Sergey Artemyev is a Russian artist who specializes in oil on canvas and pastel on canvas paintings, including some of the best optical illusions we’ve ever seen. When creating painted replicas of real-life objects, depth and thickness are some of the toughest things to pull off, which makes sense, as creating painted renditions of three-dimensional objects is anything but easy. Still, we’ve some pretty impressive optical illusions in the past, so it’s definitely doable, but few can do it better than Sergey Artemyev. The Russian artist is so confident in his ability to paint hyperrealistic replicas of various objects that he places them right next to his artworks and you still can’t tell which one is real. Read More »

Brazilian artist Fabiano Millani specializes in hyperrealistic oil paintings that look almost indistinguishable from high-definition photos. We’ve featured quite a number of extremely talented hyperrealist artists on Oddity Central over the last 15 years, but there is no doubt that Fabiano Millani is right up there with the best of them. The São Paulo-born artist, who was raised in the Rio Grande do Sul, has become famous for his oil paintings that imitate real life so well that they are often mistaken for photographs. It’s actually hard to believe that he only started making art professionally at age 18, after taking an artistic course. Today he is regarded as a remarkable figure of the hyper-realist painting community. Read More »

Be honest, looking at this hyper-realistic drawing of a squid, could you ever tell it apart from a real-life cephalopod? Most people couldn’t which is why Japanese illustrator Yuuki Tokuda’s artwork has been getting so much attention on social media. Yuuki Tokuda is a talented illustrator whose cartoony characters have been immortalized in books and magazines. But the Japanese artist has recently been enjoying praise for his hyper-realistic drawings as well, particularly that of a mind-blowingly realistic squid done with a pen, pencil, airbrush and a copic marker. Looking at his masterpiece and the level of detail he has been able to achieve with such a limited arsenal of tools, it’s easy to see why Tokuda’s pictures have been liked and shared by hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter alone. Read More »

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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Portuguese street artist Odeith is widely considered the pioneer of anamorphic graffiti, and looking at his latest works, many would say he is still ahead of the curve. Seen from all but the perfect angle, Odeith’s anamorphic masterpieces look strange and distorted, but when properly aligned with the artwork viewers are treated to larger-than-life creations that seem ready to leap off of their concrete canvas. Take the artist’s latest project, a realistic-looking wrecked bus spray-painted on a giant concrete block. Unless you saw the “before” photo, you could swear that was a real bus. Read More »

Romanie-Jade Tulloch, a 20-year-old self-taught makeup artist from Nottingham, in the UK, combines her love of makeup and art to create mind-blowing optical illusions on her face. Romanie has always been into makeup, but she only started focusing on it two years ago, in the hopes of becoming a freelance makeup artist. She never studied professional makeup, preferring instead to hone her skills by watching online tutorials and experimenting with various cosmetics. Having studied fine arts for two years in college, she naturally drifted from conventional makeup to painting artistic optical illusions on her face and posting her best work on Instagram. Before she knew it, she had hundreds of thousands of followers on the popular social network. Read More »

Looking at Toshihiko Hosaka’s incredibly detailed sculptures, it’s hard to believe that they are made from grainy beach sand, and not some sort of clay. But he only uses sand, his talent and 20-years of experience. 43-year-old Hosaka has been making sand sculptures ever since he was in school, and has been honing his skills for over two decades. Today, he is able to create large-scale masterpieces without any molds or adhesives, only simple sand and a handful of metal sculpting tools. He spends hours, sometimes several days sculpting away at mounds of moist sand, but the result is always breathtaking. Read More »

Looking at the detailed leopard portrait below, you’d be inclined to think Franziska Treptow is a photographer. Every detail, from the tiny hairs of the animal’s fur to the reflection in its eyes, is so perfect that it’s almost impossible to believe that the young German artist paints or draws every one of her artworks. Franziska’s ideas start as sketches and photos of wildlife. Using her skills in digital photo manipulation technology (Photoshop), she creates a digital model for her works, which helps her become aware of the composition and accentuation of light and shadow. She then sketches that model on paper or canvas and uses pencils or paints to create the ultra-realistic animal portraits exclusively by hand. The whole process, can take anywhere from a few hours to more than a month, depending on the complexity of the project. The end result is always breathtaking. Read More »

Tim Bengel, a young artist from Stuttgart, Germany, has returned to the childhood pastime of playing with sand for his latest art series. He uses only black and white sand on a sticky board to create spectacular paintings of people and places.  Bengel, 24, starts off by covering a blank canvas board with a special type of adhesive that takes a long time to dry. He then sprinkles black and gold sand over the drying glue in the shape of the design he has in mind, and sometimes even adds individual grains of sand using a very fine scalpel. This ‘drawing’ stage can take him weeks to complete. When the design is completed, he spreads white sand all over the canvas. Then, he shakes off all the excess sand in one sweeping motion to reveal the completed artwork underneath. The dramatic effect of this final step is well worth the hours of effort that he puts into each piece. Read More »

This group of highly skilled Indonesian woodworkers caters exclusively to people who love collecting sports cars – both real and wooden. They carve impressive life-size replicas of popular sports car models, and their creations are routinely exported to buyers in the US, England, Germany, and other European countries. 

Their latest handiwork is a model of the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, made entirely out of teak – it doesn’t work of course, but it’s a stunning copy of the real thing. And let’s not forget – cheaper by several thousands of dollars.

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43-year-old Fabian Gaete is an artist who specializes in finger painting. He’s so good at his craft that he can actually create small finger oil paintings of breathtaking landscapes in under three minutes.

Fabian currently works his magic on the streets of Puerto Montt, Chile, where his ‘live creations’ are sold at six euros each (or 10 euros for three). He moves around with a large black suitcase filled with oil paints and glass panels. As soon as he receives a request for a painting, he quickly uses his fingers to fill the panels with mountains, trees, rivers, waterfalls and more. In no time at all, the painting is completed, sealed and handed over to its new owner.

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Paul Roustan, an award-winning body painter from Chicago, has created an absolutely mind-blowing painting of a moth. When you first look at the black-and-white picture, all you can see is a moth with its wings spread out. Nothing looks amiss, not even when you look closely. But after you watch the making-of video, you’re left in a state of mild shock – there is actually a real-life female model hiding in the artwork. Scroll down for the revealing photos and video, but try to find it on your own first. It was nice of the artist to create the helpful video. Without it, I don’t suppose anyone could have guessed the perfectly camouflaged secret of the painting. The entire image consists of a painted woman standing with her arms folded, against a similarly painted background. Audrey Biernacki, the model, blends into the surroundings so well that it’s impossible to tell her apart. The whole project took Paul seven hours to complete – five to paint the background and two for the model. “On average, it takes me three hours to paint the entire body,” he said. “This one was a bit more meticulous lining things up, which is why it took so long just for a portion of the body.” Paul predominantly uses airbrushes on his human canvasses. He has been painting people since 2005 ‘out of curiosity’. He used to be an editorial illustrator for and adult magazine, and one day he came up with the idea of painting one of the models for a photo spread. The magazine agreed, and he has been hooked ever since. 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 »

Seattle-based designer Taras Lesko has spent the last few months building a nearly-life-size replica of the Lamborghini Aventador exclusively out of printing paper and cardboard. We first featured Taras Lesko’s paper masterpieces back in 2010, shortly after he had completed his amazing 4-foot-tall Freedom Gundam. In 2011 he surprised us all again with an even more impressive 7-foot Gundam made with 1,250 distinct paper parts cut out of 720 pages. Taras took a two-year-long break after that, but he has recently unveiled his latest work of art, a stunning paper-and-cardboard replica of the Lamborghini Aventador sports car. Using his design skills, the Seattle-based artist created all the necessary parts in computer programs like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and AfterEffects, printed them on hundreds of sheets of paper and used a precise X-Acto knife to cut them loose. To make sure his paper Aventador was sturdy enough to move around, Lesko used thick chipboard as a frame for the ultra-light vehicle which weighs just 11.3 kilograms. Read More »

Mehmet Ali Gökçeoğlu, a successful businessman and topographical engineer from Turkey, has built the world’s most amazing fence for his luxurious villa in Çeşme, Izmir. Eight years ago he replaced the metal fence at the front of his property with a 50-meter-long aquarium filled with hundreds of fish and octopuses. I know, you have to see it to believe it. Luckily we have the photos and videos to prove it. Located just a few feet away from the shores of the Aegean Sea, Mehmet Ali Gökçeoğlu’s property has become one of the most popular tourist attractions in Çeşme, attracting up to a thousand visitors a day, according to its owner. The villa itself is pretty impressive, but it’s not what draws so many people to this place. They come to see the aqua-fence. Eight years ago, the Turkish businessman had the eccentric idea to replace the front fence of his home with a giant aquarium full of various marine creatures from the Aegean Sea. Building the transparent structure was actually the easy part of the project. The hard part was linking the aqua-fence to the Aegean through a 400-meter-long buried pipeline, so the water could be changed continuously to keep the aquarium looking clean and its inhabitants happy. Gökçeoğlu hired a team of private divers to perform the task, and ended up paying approximately 40,000 Turkish Lira ($21,000) to fulfill his dream. The businessman says just seeing people line up outside his house staring at his creation makes it all worth it. Read More »