This Artist Paints With Barbie Dolls and Boxing Gloves

Jensen Dean, an Australian artist, builds celebrity portraits out of objects borrowed from his subjects' own lives!

From dolls, dumbbells, and knives to whatever the face on the canvas has spent a career being known for. The tool isn't a gimmick bolted on after the fact. It's the starting point!

The Tool Tells All

Painting Mike Tyson? Dean laced up boxing gloves and went at the canvas with them. Painting Gordon Ramsay? A knife. Painting Margot Robbie? A Barbie doll.

Dean used the doll's hair and its plastic feet to lay down the paint, a nod to Robbie's turn in the Barbie movie. The very object that made the role famous became the thing that made the portrait.

Once you know the rule, every piece reads twice: first as a face, then as a puzzle. What did he use, and why that?

Strange Method, Familiar Face

Here's the part that keeps people staring. Dean's process throws out almost everything a portrait painter relies on: fine control, small marks, and a tip you can actually steer. A doll's foot is a terrible brush. A boxing glove is worse.

And the portraits still land. The likeness is immediate. You don't squint at a Dean painting trying to work out who it is; you recognize the person, then work backward to the absurdity of how they got there.

Meet More Artists Like Jensen

Dean is one of the artists featured in Ripley's brand-new annual book, Ripley's Believe It or Not! Wired Into Weird , on sale now!

Inside, you'll find a suit made of cork. A sculpture assembled from pennies. A working guitar built out of a fish. Portraits made with pizza. And so much more! Ready to see all we packed inside?

ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!