Tran Ngoc Tuan makes a flower picture from colorful wool

An artist from Da Lat in the Central Highlands has perfected the art of using wool scraps to create paintings.

Tuan has crafted hundreds of intricate and elegant wool paintings in his house in Hai Ba Trung Street, where he and his two apprentices work in a 12-square-meter wool-filled room.

A former electrician, Tuan began making paintings from scraps of wool left over from his wife’s knitting to use as teaching aids for her kindergarten classes.

His art pieces were immediately commended for their great creativity and artistic values.

He continued making paintings for sale and eventually his wife quit teaching to knit at home and help her husband make wool paintings.

According to 54-year-old Tuan, making a wool painting is a painstaking process.

His wool collages were also exhibited at the Ho Chi Minh City Center of Commercial Promotion and Investment earlier this month.

“The wool painting creator needs an artistic flair and has to be in a good mood to make a good wool painting,” Tuan said.

It also takes great dexterity and meticulousness to construct a wool painting, he added.

Though his finished collages cost anywhere from VND300,000 (US$18) to VND5 million ($299) and more than 100 paintings have been sold to date, his family’s main income comes from his wife’s wool knitting job.

“Wool paintings aren’t popular yet and it is a time-consuming task,” Tuan said. “A painting usually takes a week and sometimes more than a month to finish.”

“Some customers placed large orders but I can’t fill them. I can’t recruit more workers either, as the craft doesn’t have a promising future,” Tuan said.

“But we keep hoping it will be brighter tomorrow,” he said.

The artist must trace the outline of the chosen picture onto a panel of cardboard, tearing unspun wool into fragments and combining the pieces harmoniously to give the artwork a brilliant texture.

The pieces are then fixed into place with a home-made glue before the finished painting is put into a frame.

Tuan’s artworks span many subjects, with unspun wool giving him an excellent palette to recreate Da Lat’s sparkling landscapes, flowers and animals.

He recently tried his hand at making portraits and is the only artist to be able to craft this technically demanding kind of painting.

He refuses to sell this artwork even though he has been offered good prices as “the painting portrays an eminent political leader and should be gifted to an agency or organization instead of being sold.”

Tuan’s work has been displayed at several exhibitions, including the 2005 Da Lat Flower Festival.

Reported by Gia Binh