Anna Zhirova is a self-taught food artist from Russia who specializes in hand-painting macarons to create unique edible works of art.

An architect by profession, Anna Zhirova came up with the idea of hand-painting macarons completely by accident, but she found the idea fascinating. She had been drawing for as long as she could remember, but the thought of decorating the tiny treats and creating designer macarons was very intriguing. Over time Anna developed both a technique to create the perfect canvas for her art, and the right consistency for the edible food dyes she uses.

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At only 19 years of age, Maxim Sipakov is already a very skilled animator with his own unique niche – he uses neon effects to enhance the appearance of tattoos.

Maxim honed his skills by animating online soccer videos, but he soon found that his talent was much better suited for digital tattoo enhancing, so he decided to focus on that. He takes videos from tattoo artists and other creators and works his magic on them, taking the already impressive body art to a whole new level. Maxim showcases his digital animation skills on Instagram and TikTok, where he has hundreds of thousands of fans and millions of views.

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Kay Pike is a talented designer and model from Calgary, Canada, who spends hours on end skillfully covering herself with body paint to transform into popular superheroes and villains.

Cosplaying used to be a big part of Kay Pike’s life, but after being diagnosed with congenital arthritis in her hips, which caused her excruciating pain, she just couldn’t sit and sew for hours, like she used to. Luckily, in 2015, during the Edmonton Comic and Entertainment Expo, she discovered “cospaint”, an intriguing art form that allowed her to transform into virtually any comic, cartoon or video game character by using body paint.

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Why get a carpet when you can have one a permanent etched into the floor? Unfortunately, we don’t all have the skill of Spanish artist Selva Aparicio.

Originally unveiled in 2017, Childhood Memories is a visually-striking installation by Selva Aparicio, a talented artist whose thought-provoking works tackle a variety of topics, from politics to the environment. Aparicio spent days hand-carving an intricate carpet pattern into a discarded wooden floor, and the result was so realistic that people only realized it wasn’t a real carpet only when they got close.

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Known as the “Brooklyn Transformer”, Peter Kokis has become a very recognizable figure in New York, thanks to an arsenal of impressive robot exoskeletons made out of all sorts of everyday items.

A former military pilot, Peter Kokis started making his now-famous exoskeletons after joking around with an ex-girlfriend. At one point, during a conversations, she told him “you’re too stiff, you need to loosen up and do something weird,” and he decided she was right. Using his experience in aviation, he started piecing together things he had around the house into an impressive exoskeleton that became known as Squid Boy. But that was only the beginning, as over the years he made wearable costumes inspired by the likes of The Transformers, The Terminator or the Xenomorphs of Alien.

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Spanish artist Okuda San Miguel turned a non-descript lighthouse in northern Spain’s Cantabria region into an eye-catching work of art.

Inspired by the “natural wealth of the region by representing local fauna and, with its textures, the cultural diversity of a modern and open Cantabria, which is connected to the world,” Okuda San Miguel turned the Faro de Ajo lighthouse into a technicolor work of art, featuring more than 70 vibrant hues. Okuda started work on the 16-meter-tall lighthouse in August and completed the project, titled “Infinite Cantabria”, in September. Now, the region’s last built lighthouse is meant to become a symbol of the cultural diversity of a modern and open Cantabria.

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Every year since 1961, the Veal family has been celebrating Christmas by creating their now-traditional giant ice tree on their property in Indianapolis, Indiana. It has become known as the Veal Ice Tree and is considered a seasonal tourist attraction.

If you’ve had enough of traditional Christmas trees and you’re looking for something more original, you’re going to love the Veal Ice Tree. It looks nothing like a tree, in fact no living trees have ever been used in the creation of this magnificent ice sculpture, but it became known as the ice tree a long time ago, and the name stuck. It’s actually an ice-sculpture made by attaching water hoses to a wooden frame, turning the water on on freezing nights, and letting the weather mold the ice-sculpture into existence. The Veal Ice Tree goes up every year, or almost every year, and it always gets a lot of attention from locals.

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Nigerian artist Oscar Ukonu is a master of the ballpoint pen. He wields the writing tool with such precision and skill that he is able to draw artworks that cannot be distinguished from high-resolution photographs.

The self-taught artist started drawing when he was nine-years-old, but only got into hyperrealistic art during his time in architecture school. Up to that point, he had relied on the good ol’ pencil, but the moment in tried the ballpoint pen for the first time, in 2014, he knew he had found the perfect tool to take his art to a whole new level. He has been mesmerizing fans of hyperrealistic portraits with his incredible artworks ever since. Okonu describes his creative process as his process as “a practice in time and patience”, which makes sense, considering that each and every one of his pieces takes between 200 and 400 hours of work to complete’

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The Covid-19 lockdowns have had a very different effect on people. While the boredom made some depressed, it actually helped others discover hidden talents. Take Anna Chojnicka, who started creating adorable banana peel artworks.

To pass the time and keep her creative juices flowing, social entrepreneur Anna Chojnicka started experimenting with banana peel oxidation as an art medium. Instead of doodling on canvas or paper, she decided to simply bruise bananas with thin, blunt objects and let oxidation do the rest. The bruised peel becomes darker as the hours go by, revealing the design etched into it.

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Turkish artist Deniz Sağdıç creates stunningly detailed portraits out of pieces of denim, using the different available shades of fabric to highlight even the tiniest details.

Deniz Sağdıç grew up surrounded by arts and crafts. Her father was a stained glass master, her uncle was a carpenter and a wood sculptor, her aunts worked as tailors, so she was exposed to art from a very early age. Ever since primary school, she spent a lot of time in her father’s workshop, helping him prepare the materials and cut his stained glass windows. She also spent a lot of time in her aunts’ tailor shop, discovering the secrets of the trade. So it didn’t really surprise anyone when the decided to go to art school.

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The Salar Jung Museum in Hyderabad, India, is home to one of the most amazing wooden sculptures ever made – Mephistopheles and Margaretta, a double sculpture featuring two distinct characters on opposite sides.

Carved out of a single piece of Sycamore sometime in the 19th century, by an unknown French artist, Mephistopheles and Margaretta is not only the most photographed artwork displayed at Salar Jung Museum, but also one of the most recognizable images on the internet. Photos of this stunning sculptures have been doing the rounds on social media and capturing the imagination of millions around the world, for a very long time. And for good reason, the level of intricacy, and the binary design have remained unmatched in the last two centuries.

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Toronto-based art studio Falling in Sand specializes in detailed 2D and 3D sand artworks created by expertly layering colored sand in various transparent containers.

The story of Falling in Sand began in 2018 when artist James Sun started showcasing his early sand art on TikTok. His early work was far from perfect, but it was enough to attract attention and slowly build an audience. Today, the studio create all kinds of sand art, from portraits of celebrities and fictional characters, to beautiful sceneries, as well as custom commissions. They are all made by meticulously adding layers of colored sand on top of each other using a needle-like tool.

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Believe it or not, there was once a time when people exposed themselves to harmful levels of radiation to create uranium glass – detailed, fluorescent glassware that glowed a radioactive green under black light. Some antique collectors still live with them in their homes today.

As its name suggests, uranium glass is a special type of glass made with uranium oxide, which gives it a yellow or yellow-green tint, but also makes it radioactive and causes it to glow green under a UV black light. The proportion of uranium in this type of glass usually varies from trace levels to about 2 percent, although uranium glass made in the early twentieth century contained up to 25 percent uranium. Interestingly, the fluorescence of uranium glass is not related to its radioactivity, but is a chemical property of the uranium. In fact, uranium glass is considered generally safe to use, as long as you don’t use it constantly…

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Japanese self-taught artist Rito (@lito_leafart) spends hours painstakingly carving tree leaves to create stunningly detailed scenes that capture viewers’ imagination.

Rito’s leaf cutouts are impressive enough by themselves, but the story of what inspired the artist to take up leaf art in the first place makes them even more so. Apparently, the Japanese artist suffers from ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), and spending hours focusing on a single artwork was his ways of treating his condition. He has been creating at least one of his leaf cutouts a day, as a form of therapy.

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Tal Peleg is an experienced makeup artist who goes beyond the usual tricks of the trade to create beautiful artworks in the space between her eyebrows and her eyes.

They say makeup itself is an art form, but if that’s true, what do we even call what Israeli Tal Peleg does, magic? The talented makeup artist uses both standard makeup and watercolors to create all sorts of intricate scenes – from iconic film or cartoon scenes, to original designs – on her own eyes, using very thin paint brushes. The 34-year-old artist takes between 1.5 hours and 4.5 hours (2.5 hours on average) to complete on of her amazing eye artworks, depending on the level of complexity.

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