Portrait Made From a Single Thread Wrapped Around Thousands of Nails By Kumi Yamashita

Well, to some degree creativity is thought of as a natural talent, something you either have or don't have. This might have some truth to it but it's overstated. For the most part, 'creative people' are creative because they spend a lot of time thinking about things through the filter(s) of what the medium that they work in. It could be something as simple as one morning a young Kumi Yamashita noticed that a piece of crumpled paper kind of resembled a face then set out to deliberately crumple a paper to accurately resemble a face, then from there started to pay attention to the way shadows fall on objects and began iterations on the concept with the challenge of trying to make something appear less and less 'obvious' at first glance but have its shadow/second glance reveal the accuracy. By that point, she'd have already been permuting and considering varieties of ways to accomplish these ideas using assorted concepts and techniques that she'd honed and picked up along the way while simultaneously producing buttloads of work to put those ideas to the test. Eventually, those ideas might fill up or reach a point where they're no longer satisfying so she'd begin to open up to consider what similar sorts of optical effects could be created using entirely different methods. Assumedly she'll have dozens or more less intensive examples of this style kicking around in her studio with this piece being one of (or the) culmination of it. Point being, by the time you get to that spot, it appears to the outside observer as something that is completely out-of-left-field creative and unlike anything they've ever seen, and it may well be, but that perception is itself a trick of sorts that ignores(or is unaware of) the countless hours of work and dedication and pondering and experimentation that the artist goes through to get there.

... or some shit like that at least.

/r/pics Thread Parent Link - i.imgur.com