Creativity manifests in myriad forms and for 40-year-old Sheen Herbert a bundle of colourful woollen threads did the trick. Sceneries, faces, birds… anything that catches his attention becomes a ‘woollen artwork’ in his hands.
Mr. Herbert, who has been working in the advertising field for 30 years, came up with the idea when he noticed similar creative artwork being done using rice grains and colour papers.
“But working with woollen threads is a task that needs a lot of patience,” explains Mr. Herbert, hailing from Valiathura here in the city.
It is difficult to get the right colour combinations sometimes especially while doing human face. If we cannot clearly define a feature on the face, the look will be completely changed. If the face has many wrinkles or additional features, it is easier though, says the artist.
He has ‘woven’ the faces of many famous personalities from cultural and film fields and gifted singers K.J. Yesudas and K.S. Chithra their portraits.
His art has many admirers in India and abroad.
A woollen thread work based on the famous painting, the ‘Last Supper’ is so far his most time-consuming work. He took more than a month, working eight hours a day, to complete the 5 ft long and 3 ft wide canvas in which he used threads of more than 50 colours.