Raj Sadosh/Abohar.
More than 150 volunteers, aged 11-75 years, from across the UK created a 1,125-square-foot portrait of Pramukh Swami Maharaj, in six months, using bubble wrap, which has now been formally recognised as the largest of its kind by Guinness World Records.
(MOREPIC1) The spectacular artwork covered a 25-foot high and 45-foot-wide canvas using 886 metres of bubble wrap with over 850,000 bubbles. Each 5mm bubble was individually injected with colour using a syringe, ensuring the exact amount of paint per bubble. In total, the portrait used 335 litres of paint with 320 shades of colour.
To ensure that the correct colour was injected into the correct bubble, a special software programme was used to categorise the 850,000 bubbles. Each bubble was then painstakingly numbered by hand for 100 percent accuracy.None of the participants had ever undertaken such a project before.
(SUBHEAD)When completed, the dry bubble wrap was glued to wood panels for support raising the weight to 4.5 tonnes. The completed devotional painting was then cut into 104 individual pieces, it was transported to Ahmedabad and displayed at Pramukh Swami Maharaj’s Janam Shatabdi Mahotsav.
Renu Depala, assistant head of marketing for a telecommunications firm in London, said, “Pramukh Swami Maharaj coloured our lives with spirituality and compassion. This was our opportunity to create a kaleidoscope from hundreds of shades of colour in a humble recognition of his inspiration to humanity.”
Devika Patel, a biomedical scientist, also from London, said, “We decided on bubble wrap to form the basis of the portrait because it’s such a low-key material and yet we can turn into a work of art – which is exactly what Pramukh Swami Maharaj did; he turned seemingly ordinary people into spiritual masterpieces. We were especially energised to complete this mammoth task because Mahant Swami Maharaj himself began the painting by injecting the first bubbles with colour in Surat and gave his blessings and encouragement to all us volunteers.”
