World renowned artist Rob Surette has recently completed a mind-blowing portrait of Jesus Christ made out of 24,790 colored push pins. The amazing work of art measures 5.5 feet x 4 feet, and took the artist six months to finish.

Rob Surette has been fascinated by pointillism ever since he discovered the art of Georges Seurat, who invented the dot painting technique during the late 1800s. He became a master of it himself and now creates incredible works of art that always has viewers asking how he achieves such elaborate visual illusions. “They stand close to the image and say, ‘All I see is push pins!’ and then they walk backwards, away from the artwork and say, ‘It looks so real! How is that possible?'” Rob says is the reaction of most people. Before starting work on this portrait, Surette set a record for the world’s largest Lite Brite creation (513,000 pieces), and wondering what other objects he could use to create a portrait out of dots, he settled on push pins.

Up close, viewers can clearly see the entire portrait of Jesus is made from just white, black, yellow, red, green, blue, purple and magenta push pins, but as they take a few steps back, the human eye starts blending the colors together producing realistic flesh tones and brown hair. He says the same technique is used for creating full color magazine pictures with printing presses. The artist spent six months on this project, working on it for approximately one hour every day, seven days a week. The price tag for this unique representation of Jesus is $250,000.

Rob Surette has even bigger plans for the future. For his next projects he intends to create a Mickey Mouse portrait out of thousands of regular pins, and after that he wants to make a giant white lion sculpture from LEGO bricks. They both sound very intriguing and we can’t wait to feature them on OC.

Thanks a lot for the photos, Rob!