Moscow-based artist Alena Litvin has a very special gift – she can recreate a detailed photographic portraits using only colored pencils and mountains of talent. The results are often so impressive that you can barely tell the drawing apart from the photo. Looking at her amazing drawings, it’s very hard to believe that Alena is a self-taught artist who has only been exercising her craft for the last eight years. From portraits of celebrities like Scarlett Johansson or Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, to regular people who commission her to draw portraits of their loved ones, there’s nothing the young Russian artist can’t pull off. She can take up to 10 days to finish a portrait, which may sound like a long time, but just look at the level of detail in some her artworks… Read More »

Looking at the expertly-drawn charcoal and graphite portraits of Dylan Eakin, you’d think he has a lifetime of experience and many years of art school under his belt, but the truth is he’s a self-taught artist and he’s only been at it for three years. Staring at most of Eakin’s black-and-white portraits, I often found myself looking for any clues that I was looking at a drawing and not a high-definition photograph. That’s what hyperrealism is all about, I know, but the talented artist really takes it to the extreme, nailing even the finest of details, like loose strands of hair on his subjects’ faces, droplets of sweat or the smallest wrinkles. To the untrained eye, his works seem perfect, but he is the first to point out that there are some things he simply can’t replicate. Read More »

Drawing hyperrealistic color portraits with your dominant hand is difficult enough, but try simultaneously drawing two separate portraits with both hands. It sounds almost impossible, which makes Dutch artist Rjacenna’s skill that much more impressive. Rajacenna first made news headlines in 2010, as a child prodigy able to create incredibly realistic portraits of celebrities with a simple pencil. She has been honing her skills as a photorealistic drawing artist ever since, and somewhere along the way she discovered that she could draw just as well with her left hand as she did with her right. Not only that, but she could draw with both hands at the same time, somehow distributing her attention to two separate and completely different portraits. Read More »

Jono Dry is only 28-years-old and has never taken art classes, but his incredible talent allows him to create these photographic quality drawings using only graphite pencils. The young South African artist is considered one of the few people in the world able to take drawing pat the limits of what is considered achievable with simple graphite pencils. Jono spends most of his time working on his large-scale drawings, and usually takes about 2-3 months to complete a piece, but he once spent a whopping 5 months painstakingly drawing one of his most complicated artworks. Considering how incredible the result of his labor ends up looking and the fact that he only produces between 4 and 8 large-scale drawings per year, Jono Dry’s hand-drawn masterpieces are considered very exclusive among collectors. Read More »

Some people are just born with an insane amount of talent. Take 31-year-old Nikola Čuljić, a self-taught artist from Serbia. He has been actively drawing for only three years, yet look at the wonders that he’s able to produce with some pencils, markers and pastels. People had always told Nikola Čuljić that he had a talent for drawing, but he just wasn’t very interested in it. Then, three years ago, he decided to give it a shot, so he started drawing ultra-realistic portraits. That turned out to be very hard, and the young artist realized that he wasn’t very good at it, or, at least not as good as he wanted to be. Čuljić wanted to be the best, and anything less than that just didn’t satisfy him, so he decided to try something different. And that’s how he got into hand-drawn 3D illusions.

 

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Most artists take decades to master their tools, but at 23 years of age, Alfredo Chamal is already one of the world’s best ball-point pen artists in the world. He specializes in hyper-realistic drawings that look like artistic photographs from afar. It’s only when the viewer approaches the artwork to take a closer look that he realizes it is actually a hand-drawn large-scale drawing, and not a photograph. Made famous by by Spanish illustrator Juan Casas, the ball-point pen is not the most popular art tool in the world, partly because of it’s permanent effect which makes covering up any mistakes very difficult. But that din’t stop Alfredo Chamal from using the tool to experiment contemporary realism. Based on photographs he takes himself, Alfredo’s large scale drawings take several days to complete, but the end result is always more than worth the effort that goes into them. Read More »

New Zealand-based tattoo artist Steve Butcher specializes in hyper-realistic tattoos that look like they’ve been printed on the skin instead of hand inked with a tattoo gun. Working out of Matt Jordan’s Ship Shape Tattoo studio, in West Auckland, Butcher is one of the most in demand tattoo artists at conventions all around the world, and looking at his work, it’s easy to see why. Whether he’s doing portraits of NBA stars, animals or flowers, the end result is always breathtaking. His designs are perfect down to the smallest details, as he always seems to nail even the toughest elements like tiny drops of sweat, hair or reflections in the eyes of his characters. Read More »

We’ve seen a lot of hyper-realistic art here on OC, but the works of Polish artist Mariusz Kedzierski are especially stunning and awe-inspiring. That’s because he’s able to draw like a complete pro despite the fact that he has no hands. Each piece takes him at least 20 hours to complete, while his most complicated work to date required a whopping 100 hours. In seven years he has put in about 15,000 hours of work, completing over 700 drawings. For some unknown reason, the 23-year-old from Świdnica city, in southwestern Poland, was born without hands. “There is no logical explanation,” he says.  “In the past I have asked myself and God, ‘why me?’ many times. But when I accepted myself, I realized that if I would not be born without arms, I might not do what I do.” Read More »

Li Hailing, a barber from Lingbao, in central China’s Henan province, uses leftovers from his day job to fuel his real passion – art. He collects the hair that he cuts at his salon and, in his spare time, arranges the thousands of strands to create stunningly-realistic celebrity portraits. Li, whose inspiration comes from sand painting, uses the same techniques for his hair paintings – he sprinkles hair onto a canvas with his hands and arranges them until recognizable portraits emerge. There is no glue involved, so the hair can all be blown off with a simple swift wave of the hand, leaving nothing behind on the canvas. Li photographs each piece of hair art before he destroys it and moves on to the next. It takes him a minimum of two hours to finish each hair painting. Read More »

Tiffanie Turner, a San Francisco based artist, is best known for her ability to craft incredibly realistic flowers out of paper. She cuts petals out of delicate Italian crepe paper and sews them together to resemble the creases and folds of flowers. When photographed, it’s nearly impossible to tell these fake flowers apart from real ones! The faux florals that Turner creates vary in dimensions, right from palm-sized to nearly three ft. wide. Depending on the size, each flower can take anywhere between 35 to 80 hours to complete. Most of her pieces mimic healthy flowers, but at times she experiments with the wilted look as well. Read More »

Alexander Zhuikov, a student from Novosibirsk, Russia, was recently in the news for his highly realistic snow sculpture of a life-size tank. It took him a month to create the frozen masterpiece, which he later entered into a contest held by the makers of popular online game World of Tanks. Alexander, 20, began his project by downloading various tank drawings from the internet. He chose a spot in his grandmother’s garden and with the help of his friends, he cleared the place by shoveling  about 20 tonnes of snow. He then set about building the snow machine and making a shield to protect it from the sun, using simple tools like spades, knives and trowels. He even created a self-propelled cabin that can be accessed through a hatch. Everything is made of snow, except for the rope, barrel, and other small parts. Read More »

Award-winning Italian artist Guido Daniele has an exceptional talent – he can transform human hands into ‘handimals’, hyper-realistic animal portraits. With a career as an illustrator spanning over 40 years, Guido began to explore and experiment with body art and using the human body as a canvas in 1990. Gradually, he perfected the art of making his models contort their bodies into specific positions and using his painting skills to turn them into realistic portraits and scenes. Read More »

Artist Bobby Causey makes wax sculptures of celebrities that are so life-like, you’re going to have a hard time believing they’re not real. The self-taught professional, based in Allen Park, Michigan, painstakingly creates each piece by hand, even punching in each individual strand of hair one at a time!

Causey, who won several art shows as a kid for his drawings, said that he enjoys sculpting a lot more – his favorite sculptors include Jose Ismael Fernandez and Michelangelo. He also remembers that special moment when he realized that sculpting was his ‘thing’: “It was the Lost Boys: David piece. I loved that movie and loved the soundtrack; once I completed the piece, I could hear the music from the movie, and got some chills. I said, ‘I think I found my special purpose; what the hell can I sculpt next!’”

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This pencil portrait of an old man looks unbelievably realistic, down to the reflection in the pupils, and it’s hard to believe that it was actually drawn by a teenager. For her incredible masterpiece, 16-year-old artist Shania McDonagh won the top prize at this year’s Texaco Children’s Art Competition. She was judged the best in the senior age category, for students aged 16 to 18 years old. Texaco Children’s Art Competition is an art contest held for kids in Ireland, every year since 1955. Shania, a student at Mount St. Michael Secondary School in Claremorris, has been taking part in the contest for the past four years. And you won’t believe this – she has won the first prize in her age category every single time. According to Professor Delan McGonagle, the chairman of the judging panel, Shania is a ‘young artist of exceptional skill and ability among the many talented artists in the competition.’ He also added that Shania’s work has established her as one of the most talented artists of her generation, whose skill could see her become one of Ireland’s foremost portrait artists of the future. Read More »

Zaria Forman’s paintings of icebergs are so realistic that just looking at them actually gives me the chills. Her 2012 collection, Chasing the Light, is a tribute to her mother who died from brain cancer. She also hopes to raise awareness to climate change through her work. Forman has a unique style of creating art. “When I travel, I take thousands of photographs and make small sketches. Once I am back in the studio, I draw from my memory of the experience, as well as the photographs to create large scale compositions. I add layers of color onto the paper, smudging everything with my fingers and hand,” she said. Read More »