Portraits from Rubik’s cubes

Solving a Rubik’s cube is not easy for most people. But for Prithveesh K, it is just a matter of 28 seconds.

Currently pursuing his Masters in Manipal University, 23-year-old Prithveesh makes portraits using Rubik’s cube. Hailing from Udupi, he has designed around 70 mosaic artworks till now, a hobby sparked by an early interest in the Rubik’s cube.

“It started during my engineering days. However, while making the portraits, I don’t necessarily solve the cubes. I shuffle them and arrange them to get the preferred image,” he says.

It was difficult initially as there was no easy and authentic tutorial available on the internet. Since the art was not that popular in India, Prithveesh learnt everything on his own.

His art has now made it to the Guinness and Limca Book of Records. “Our presentation in Guinness and Limca was dedicated to the world-class comedians. The portraits were dual-sided. One could see Charlie Chaplin on one side and Mr Bean on the other,” he says. It was the world’s first dual-sided mosaic portrait which included around 4,500 Rubik’s cubes.

His friends and family are enamoured by his hobby. “In fact, my family thinks I should make this a full-time career. As I am not sure how this will turn out as a profession, I am continuing to keep this as a hobby.”

Prithveesh takes about four to five days to complete each art work, mostly working on weekends.

In a bid to popularise the art, he started publishing his works on social media from 2016 onwards.

He has now conducted many workshops in schools and colleges, and trained around 3,500 children in solving the cubes. He has also penned a book on the techniques of solving a Rubik’s cube, titled ‘Rubik’s Magic’.

“My designs depend on the trending events. I have no prior ideas. I work towards making something relevant to current events,” he says.

He has started replicating the mosaic portraits on graph sheets, to preserve and display them better. “It is difficult to handle mosaic artworks. Hence, I started plotting the same on graph sheets which can also be framed,” he says.

Prithveesh has performed all over the country, including places like Hyderabad, Chennai and Uttar Pradesh. He has also participated in many reality shows like ‘India’s Got Talent’, ‘India Ke Mast Kalandar’, ‘Maja Bharatha’ and more.

Talking about the importance of Rubik’s cube, he says that it has helped him improve brain-hand-eye coordination along with increasing his memory power and concentration.

You can follow his work at ‘prithvimosaics’ on Facebook and Instagram.

(He can be contacted at [e-mail])