It took Athens, Greece-based artist Charis Tsevis about a week of 16-hour days to create this trippy mosaic portrait of Steve Jobs for Brazilian magazine ALFA.

Tsevis is an old hand at innovative Apple collages, whose work has appeared in Fortune and inspired a send-up of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

This one is something of a departure, taking us back to the colorful early days of Apple history. More on the inspiration behind it and close-ups after the jump.

“They wanted the psychedelic, the hippie, the younger Steve,” Tsevis says. “Their article is talking about the his trips in India and in LSD as well as the first days of Apple. I decided to take a collage approach to the illustration using very old and probably kitsch Apple II advertisements from the late 70s and early 80s.”

I have based my whole portrait on the historic photo of Steve with the Apple but of course I wanted to put more color and more dynamics to it.”

The result is colorful stroll through Apple history — check out the vintage “Adam” ad lower left in the detail above — as well as a nice portrait of a young, vibrant Jobs.

Via Flickr