Lego Art Iron Man: Take some time for yourself

One thing I've learned during this pandemic is that one can never have too many activities to stay occupied while cooped up at home. For me, that means streaming late '90s and early 2000s TV shows, playing video games , learning to play ukulele, building ukuleles, cross-stitching and more. 

One thing I haven't been doing much of during quarantine is building Lego sets, which is weird, since I used to do that pretty regularly during the before times. I guess maybe I've slowed down since I'm running out of shelf space to display them all. Now, Lego has debuted a new line of building sets, aimed specifically at stressed-out adults, called Lego Art, designed to be hung on the wall instead.

The Lego Art series was released earlier this month, and features designs inspired by Star Wars , Andy Warhol, The Beatles and Marvel 's  Iron Man . Lego was kind enough to send me one of the Iron Man sets so I could share the building experience with you. 

'Listen, build, relax'

Each Lego Art set comes with instructions to build three or four different designs, but not at the same time. So you can choose to build your favorite Beatle or version of Iron Man armor, but you'll need to take it apart to build a different one (or buy multiple sets). If you do invest in three Iron Man or Star Wars sets, however, Lego offers free downloadable instructions to combine them into one Ultimate Build. The jumbo Darth Vader build looks pretty rad.

Each series also comes with a QR code so you can access a "uniquely curated soundtrack" for you to listen to while you're building. While I was working on the Iron Man Mark III design, I enjoyed what was essentially a 90-minute podcast about Marvel Comics, featuring interviews with comic book experts, Marvel staffers and the Lego designers who created the set.

As far as building the set goes, I'd have to say I would probably have been more relaxed if I wasn't trying to record the whole process with three different cameras from multiple angles. I did listen to the soundtrack while doing so, and it was quite engaging. It was especially interesting to learn that the Lego Art sets were originally created using square pieces, but the image ended up looking too pixelated. The circle pieces helped give the designs a softer look, plus they allowed the black background to show through.

Building the set was also time-consuming. It includes a total of 3,167 pieces, and while you don't use them all for each design, the grid of 48 by 48 studs accounted for a total of 2,304 little round pieces that had to be put in just the right place. My fingers were a little sore by the end of it, but that's the pain I'm willing to put up with to bring you this kind of content.

One of these days when I have some down time, I'll probably take the set apart so I can build a different design. Then I'll see just how relaxing the whole experience can be. I don't think I'll be buying two more sets to complete the triptych, but I could maybe see splurging on one of the Warhol sets. A magenta Marylin Monroe could really tie my living room together.

Lego Art Iron Man is exclusive to Lego.com and Lego retailers, and is available now. The other three sets will be available on Sept. 1.