Twitter has introduced me to many gifted and ingenious artists and creatives. Daniel Edlen, known as @vinylart on Twitter, caught my eye recently.
Daniel paints Vinyl Art, portraits of musicians and entertainers on vinyl records. Instead of Elvis on velvet, think Elvis on an Elvis record! Read on to learn more about this artist and his unusual canvas…
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I’ve been creating art for a long time. Not as a job, but as a passion. I think that’s what it has to be first in order for an artist to be successful.
Throughout the years, I have worked in many different media and taken many art classes. Learning has informed all my visual creativity, from drawing to sculpture, to the mixed media work I do now…
Years ago, I was introduced to the world of music through records or, vinyl. Along with going to local concerts, my parents had some great music on record. I loved watching my dad take such care with his Beatles albums.
By the time I was in high school, I had a good sized collection of my own with duplicates of many records that I loved. During that time, my high school art teacher loved Rapidographs pens, giving us projects of dot drawings otherwise know as, stippling where the density of the dots would create the shading, like a newspaper photo.
Then one day, I did a simple drawing using a white pencil on a black piece of paper. The dots and the reverse drawing are what combined in my head to inspire my vinyl art. I had 5 copies of the Beatles’ Pepper album. So I tried painting normally, as I would on white paper. It sort of worked. Then I tried plain white paint dabbed pointilist style – the portraits jumped out of the depths of the vinyl!
Now I’m so proud to be able to share my portraits with my free coffee-table eBook http://vinylart.info/eBook.htm, releasing my second volume on September 1, 2010. It combines my passion for sight and sound, presenting the pieces of musicians important to me along with links out to YouTube music videos and Amazon listings for my favorite albums.
Think about how you innately process your world, how it could encourage your creativity. It’s in you, in the universe. ~Peace. @vinylart
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Thanks to Daniel for sharing his interesting story with us. I really enjoyed learning about this unique art expression! ~Lori 🙂
You may also like to read: Painting Portraits 101: Part 1 – Proportions, or Painting Portraits 101: Part 2 – Start to Finish and The Creation of a Masterful Figurative Painting
Hi Lori
I need some advice please if possable I want to use oil sticks to paint with and I’d like to use them on plastic like vinyl records or use them on bin bags or plastic bags and I’d like to use the colour of the plastic to show in parts of the finished picture but will a bin bag or plastic bag take oil stick paint? Any advice I’d’ve gratefull for thank you kind regards Patrick.
Hello Patrick, as you most likely know, oil will not adhere properly to plastic. It would be best to first coat the area of the bag or record that you want to paint with oils, first with acrylic gesso. This would help the oil stick adhere. However, you don’t want the gesso to show underneath. Otherwise, I would suggest using acrylic paint instead. Let me know how it all turns out for you. Thanks!
hi these are awesome, my daughter is doing some as an art project just wondering do you clean the records first and do you put a primer on… she seems to be getting some smudge effects under some of the spray paint?? any tips would be awesome. thanks
Hello Catherine, that is a very good question. Yes, clean the records first. If you are getting smudges, she might want to try using an acrylic clear gesso. I hope this helps.
Hi, Lori. I am fortunate currently to be showing paintings on vinyl records by Holly Jackson. Holly tells me she triple primes with Gesso and then paints with a soft bodied acrylic. Daniel Edlin is doing inspiring work and garnering some well-deserved attention it seems. Holly’s approach is somewhat different, featuring a musical instrument rather than the recording artist and fully covering the surface with paint rather than preserving some experience of the vinyl. Here is her “Tuba.” Tuba