They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Each of the images in this gallery is made of up up to 200,000 words of varying lengths, heights and colours. Amateur Spanish artist Juan Osborne scours speeches, lyrics and books for the words associated with his subjects.
Each picture is painstakingly pieced together on his netbook using software he designed himself. He says: "People are surprised when I tell them that my work is created using a standard netbook and software that I built myself - which is very basic. There are no limits to creativity - if I need something or think of a new way to make something I just create a new application to do it. I feel free without the need for commercial software."
Click to enlarge images
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| The Beatles made from lyrics of 290 of their songs |
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| A portrait of Sir Winston Churchill |
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| made of the phrase Never, never, never, never give up - a quote from a speech he made on October 29, 1941 at Harrow School |
Juan says: "Words are powerful, they go straight into the human mind and really add something to my pictures that you can't get from a regular picture taken with a camera. Mine have stories behind them that can be read, which is pretty unique. I've made so many now that I've got the process down to a tee and can churn out a lot in a short space of time - maybe just a few days each."
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| A portrait of Charles Darwin with the most frequent words in the book On the Origin of Species |
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| The Words of Jesus |
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| a picture of Kate Middleton and Prince William. |
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| is made of words from their engagement announcement |
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| A portrait of Kurt Cobain made using words from Nirvana lyrics |
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| A portrait of John Lennon made using words from the song Imagine |
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| A portrait of US President Barack Obama made from the transcriptions of more than one hundred of his speeches |
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| A portrait of Pablo Picasso made up with words from titles of his paintings |
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| The famous picture of a man standing in front of a column of tanks on Tiananmen Square |
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| made using the word 'Freedom' in about 50 different languages |
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| Vincent van Gogh's painting Starry Night |
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| made with the words of his quote: "I often think that the night is more alive and more richly coloured than the day" |
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| Juan Osborne at his computer |
He says that he now plans to create a colossal super picture consisting of one million words: "My biggest one so far was a mere half a million words, but I want to go one better - or half a million better. The only problem I have is finding somewhere to print a picture that big."
