An artist has created a microscopic sculpture of Barack Obama and his family in tribute to the first black president of the United States.

Willard Wigan MBE made the artwork from a slither of cable tie, which sits in the eye of a gold needle.

The 51-year-old said that being able to witness the first black presidency was a "dream come true" and something he wanted to mark.

He said: "This is a very significant piece. Being the first black president in history, I had to make a tribute like this as something to show my gratitude.

"It was my belief that I would never see anything like this in my lifetime. It's a dream come true. Martin Luther King's dream has finally come true."

Mr Wigan, from Birmingham, said he worked nearly 18 hours a day for seven weeks in a cupboard to create the sculpture.

"It became an obsession, it almost sent me insane. I had to make it right. I had to really concentrate, you have to be a dead man walking," he added.

The artwork is so small that a powerful microscope that magnifies the object 400 times is needed to see the detail clearly. Mr Wigan worked on it in between heartbeats to avoid mistakes.

He used a small splinter of a diamond as a chisel and to paint it he used a hair of a dead fly.

Mr Wigan said: "I found a piece of old cable tie and I cut out a microscopic slither, and put it under a microscope to carve out one piece, which is smaller than a full stop in a newspaper.

"To carve out the president's family I used a broken shard of a diamond and attached it with the tiniest spec of super glue and I attached it to a broken part of a needle.

"When I first heard that Barack Obama was going to be the first black president, I wanted to do the smallest, biggest tribute in history."

Mr Wigan said he wants the president to see his work and hopes to go to America to promote his artwork.

"I would like Oprah to see it," he said. "America will be in for a surprise. I'm sure no one would have seen anything like it before. My work knocks people out, you've not seen the best of me yet."

His work is currently on display at the Friar Lane gallery in Nottingham.