A THURROCK man's living room carpet has become a moving feast of art.

Talented Andy Joyce from Grays has been furloughed from his job as a sales development manager but he has found an artistic way to pass the time and had been delighting followers on his Facebook page by creating amazing carpet portraits.

'Bored' Andy, 47, started "messing around" with his newly laid, deep pile carpet "stripping" it up like Wembley's pristine football surface. Then came some more expansive ideas...

He was inspired initially by his wife Wendy's key worker role, as a Health Care Assistant at Spire Hartswood Hospital, Brentwood.

Andy, from Grays, explained: "The first stripes were done really late at night as my wife was on night shifts and the kids were in bed. "I just wanted to put something amusing on FB to make people smile and also make Wendy smile when she came home in the morning.

"Then when, on the first day that everyone clapped for the NHS heroes, it inspired me to do a huge heart with NHS written underneath.

"I put the pictures on Facebook and people started liking and sharing, and it's now became a bit of a big thing."

Since being furloughed from his sales job - where Andy worked with hotels, restaurants and pubs - he is now temporarily delivery driving for Iceland. And then, when he gets home every night, it's back to the floor…Charlie Chaplin has appeared with many others including a Storm Trooper, the Gotham City skyline, Freddie Mercury and even an elaborate Donald Trump.

He said: "I reckon Trump took a couple of hours - quite often you have to scrub them out and start again. The NHS heart message was pretty quick - ten mins or so as there wasn't a lot of detail. On average though they are at least an hour.

Genious

"The first few only took a few minutes, but Donald Trump took the longest. Also Mona Lisa took ages because it was the first proper 'arty' one. I've done 22 in total now."

And it's all thanks to lockdown his genius surfaced.

He said: "It's amazing what you have time for. Once you have done every bit of DIY and gardening there is still plenty of time in the day. Every now and again I put a Coronavirus specific message in it if it's relevant to the picture. I liked the Freddie Mercury one that said 'NHS are the champions'."

And his family Wendy, 46, Oscar, 12, and Isla, 8, certainly don't want him stopping now while he's having a good time…

"The kids love it. It's great when they come down in the morning and go 'wow', Oscar has been sharing the pics with his pals on WhatsApp. And on Isla's birthday she came downstairs to a unicorn and a birthday message in the carpet.

"My wife Wendy helps me do them now as they need an extra pair of eyes to make sure they look good. (She is a bit more of a perfectionist than me)."

And how do the ideas keep coming….?

He added: "Sometimes they are relevant to the day. Like the first NHS one. And the VE day one. Sometimes people make requests on FB. Usually we just think of somebody iconic and find a picture that we can copy.

"They need to be black and white stencil style pics otherwise the detail won't work. You can't even do shades of grey in between black and white. The pics need to recognisable using just black and white and very little detail. The best detail you can get is about an inch wide. Anything finer gets lost."

Story courtesy of Caters News.