Malaysian Artist Makes Celebrity Portraits from Scribbles

For the average illustrator, scribbling isn’t the best way to create realistic-looking portraits. But then again, Vince Low isn’t your average illustrator. The Malaysian artist somehow manages to produce impeccable portraits of some of Hollywood’s greatest actors using only childish scribbles.

The lead illustrator of Malaysian advertising agency, Grey, Vince Low has an impressive portfolio of stunning artworks, but his latest portrait series, called Faces, is particularly eye-catching. That’s because the stunning depictions of stars like Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Will Smith or Leonardo Di Caprio were all done exclusively with scribbles on blank white canvases. Most people would have a hard time capturing their unique features using classic drawing techniques, but he creates highly accurate facial representation just by overlapping thousands of swirling lines. Amazing or what?

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Artist Spends Years Working on Just One of His Incredibly Detailed Drawings

The pen-and-ink drawings of Manabu Ikeda are enormous in both size and detail. Working on paper canvases several meters in size, the Japanese artist spends up to two years on a single one of his masterpieces, never knowing what they are going to look like until they are finished.

Manabu Ikeda begins work on his monumental artworks by sketching some images in his sketchbook as they pop into his head. He is always thinking about his art and sometimes sees images when he is doing the most mundane things, like having dinner with his friends. His drawing are a combination of the things that inspire him, from nature and history to technological advancements and catastrophic events like earthquakes or tsunamis. Although he has an idea of what he wants to lay down on paper when he starts to draw, a lot of time he just uses the images that flash in his mind as he is working, and the end result is a big mystery until the final stages of the drawing process. Filling a white canvas big enough to cover a large wall is a painstaking task, as Ikeda works at a very slow pace. His works are so insanely detailed that he will sometimes work for eight hours a day on a single 4-inch square trying to get everything just right.

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The Amazing Pencil-Drawn Illusions of Ramon Bruin

Netherlands-based Ramon Bruin is a mostly self-taught artist with a gift for creating amazing optical illusions. He is well-versed in airbrushing and painting, but his most impressive works require only a pencil and a few pieces of paper.

The best word I can think of to describe Ramon Bruin’s art is “mind-blowing”. “The art I make is what I like to call optical illusionism,” the gifted artist says. “It appears the drawings are 3D and actually leap off the page. It’s of course all optical illusions.” He uses a variety of methods to achieve the desired result, including the anamorphic technique – drawing detailed yet distorted images which looks incredibly realistic only when photographed from the right angle. “The main thing about my art is they are photographs of drawings. It’s all about the photograph,” Bruit told The Huffington Post. “I draw out of perspective and when I’m done I take a photograph from one particular angle and the whole image appears to leap off the page. It can only be seen on the photograph – you can’t see it live.” To make his 3D wonders even more impressive, he often draws them on multiple pieces of paper and adds props like pencils and his own hands.

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Vietnamese Artist Carves Bamboo Roots into Beautiful Statuettes

For the past seven years, Vietnamese artist Huynh Phuong Do, from Hoi An, has been making a name for himself by carving beautiful portraits of Buddhist deities and historical figures out of bamboo stumps and roots.

Huynh Phuong Do relaunched his artistic career completely by accident. He had been carving wood since he was 15-years-old, but living in Hoi An, famously known as Vietnam’s Bamboo Village, it was hard for him to stand out among dozens of other talented craftsmen and sculptors. But one day, seven years ago, floods in the upper reaches of the Thu Bon River brought bamboo stumps to the river bank in front of his house. The debris stirred something in Do’s mind, and he took a few stumps to make sculptures out of them. Little did he know this was the beginning of a very successful business. Today, Huynh Phuong Do has his own sculpture showroom, and his works can be found in over 20 Hoi An souvenir shops. He spends all his days contemplating bamboo roots, thinking of ways to give them a realistic human appearance, and struggles to make between 200 and 300 pieces a month to keep up with demand from tourists.

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Artist Creates Amazing Tree Troll Inspired by Her Father

Seattle-based artist Kim Beaton enlisted the help of 25 volunteers to build an awe-inspiring 12-foot-tall tree troll exclusively out of non-toxic materials. The kind face of this forest giant was inspired by her late father, a lumberjack from Montana.

In 2006, Kim Beaton and a team of volunteers spent 15 days creating a unique tree troll out of papier mache, wood, metal plates and other non-toxic materials. Although the entire sculpture looks unbelievably realistic, it’s friendly face and beautiful blue eyes immediately grab the viewer’s attention. Trolls are not exactly known as friendly creatures, but Beaton’s is special. The artist explains: “[My father] had died a few months prior at 80 years old. On June 2nd, at 3am, I woke from a dream with a clear vision burning in my mind. The image of my dad, old, withered and ancient, transformed into one of the great trees, sitting quietly in a forest. I leaped from my bed, grabbed some clay and sculpted like my mind was on fire. In 40 minutes I had a rough sculpture that said what it needed to. The next morning I began making phone calls, telling my friends that in 6 days time we would begin on a new large piece. The next 6 days, I got materials and made more calls. On June 8th we began, and 15 days later we were done. I have never in my life been so driven to finish a piece.”

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Pu Derong’s Exquisite Eggshell Carvings

What do you get if you combine an egg, a carving knife and a pair of able hands? In Pu Derong’s case the answer is a breathtaking work of art. The 40-year-old self-taught artist from China’s Hebei Province can guide a knife across an egg’s thin shell to create amazing three-dimensional designs.

“I had always been fascinated by eggs as a child,” Pu says. “They are so fragile. Artists use canvases; eggs are mine.” The talented artist from Dongzhuangtou village showed a great interest in painting and calligraphy from a very young age, but he didn’t have the financial resources to attend a specialized art school, so he taught himself. In his adult years he did all kinds of manual labor, worked as a repairman and as a chef, but never gave up on his passion for art. One day, he discovered eggshell carving completely by accident, and he’s been hooked ever since. He made his own carving knife, and after hundreds of failed attempts, he started to master the art of carving on a fragile 0.3 mm eggshell canvas, creating all kinds of beautiful designs, from nature-inspired patterns, to Chinese traditional motifs and architectural pieces. Today, he is recognized as one of China’s most skilled artists, and his masterpieces have won several awards in various contests and exhibitions.

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Self-Taught Artist Turns Dead Trees into Urban Artworks

During the last six years the Ukrainian city of Simferopol has been transformed into an urban art gallery by a mysterious artist who carves wooden statues out of dead tree trunks. There are now dozens of these incredible works of art spread throughout the Crimean city.

Not many took notice when the first wooden masterpieces started showing up in various areas of Simferopol, but in time the city became filled with them, and people began wondering who was behind them? Was it the local authorities, a local art group or did the trees magically transform into detailed sculptures? There were all kinds of rumors going around, but local media was finally able to track down the “perpetrator”. His name is Igor Dzheknavarov, and remarkably he’s not a trained sculptor or carpenter, but a cook. “Cooking is the biggest art of all,” he jokingly told surprised reporters. “If you can fry potatoes, you can do anything.” Ten years ago Igor taught himself how to sculpt, and at one point started using his newly discovered skill to improve the look of his city. He calls himself a co-artist, as all of his works are inspired by the unique lines and twists of the trees he carves.

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Honebana – The Detailed Animal Bone Flowers of Hideki Tokushige

Excavated Neanderthal bones often had traces of pollen around them, indicating that even back then flowers were used to celebrate the deceased. Japanese artist Hideki Tokushige uses animal bones to recreate various flowers, thus honoring the longstanding connection between the two.

“We’ve been creating paintings and sculptures for over 70,000 years and our relationship to bones is just as old,” Tokushige explains. “Everything around us – clothes, nuclear power plants, internet – can be traced back to the structure of bones.” Inspired by the cycle of life and death and the relationship between flowers and death, the Japanese artist started creating stunningly detailed Honebana, or bone flowers. It all started one day, when Hideki Tokushige was coming home from work. He saw a dead raccoon in the middle of the street, and instead of simply ignoring it or throwing it in a waste bin, he took it home, removed the bones and used them as an art medium. Originally trained in photography, Hideki found a way to assemble the bones into intricate floral sculptures that are shockingly beautiful to look at.

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Amazing Model of Matsumoto Castle Made Entirely Out of Corrugated Cardboard

A Japanese artist known only as “Upunushu”, has created an amazingly detailed replica of Matsumoto Castle, a National Treasure of Japan, using only pieces of corrugated cardboard.

Cardboard is certainly not the easiest medium to work with when trying to recreate an architectural wonder like Matsumoto Castle, but Japanese artist, Upunushu, proves it can definitely be done. According to footage posted on Japanese video sharing site NicoNicoDouga and other media reports, this young master spent an entire week just planning the project, and another six months cutting out all the necessary pieces and assembling them as a model of the famous Crow Castle. It certainly wasn’t the shortest modelling project, but in terms of cost, this stunning piece of art couldn’t have been cheaper. Using cardboard boxes as the main material of her build, the talented artist spent just ¥300 ($2.95) on supplies. Apparently, just getting the castle’s stone base right took Upunushu two months to complete, as she had to glue each cardboard brick individually. The talented Upunushu has been creating incredible cardboard models ever since she was in fifth grade. Now in her mid-twenties, the artist has improves a lot since her early years, and plans to build even more intricate replicas.

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The Ancient Art of Tibetan Butter Sculpting Is Melting Away

For the last 400 years, Tibetan monks have been using butter from yak milk to create large and intricate sculptures inspired by stories of Buddha, animals or plants and putting them on display during the annual Butter Lantern Festival. Unfortunately, the long and difficult process of making these exquisite works of art has led to a shortage of gifted lama artists.

The art of butter sculpting was born from the Tibetan tradition of giving Buddha everything they got from their domestic animals. Nomadic tribes with large herds of sheep and yaks regarded the first butter from each dri (female yak) as the most precious one and offered it to Buddhist monasteries, where monks shaped it into beautiful colored sculptures and offered it to the enlightened ones. The tradition was passed on from generation to generation, and even today, dozens of Tibetan monks work for months on a single giant butter sculpture that must be ready before the 15th of January, the climax of celebrations of the Tibetan New Year, as it mark the triumph of Lord Buddha over his six non-Buddhist teachers who challenged him in performing miracles. During the day, people pray in temples and monasteries, and as the night comes they head to Lhasa’s Barkhor Street to admire the hundreds of artistic butter sculptures, ranging from just a few centimeters in size to several stories high. This colorful display attracts millions of tourists both from Tibet and abroad.

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Talented Illustrator Doodles Photo-Realistic Ballpoint Pen Portraits

Doodling may not seem like the right word to describe Jacob Everett’s detailed artworks, but he does in fact use overlapping elliptical patterns to create incredibly realistic portraits of celebrities and homeless people from the streets of Bradford.

“I am a portrait artist working with biro on paper,” Jacob describes his technique. “I produce large-scale portraits using an intricate technique of overlapping elliptical marks, which gradually build to represent the subtle contours of the face. In common with digital images, my works, close up, appear as thousands of tiny ‘pixels’. When viewed from a distance they reveal the subtleties and nuances of individual character.” Using loops to accentuate the tiniest features of the subject’s face is a time-consuming process, and the 23-year-old illustrator spends several weeks on a single piece, concentrating on one section of their visage at a time. The finished product is always an awe-inspiring masterpiece that viewed from up-close looks like a sea of tiny pixels, but from afar reveals all the subtle contours of the person’s face.

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The Drinkable Masterpieces of a Japanese Anime Latte Artist

If you’re a fan of coffee and Japanese anime, you’re going to love these amazingly detailed latte portraits of famous Japanese cartoon characters. They are the creations of Twitter user, Sugi, who only started doing latte art a year ago.

I’m a big fan of coffee art, whether it’s executed directly on a cup of joe or on a canvas, using the delicious medium as paint, so when I saw these incredible works of anime art I just couldn’t resist sharing them with you guys. If you thought latte hearts and leaves were cool, Sugi’s designs are probably going to blow your mind. The talented Japanese barista only took up coffee art last April, but she is already able to create unbelievable portraits of anime characters like Sailor Moon or Naruto in stunning detail. Using only toothpicks, chocolate syrup for the dark areas and cocktail syrups for the other colors, Sugi hand-draws two-three of her beautiful artworks every day. So far, she has created over 800 latte masterpieces, and posted photos of them on her Twitter page.

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The Meticulously Woven Mugshots of Joanne Arnett

American artist Joanne Arnett combines photography and embroidery into an amazing new art form. Using thread and steel wire, she is able to reproduce people’s mugshots in photo-like quality.

We’ve featured some impressive embroidered artworks on Oddity Central in the past, but Joanne Arnett’s masterpieces are in a class of their own. Living and working near the banks of the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, the talented artist hand-weaves every photo onto a canvas made of steel wire. According to The Jealous Curator, “she weaves large scale portraits with wire so the face is visible when light bounces off it. The images shift, like a giant daguerreotype from positive to negative depending on where the viewer stands, or sometimes they completely disappear into the plane of fabric.” It’s simply amazing how she can turn these embarrassing mugshots into something so beautiful, and the fact that she names every work of art after the subject’s sentence just adds to their charm. If you thought weaving and embroidery were just outdated crafts your grandmother used to practice, Joanne Arnett’s stunning artworks will definitely change your mind.

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Sharkskin Designer Gloves Are a Real Pain to Take Off

If you’re looking for a pair of comfortable designer gloves, stay away from Sruli Recht’s pain-inducing mitts. The Australian designer used an inner lining made of basking shark skin, which features thousands of hook-like scales.

From the outside, Sruli Recht’s Lasting Impression looks like a nice and soft basking shark skin glove, but there’s a thorny surprise waiting inside for would-be wearers. The eccentric designer decided to fit the interior of his creation with thousands of sharp hook-like scales, all directed inward. That means the gloves are easy to put on, but literally a pain to take off. “Should you put your hand in, you will discover that the thorns, all directed to slant inward, will lock your hand in place in the manner of ten thousand fishhooks. Should you attempt to remove it, the thousands of thorns will bite into the skin. You can put the gloves on, but to remove them would mean to cut them off. Gloves for life, or for one wear – the ultimate and final commitment,” Recht writes on his website. Of course, you could always cut it off to avoid experiencing the excruciating pain, but then again, you would be throwing a good $950 right off the window. I say pull the hand out! Yes, you’ll probably faint from the pain, but you will have ripped off most of the spikes, and ended up with a nice, comfortable glove. Plus, you’ll feel like a real man…

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Stunning Japanese Paintings Created in Microsoft Excel

When it comes to painting, or even digital art, Microsoft Excel isn’t usually the first thing that pops into your head. Yet 73-year-old artist, Tatsuo Horiuchi, has been using it to create stunningly beautiful traditional Japanese artworks.

If you’re going to use software for artistic purposes, why not use something like the powerful and popular Adobe Photoshop, right? Well, Tatsuo Horiuchi’s explanation sort of makes sense – he says graphics software is too expensive, while Microsoft Excel came pre-installed on his computer. Plus, although he had never used it himself, before he retired from his job he often saw his colleagues using it to create graphs, so he thought the program could be used to draw art as well. In his early pension years, Horiuchi decided he wanted to try something new, so he bought a computer and began experimenting with digital painting. At first, he tried Microsoft Word, but he experienced problems with determining the canvas size to fit the printing paper, so he ultimately turned to Excel, which had a neat feature that automatically reduced the worksheet size to fit his A4 printing paper. Painting in a spreadsheet application was hard at first, but the ambitious Tatsuo managed to hone is skills, and during the last 10 years he has established himself as an original artist, with exhibitions all over Japan.

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