Thomas Pavitte is turning the colouring book trend on its head with a new take on an old classic.
Pavitte's 1000 Dot-To-Dot series have sold 400,000 copies worldwide, now he's turned his attention to colour-by-numbers
If you haven't seen Thomas Pavitte's take on the classic dot-to-dot already, you're missing out. Have a look at our interview with the artist behind the books, which have sold 400,000 copies worldwide.
But now he's turned his attention to a new retro artform: "paint by numbers", with just with a twist or, well, more of a spin...
"The inspiration came from seeing the guidelines of many iconic logos," he explains. "Many of them are constructed through very precise geometry and I noticed consisted mainly of circles."
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Thomas prefers the black and white tones to colour in his Quirkles, but you can always mix it up for an Andy Warhol look
"I wanted to see if I could take this concept and create more detailed illustrations out of them. I experimented with an illustration of a scene from the movie Bladerunner to see how the idea would work."
Thomas' original experiment with the use of an image from his favourite sci-fi flick, Blad Runner
His pop-art style colour-by-numbers images came about when his publishers in London were curious to see how the concept would translate into a colouring in book.
"I was skeptical at first because of the complexity of my Bladerunner image," the artist admits. "To create something similar for a colouring in book, I would need to radically simplify things."
Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Jimi Hendrix and Mohammad Ali are among the icons you can colour in with Quirkles
Thomas settled on the idea of limiting the illustrations to just having 5 shades or colours, after numerous experiments. "When it came to numbering all the segments that the circles create, I numbered them so that number 1 would be the darkest shade or colour and number 5 would be the lightest."
The iconic pop art print of Che Guevara gets a circular reimagining
His process is very manual and similar to how he creates the 1000 dot-to-dot artwork.
"I draw all the circle on top of a reference image one by one. Each drawing consists of approximately 600 to 1000 individual circles," he reveals.
As you colour in by tone, it's important to take this into consideration if you decide to stray away from black, white and grey
"Personally, I prefer the black and white versions, but if people want to use colour, they are completely free to create their own colour combinations. Colour works best if you order them in tonal order. #1 Should always be the darkest colour and #5 should always be the lightest."
The Quirkles book series: you can colour pop culture icons or perhaps painting a masterpiece is more your cup of tea
Alice Pattillo is a freelance journalist with a passion for heavy metal, horror, science fiction, fantasy and comics. She has over seven years experience in magazines, formerly working as a staff writer at Creative Bloq, Imagine FX, Computer Arts and 3D World, as production editor for Guitar World and Guitar Player and online editor of Metal Hammer.
