Selling life size "sculptures" made entirely by LEGO for £10,000 each

Parents the world over have watched their sons playing with Lego and dreamed they'll go on to build successful careers as, say, high-flying lawyers.

Well, quite what the parents of Nathan Sawaya are now thinking - the 36-year-old quit his job as corporate lawyer in 2001 to return to his boyhood obsession - creating shapes with those colourful building blocks.

But before you smirk, the artist is proving there is more to Lego than child's play - by selling his brick-based creations for a staggering £10,000 each.

This piece of Lego art of a man rising up is called Red.

His works, which are shown in galleries across the globe and are in demand by top art dealers, include life-size 'sculptures' and can each use 150,000 of the familiar little bricks .

Nathan Sawaya's Lego work Swimmer.

Sawaya spends between eight to 12 hours each day creating with Lego, but it depends on what he's working on. 'Sometimes when he get really into a sculpture, I can spend 18 hours at a time. He spend a lot of time sketching out his ideas on special graph paper that has the brick shapes printed on it. Then the rest of the day is spent building.

Buyers needn't worry about the artworks coming apart though, when Nathan is happy with a creation he rebuilds it, this time glueing the bricks together.