The Photo-Realistic Ballpoint Pen Drawings of Andrey Poletaev

Andrey Poletaev is a master of the ballpoint pen, wielding the common writing tool to create stunning works of art that sometimes rival photographs in terms of realism.

Ukrainian-born artist Andrey Poletaev is considered one of the world’s premier ballpoint pen artist, and looking at his exquisite works of art, it’s easy to see why. Although he doesn’t like to be categorized as a hyperrealist artist, his expertly drawn city landscapes and portraits are incredibly realistic to the point where they often get mistaken for photographs. To achieve this amazing level of realism in his ballpoint pen artworks, Poletaev applies up to twenty layers of pen ink on the canvas, and spends hundreds of hours on a single art piece.

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Japanese Mom Creates the Most Adorable Anime-Themed Bento Boxes

A Japanese mother-of-two has been getting a lot of attention on social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest for her incredibly detailed and colorful anime-themed bento boxes.

If you’re even a little familiar with Japanese culture, you probably know about “kawaii”, the people’s affinity for all things cute, and the attention to detail present in almost every aspect of daily life. Food is no exception, not even the school lunch Japanese mothers prepare for their children every day. While some just patiently arrange rice balls, sliced rolls or pickled veggies nicely in a box, others spend extra time creating an entire ensemble, complete with rice balls shaped like panda bears or sausages carved to look like octopuses. And then you have mothers like @ryiuyuda, who take the process of arranging a bento box and turn it into an art form.

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The Incredible Ballpoint Pen Drawings of Samuel Silva

We originally featured the amazing ballpoint pen drawings of Portuguese artist Samuel Silva back in 2021, but he has been buys over the last eight years, and I though we’d take a look at what he’s been up to.

Looking at some of Silva’s incredibly realistic artworks, it’s clear why many consider him the no. 1 ballpoint pen artist in the world. The photo-like level of detail in his masterpieces is simply uncanny, making it hard to believe that he is a self-taught artist who never went to art school. He started drawing when he was 2-years-old, and developed his own style and technique by creating “simple classroom sketches in the back of exercise books”. A lawyer by by training, Samuel Silva doesn’t create new works as often as other artists, but when he does, you better believe it’s something special.

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Ambidextrous Artist Creates Detailed Drawings by Using Both Hands at the Same Time

Drawing something even close to resemblig art is hard enough to do with one hand, but doing it with both hands, at the same time, sounds downright impossible. That only makes this amateur artist’s skills that much more impressive.

Colin Darke, a lawyer and amateur artist from Detroit, has been getting a lot of attention lately for his ability to draw detailed artworks with both hands at the same time, often using different colors in each to highlight his ambidextrous technique. From portraits of celebrities, iconic film characters, animals an nature-inspired scenes, there’s nothing he 42-year-old can’t draw with his hands simultaneously. After keeping his skill a secret for most of his life, the amateur artist only recently started posting photos and clips showcasing his ambidextrous talents on Instagram, after being inspired by a motivational speaker.

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Amazingly Talented Artist “Paints” with Layers of Denim

It’s hard saying goodbye to your favorite pair of jeans, even when they’re way beyond wearable, but English artist Ian Berry has found a way to avoid throwing away denim, by using it to create beautiful works of art.

Netherton-born artist Ian Berry, aka Denimu, has made quite a name for himself after his unique art took the art world by storm. It’s hard to believe the idea of using old denim as medium for his art came after a call from his mother, Christine, asking him to clean out his room.: “It was about six or seven years ago my mum was clearing out my old room and she wanted me to go through my things. I found loads of old jeans and denims and I noticed the different colors and shades. I kept hold of them but it was only about 18 months later I began to do something with them.” Little did he know his experiment would soon make him and his denim art famous all over the world.

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The Unbelievably Realistic Feline Drawings of Yuki Kudo

When it comes to hyper-realistic drawing, cats and other felines must be among the most difficult things to pull odd due to their fur. Getting every strand just right requires a steady hand and mountains of patience, and that’s what makes Yuki Kudo’s artworks so damn special.

Over the past decade, we’ve posted some pretty impressive hyper-realistic artworks on this website, so it takes some thing special to catch our attention. However, the first time I laid eyes on the color pencil drawings of Japanese artist Yuki Kudo, they took my breath away. I still find myself staring at some of his masterpieces, looking for clues that it’s just a drawing and not some digitally enhanced photo or CGI graphic. Oh, and did I mention he is only 18 years old?

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Sloppy-Looking Toothpaste Paintings on Bathroom Mirror Turn Into Masterpieces When the Lights Go Out

The first time people see Xiong Qingzhen’s toothpaste paintings, they’re not very impressed. Frankly, they look sloppy,, but then he flips the light switch in his bathroom and everyone’s jaws hit the floor…

Based in central China’s Hubei province, Xiong Qingzhen got the inspiration for his now famous toothpaste painting technique from his days taking photos with an old film camera. He found the way images on negatives were inverted in a dark room interesting, so one day he decided to apply a similar technique in the comfort of his own bathroom. Using the mirror as a canvas and plain toothpaste as paint, Xiong started painting “negative” portraits of popular celebrities. They didn’t look too impressive to the naked eye at first, but a simple flip of the switch revealed the true artwork.

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The Mind-Boggling Optical Illusions of Stefan Pabst

When it comes to ultra-realistic, hand-drawn or painted anamorphic illusions, you’d be hard pressed to find someone better than German artist Stefan Pabst. Just take a look at some of his work and you’ll be rubbing your eyes in amazement.

Born in Russia, Stefan Pabst has been living in Germany since he was 15-year-old. In 2007, he started painting and drawing portraits, but quickly got bored with it and began looking for a way to somehow traverse the 2D border of a sheet of paper. As he continued to explore the limits of his talent, Pabst stumbled upon the art of anamorphic illusions, and he hasn’t looked back since. Although he continues to create commission portraits, the German artist has become much more known for his mind-blowing optical illusions.

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The Magical Art of Ink and Water Painting

When it comes to painting techniques that are satisfying to watch, you’ll be hard pressed to find something better than ink and water painting, the art of dropping a bit of of ink onto water-traced patterns and watching it spread.

French artist David Bayo, whose impressive pointilism portraits we featured last year, has been a lot of attention online for his ink and water painting videos for the past three years. In a 2016 interview, he revealed that he discovered the delicate art form while experiencing with various mediums to find the one that suited him best. After lost of practice, he was able to understand the interaction between ink and water and use the two to create incredible works of art.

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Street Artist Creates Mind-Blowing Graffiti Optical Illusions

Portuguese street artist Vile has a gift that some would consider similar to a superpower – he can make concrete walls look transparent to the naked eye, using only cans of graffiti paint.

Rodrigo Miguel Sepulveda Nunes, aka Vile, started doing graffiti when he was 14 years old. In college he studied Cartoon and Animation Film and Drawing and Illustration, and in 2007 he started working as an independent artist. Vile has several remarkable paintings and portraits under his name, but graffiti always remained his biggest passion, and today he is better known as a street artist. Looking at some of his most impressive works, it’s easy to see why Vile is considered one of the world’s most talented graffiti artists.

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Artist Smashes Glass Panes with Chisel and Hammer to Create Stunning Artworks

Seen from up close, the creations of Swiss artist Simon Berger look more like vandalism, but take a few steps back and you’ll notice the cracks in the smashed glass panes form clear and complex portraits and images.

Berger admits that as an artist, he had the desire to be taken seriously, to attract attention, and the easiest way to do that was to use a material or a creative technique than no one had used before. The trained carpenter decided that laminated glass was not very popular as an artistic medium, so he started experimenting with it, developing an original technique that involved smashing the glass with hammer and chisel to create detailed and recognizable patterns. Having honed his skills, Simon Berger is now able to wield this wilful destruction to create stunning human portraits that are only visible from afar.

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Artist Spends 200 Hours Making Stunning Portrait of Bill Murray Out of Rolled Vinyl Tape

Danny Schleibe, the creator of a unique art form called “tapigami”, spent a whopping 200 hours making an awe-inspiring portrait of actor Bill Murray exclusively out of hundreds of rolled pieces of vinyl tape glued to a wooden panel.

Sacramento-based artist Danny Schleibe has spent the last 14 years of his life refining the contemporary art of tapigami, which looks very similar to quilling, only with vinyl masking tape instead of rolled pits of paper. He recently perfected his technique to a level that allows him to create portraiture, and his first project was an amazing portraits of Bill Murray made out of tiny strips of rolled tape. It’s only when you get up-close and see how he nailed all the subtle details, like the actor’s beard and eyes, that you really start to appreciate all the work that went into the artwork.

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Professional Makeup Artist Uses Her Lips as a Canvas for Tiny, Detailed Artworks

We’ve featured some impressive body art on Oddity Central, like Luca Luce’s face-painted optical illusions or the colorful chest artworks of Georgina Ryland, but nothing quite like the detailed lip art of Ryan Kelly. The talented makeup artist paints tiny yet intricate portraits of celebrities and popular characters on her lips.

Looking at the kind of detail Ryan Kelly is able to produce on such a tiny and unusual canvas, it’s hard to believe that her lip art started out as a joke. Four years ago, Ryan and her husband were on the couch watching Katy Perry’s Superbowl halftime show, when their attention was caught by one of her dancers, who later went viral as “Left Shark”. He was fumbling through the choreography, but looked cool doing it, and they both found him hilarious. It was the makeup artist’s husband who suggested that she paint a shark on her lips and the fins on her fingers so she could puppet her very own Left Shark performance. She did just that and posted a photo of her facial makeover on social media. The response was overwhelmingly positive and inspired her to delve deeper into lip art.

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Struggling Artist Turns Fry Cook Job into Successful Pancake Art Career

Today, Dan Drake, aka ‘Dancakes’, is known as one of the world’s most talented pancake artists, but few people know that he never planned, nor trained for this career. He was just a guy flipping fried foods at a diner to make ends meet, but his artistic talent catapulted him to international fame.

Dan had always had a talent for drawing, but never really considered turning it into a career. In high-school, he would doodle and draw comics in the back of the classroom out of boredom, and dreamed of becoming a renowned musician with his band, Psychedelic Psycho Nuts. While trying to get his musical career off the ground, Drake got a job as a fry cook at the Courtesy Diner, in his home city of St. Louis. Because he needed to earn his chops, he was placed on the slow shifts, which resulted in few tips but a lot of time on his hands. It was on one of these shifts that he got his feet wet in the world of pancake art.

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Millionaire Wants to Buy a Mountain So He Can Turn It Into His Own Mount Rushmore

If you happen to own a mountain or cliff that you’ve been struggling to sell, maybe you can strike a deal with this multimillionaire who wants to carve his family’s faces into it, Mount Rushmore style.

Online luxury marketplace HushHush.com recently revealed that a mysterious multimillionaire reached out to them with a very unusual request – he is looking to buy a mountain or a cliff  in the UK so he can turn it into a personal Mount Rushmore. The stone real-estate has to be large enough to fit the buyer’s carved portrait, as well as those of his wife, their three children and the family dog. The man is apparently willing to pay up to £12 million ($15.5 million) for the mountain itself, and has a separate budget for a team of stone carvers to create the family portraits.

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