Stroud Play-Doh artist wanted to make art more accessible

Ms Macnair said she wanted to make art more accessible after her experience working in museums

An artist, who recreates famous photographs in Play-Doh, says she wanted to make art more accessible.

Eleanor Macnair from Stroud, Gloucestershire, started remaking photographic art from children's modelling clay in 2013.

She said the idea came after a "chain of events" and a "make a photo in Play-Doh" round during a friends pub quiz.

Ms Macnair said: "I was working for museums and I felt like a lot of stuff wasn't accessible."

She added: "You'd have to use certain language to talk about art and it would take itself quite seriously."

"You don't have to talk about art in fancy language to be able to enjoy it."

Inspired by her friends pub quiz, Ms Macnair said it's then that she decided to start creating and posting her art to Tumblr, in a medium which is easy and accessible for everyone.

Eleanor Macnair said the material is easy for everyone to access and wants art to be that way

Since then, Ms Macnair said she has honed her skills and mastered her craft while working on a desk in her bedroom.

She said: "My working tools are an empty wine bottle, a craft knife and a chopping board."

"I mainly work at night-time when my young son is asleep, or in between doing my day job," she added.

The pieces are made firstly by rolling out the background colour, then making the figures, and by building up the layers by making the clothing and garments.

She then takes a photograph of the artwork straight away as the dough starts to crack after 24 hours.

'Two hundred pots'

Ms Macnair said the hardest things to make were "things like eyebrows".

She said: "They're actually so so small. You need a cocktail stick and you need to roll it out really thin."

"I know it's a child material but it's so soft, that it breaks really easily," she added.

On how much Play-Doh she owns, Ms Macnair said: "I've got probably about 200 pots but I haven't bought any for about three years."

"You can just roll them back up, make sure they've got enough water on them, put them back in the pot and they do last for a long time."

"If you are thinking of having a go yourself, you need two things; cold hands and patience for the fiddly bits," she said.