A Canadian student has created a replica of the Queen using “at least a couple of hundred” pieces of tape, which has gone viral and been labelled “the best tribute ever” by followers.
Matt Palandra, who is known as themagicmatt on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube and is a computer engineering student at the University of Toronto, spent seven hours creating an A4 image of the Queen after her death on Thursday.
The artwork was the result of a request from his followers, and reflects the late monarch’s face when a light is shone behind it.
“Literally minutes after the royal family posted [that the Queen has died], I had at least 20 comments instantly asking me if I could please make a tribute to the Queen,” the 19-year-old said.
“I tried to make one that was tasteful and to the best of my ability because I love creating content for my followers and want to deliver.”
He added that he did not expect the art to take seven hours to complete but he wanted to “make it right”.
“As soon as the news happened, a lot of people posted tributes which were cool artwork like collages, but I wanted to add a story to it,” he said.
“I made a video showing how I made the art, where I did a voiceover and I included a quote from the Queen.
“I spent a lot of time looking through videos of public addresses that the Queen did to include the right quote.”
His video also had quotes from world leaders commenting on the Queen’s death, including French president Emmanuel Macron, as well as the date of her funeral – September 19.
He also used a black-and-white photo of the Queen which the royal family posted as a reference, which he said “spoke to me”.
After he printed off that image, he used a separate piece of paper to plot which parts of his work would be darker, including the highlights in her hair and her pupils, and stacked several bits of tape on top of each other to ensure that when the work went into the light, the darker parts would stand out.
He added: “For the darker areas, I use around three layers of tape, for the slighter lighter areas I use two layers and the lightest areas have one layer.”
His tribute has accumulated over seven million views across his social media platforms, which has made Mr Palandra “really happy” because “people are appreciating what I like”.
“It’s something unique to me, it’s something that I like doing and I’m really happy to see that people are taking a liking to it.
“On the day I made the art, I posted a video of it to TikTok and within the first hour or so, it was at 8,000 views.
“And then the next morning I woke up and I had million of views and it was kind of a shock. I didn’t think it would be so well-received, but I was definitely happy with it.”
Despite racking up millions of likes, Mr Palandra is a relative novice to the craft, having begun making art using tape a couple of months ago, and said the endeavour was a “big risk”.
“I didn’t know if it was going to work out and to be honest, when I made my first one I put the light behind it and thought does it look that good? I couldn’t really tell,” he said.
However, he has since gone on to create unique versions of other people who have made a huge impact in their respective fields including footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, and added that an email from one follower about his latest tribute “warmed his heart”.
“My grandmother (Maureen Levins, 77) grew up for almost her whole life with the Queen being in power and she was very into the royal family and is Irish,” he said.
“And it’s funny because my uncle made her an Instagram account and she followed me, unbeknownst to me, and after I posted I got an email from my grandmother saying – ‘I saw your video on Instagram, this is the best tribute I’ve ever seen. I’m always so proud of you.’
“That was so sweet and obviously from a grandmother, that really warmed my heart.”
Other comments included “that was beautiful Matt. Such a nice way to honour her” and “this is the best you’ve done by far”.
He said that news of the Queen’s death was something that “no one could believe”.
“It’s crazy how 70 years of reigning can come to an end.
“When the news broke, my grandmother called my house and was a bit distraught about it, so it was good to also do the tribute and get that response from her.”
