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Food

Sweet How-To Turns Candy Dots Into Pop Art Portraits

Candy art made from this instructable looks great—but keep it away from the ants.

This article was originally published on November 7, 2014 but we think it still rocks!

Some photographs are so mouth-wateringly beautiful, so well-composed, you just want to take a bite out of them. Thanks to this new instructable, you can turn this problem into a solution through the fabulous art of candy dots.

With just a little bit of Adobe magic and a lot of merengue powder, an Instructable from photographer Nathan Sharratt shows how images can be converted into the colorful candy dot papers that speckled our childhoods with slightly papery, totally sugary joy. Depending on the size of the image you desire to print, the process can become pretty time-intensive. Sharratt's wall-sized self portrait took a full week of heavy sugar-on-paper action. The result is stunning for both your eyes and your stomach.

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Once you've selected your image, the process consists of three basic parts: converting the image into halftones, printing the strips, and applying the sugary goo to each "pixel" dot. Sharrat himself uses Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and a free trial of the Phatasm plugin, to format the "pixels" properly. Halftones rely upon the eye to fill in the blanks between the lines, so getting the dots just right can make or break this project. Don't slack on the details, though, and you're only 13 simple steps away from having the dessert of Andy Warhol's dreams on your very own mantlepiece.

The details, tips, and tricks spread through those 13 steps are listed in full on Sharratt's Instructables page, where he demonstrates the making of Bathroom Selfie In Sugar And Spice And Also Ants, which debuted as part of his In Translation exhibition at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. We're about to apply this process to Warhol's Campbell's Soup Cans—making them actually edible may fly in the face of their artistry, but we'll never feel closer to the pop art icon.

h/t Instructables

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