As noted above, Obaminoes is related to pointillistic images which are made up of thousands and thousands of small colored (usually) dots. It was begun by Seurat and continues over 120 years later to engage many artists - including the quadrapelegic artist Chuck Close.
 Seraut's La Parade (1889) |
 Seraut's La Parade (1889) |
In some sense any image printed in a newspaper or on a dot-matrix printer is a pointillistic image as it is made up solely of small dots.
More recently computers have been used to render artistic images using all sorts of fundamental components other than just dots. Quite interesting are photomosaics which are images made from hundreds and hundreds of photo images that are reduced and then used to create pixel-like components that create the mosaic. The larger image is usually closely related to the images that make it up. Below is "Aids Quilt" which features a person who is anguished by the ravages of Aids. The individual components that make up this photomosaic are images of the Aids Quilt.
 Aids Quilt, 1998 |
There are programs that you can download to make your own photomosaics and many online companies contract to make custom photomosaics. The tools needed to make these photomosaics are closely related to those used here to create the pattern for domino artwork.