❓ Frequently Asked Questions

Pointillism is an artistic technique developed in the 1880s by painters like Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Instead of mixing colors on a palette, pointillist artists apply small, distinct dots of pure color to a canvas. When viewed from a distance, these dots optically blend together in the viewer's eye to create the impression of a full image with depth and dimension.

ArtParTee brings this classical technique into the modern era with a playful twist: we use colorful golf tees instead of paint dots! Each bamboo golf tee becomes a "pixel" in your artwork, creating a three-dimensional pointillist effect. When you stand back and look at the completed tee board, thousands of individual tees blend together to reveal a striking portrait or image.

Just like traditional pointillism, the magic happens in the optical blending – what looks like individual colored circles up close transforms into a recognizable image from afar. It's art history meets sports memorabilia!

ArtParTee is a unique platform that transforms your favorite photos into stunning mosaic art made entirely from colorful bamboo golf tees. Whether you're a golf enthusiast, sports fan, or just looking for a unique way to display cherished memories, we offer multiple ways to bring your images to life.

Founded by a husband and wife team during the 2020 lockdown, we combine our backgrounds in design, technology, and exhibition work to create striking physical art pieces that stand out in any space. Each piece can contain thousands of individually placed tees, creating a tactile, three-dimensional artwork that's as fun to touch as it is to look at.

Our process is designed to be intuitive and fun:

1. Upload: Start by uploading your chosen image. This could be a portrait, pet photo, sports moment, or company logo.

2. Crop: Use our interactive cropping tool to focus on the most important part of your image. Remember, simplicity is key!

3. Background Removal (Optional): Remove the background to isolate your subject and create a cleaner final result.

4. Pixelate: Watch as our system converts your image into a pixel grid using our specially curated tee color palette. You can adjust colors using our pencil tool for perfect results.

5. Preview: See how your artwork will look as a physical tee board, with options for framing and mounting.

6. Choose Your Path: Order a DIY kit to build it yourself, purchase a digital download, or commission us to create a professional piece for you.

DIY Kits: Our DIY kits are 50 tees wide by 50 tees tall (2,500 tees total). They come with everything you need to create your own tee art at home: a pre-drilled board, all the colored tees sorted by color, and a numbered blueprint showing exactly where each tee goes. It's like paint-by-numbers, but with golf tees! Perfect for a fun weekend project or a unique gift-building experience.

Commissioned Pieces: Our commissioned works start at 50 tees wide but can scale much taller, allowing for significantly more detail and impact. We handle all the work – from design refinement to physical construction – and deliver a gallery-ready piece. These are perfect for offices, clubhouses, or homes where you want a statement piece without the DIY work.

Digital Downloads: Want the design for your own purposes? Digital downloads give you high-resolution files perfect for printing, sharing, or using as unique digital art.

The best tee art comes from bold, simple images with strong contrast. Here's what works well:

✅ Great choices:

• Close-up portraits (one or two faces)

• Single pets on plain backgrounds

• Sports action shots with clear subjects

• Logos, badges, or bold symbols

🚫 Challenging choices:

• Group photos with many people

• Landscape or scenic photos

• Low-contrast or very dark images

• Photos with too much fine detail

💡 Pro tip: If you squint at your image and it still looks recognizable, it'll probably work great as tee art! Check out our Image Guide for more detailed tips.

Every DIY kit comes with a detailed printed blueprint – your roadmap to creating perfect tee art! The blueprint shows your pixelated design with each circle containing a number that corresponds to a specific color in the included color key.

The blueprint includes:

• Numbered positions for every tee

• A color key

Simply match the number on the blueprint to the numbered tee bags, then push each tee into the corresponding pre-drilled hole on your board. It's methodical, meditative, and surprisingly satisfying!

Our system uses a carefully curated palette of bamboo golf tee colors, each mapped to specific colour codes for consistency and quality. The number of colors in your final piece depends on your original image and the processing settings you choose.

For DIY kits (50x50), we typically recommend using 6-12 colors for the best balance between visual impact and build complexity. Too many colors can make the building process tedious, while too few might lack depth and nuance.

For commissioned pieces, we can work with broader color ranges and even source custom tee colors for specific projects. Our pixelation process uses advanced dithering algorithms (Floyd-Steinberg, Atkinson, and others) to create smooth gradients and realistic shading from a limited color palette.

Our background removal tool uses advanced AI to automatically isolate your subject from its background, creating a transparent PNG. This is incredibly useful for creating cleaner, more focused tee art.

Once the background is removed, you have two options:

1. Keep it transparent: The transparent areas will show the white board underneath, creating a floating effect where tees are only placed on your subject.

2. Add a colored background: Choose from our tee color palette to fill the background with a solid color, making your subject pop.

The tool is especially helpful for portraits, pets, and subjects photographed against busy or distracting backgrounds. You can also use our pencil tool to manually refine any edges after background removal.

Creating your design online: Most people complete the online creation process in 10-20 minutes, including uploading, cropping, pixelating, and adjusting their image.

Building a DIY kit: A 50x50 tee board (2,500 tees) typically takes 4-8 hours to complete, depending on your pace. Many customers enjoy spreading this out over a weekend or several evenings, making it a relaxing, meditative project. Some people like to listen to music or podcasts while building!

Delivery times:

• Digital downloads: Instant access after purchase

• DIY kits: 5-7 business days for processing and delivery

• Commissioned pieces: 2-4 weeks depending on size and complexity

Currently, we ship DIY kits and commissioned pieces throughout the UK. International shipping is available for some products – please contact us directly to discuss international orders, as shipping costs and delivery times vary by location.

Digital downloads are available worldwide with instant access, making them a perfect option for international customers who want to enjoy ArtParTee designs or have their own local fabricator create the physical piece.