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

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