YUNLIN COUNTY, Taiwan (Reuters) — At his home in Taiwan’s Yunlin County, miniature artist Lee Chien-chu peers through a magnifying glass to take a closer look at one of his latest works of art – the alphabet carved from the lead of a mechanical pencil.
Lee creates miniature sculptures out of various types of pencil lead, all smaller than 0.5 centimeters in diameter. The piece of art he is holding up, however, is even smaller than that.
Each of the 26 letters is 0.1 millimeters long and measures 0.5 millimeters in height and width. Carving one letter took Lee 40 minutes to complete.
Born in 1973, Lee took to pencil lead art just six years ago, and gets his ideas from a variety of subject matter, including Chinese culture, famous landmarks, and religion.
“The subject matter I use for my creations can mostly be categorized as a Chinese style (of art) and with folklore characteristics,” he says. “Recently I have created a series about Buddha hands, a series about architecture, one about traditional (Chinese) weapons and one about the alphabet, 26 letters up to ‘z’. Those are all artworks that I like very much.”
The material he uses – graphite, mechanical and colored pencils – is cheap and easy to buy. “It can be bought at any ordinary bookstore or stationery shop,” he says, adding that he has never used a pencil that has cost more than $1 (around $35 TWD).
Close to Lee’s home is the Xilou Bridge, a famous landmark in Taiwan. He said its beautiful structure and bright-red beams had attracted his attention, leading him to find a pencil with the exact same color of lead to recreate the complex bridge in miniature form.
“When choosing subject matter for my sculpting, I always consider the shape and size of the pencil lead. So the rectangular Xilou Bridge is very suited to a rectangular pencil lead. That’s why I carved Xilou Bridge at the time,” he said, holding up his miniature version as he strolls past the real thing.
