article_snippet: A Chinese university professor has created a series of vivid portraits of well-known figures using tiny pieces of jeans, reported the People's Daily Online.
article_snippet: The largest of all, an image of a Buddha, measures two metres (6.6ft) in height and comprises more than 10,000 pieces of denim.
article_snippet: Wang Xiaolei, an associate professor at Wuhan Textile University, started creating what Wang Xiaolei, an associate professor at Wuhan Textile University calls ‘denim paintings’ after visiting a town in China in 2007 which specialised in processing off-cut cloth pieces but had a terrible effect on the surrounding environment in doing so.
article_snippet: Wang Xiaolei, working on a portrait of Audrey Hepburn, embarked on the unusual endeavour of 'painting' with unwanted denim after witnessing how scrap cloth factories destroy the environment .
article_snippet: Wang Xiaolei, an associate professor at Wuhan Textile University interest was strengthen after an academic visit to the University of Manchester in 2008, during which Wang Xiaolei, an associate professor at Wuhan Textile University learned more ways of recycling scrap cloth.
article_snippet: Since then, Mr Wang's has collected tens of thousands of old jeans for experimenting with Mr Wang's art.
article_snippet: Mr Wang's says denim has a three-dimensional quality so it is easy to make shapes with.
article_snippet: To make a portrait, Mr Wang's first cuts jeans into large pieces and separates large pieces into different colour shadings.
article_snippet: Mr Wang's first cuts jeans into large pieces and separates large pieces into different colour shadings, before creating artworks of figures such as Leonardo DiCaprio (
article_snippet: Extended periods of concentration on these denim collages, separating the cloth into almost identical shades of colour, has also resulted in Mr Wang's eyes almost always being bloodshot.
article_snippet: : Chairs have also had the denim treatment from Mr Wang's .
highlights_snippet: ‘denim paintings’ in hope of protecting environment .
  
highlights_snippet: A painting could contain 10,000 pieces of denim and take 6 months to make .