quotes several thousand times, in different sizes and fonts. "I imagined myself painting a portrait, inside which you can look and see his thoughts. I especially got carried away with the portraits of Willem de Kooning, Picasso and Mauritz Escher. These are my favorite artists, and I wanted to show them respect in my own way - to give people the opportunity to see their wisdom."

At first, the artist wrote with a black pen, however, feeling that the black color does not always convey the full depth of his idea, he began to use colored ink. For the portrait of the famous movie villain Joker, Vance wrote quotes from the movie "The Black Knight" for more than 100 hours.

As in the case of pointillism (the direction in painting, which is characterized by a special manner of writing — separate strokes of the correct shape), from afar handwritten quotations merge together and create an image. If you get closer, you can see an infinite number of words and sentences.

Audrey Hepburn.

Johnny Cash.

Mark Twain.

Albert Einstein. Charlie Chaplin.

American writer Edward Abbey.

Bob Dylan. Nikola Tesla.

Dutch artist Willem de Kooning.

Maurits Cornelis Escher is a Dutch graphic artist.