Back in May, the Oilers reached out to the 23-year-old artist in anticipation of McDavid winning his third Hart Trophy. The team was looking for a unique way to capture the moment, and Sadiq was up for the challenge.
"It's super amazing to honor any athlete, but any time it's an iconic athlete like McDavid it's like, 'I would've done that one anyway,'" Sadiq told NHL.com. "I was super excited. I love it, absolutely love it."
The 5-by-4-foot piece took Sadiq about three and a half hours to design and build, uniquely solving each of the 560 Rubik's Cubes to create the correct color scheme for the portrait.
He's done a handful of other NHL portraits throughout the years, which he has posted on his Instagram account , including Detroit Red Wings forward Dylan Larkin and New Jersey Devils forward Nico Hischier. He also recently created a portrait of Vegas Golden Knights forward Jack Eichel.
Sadiq started creating these pieces of artwork two years ago after the COVID-19 pandemic forced his college classes at Rutgers University to move virtual. Studying biomedical engineering at the time, the then-junior wanted to think of some way to continue the hands-on portion of his education despite being stuck at home.
"My education was stunted, which was frustrating," Sadiq said. "I was just trying to find something to continue using that engineering process. That's exactly what I was doing."
So, he turned to Rubik's Cubes.
He said he learned how to solve the cube when he was 10 years old, so he thought it would be the perfect way to create the images.
"Images are made up of pixels," Sadiq said. "I figured if I have enough cubes, I can make an image out of it."
Sadiq graduated in May 2022 and has since turned his artwork into a full-time job.
He doesn't always hear back from the athletes after creating their portrait, but he sees all the comments on social media and says they're generally overwhelmingly positive.
"People are super loving and caring, which can be rare on social media," Sadiq said. "As an artist, that's all you can ask for."
