Derek Turcotte is a talented tattoo artist from Canada who specializes in intricate tattoo designs inspired by popular video games and comics.

Owner of the Electric Grizzly Tattoo studio in Canmore, Canada, Derek Turcotte has also made a name for himself internationally thanks to his popular Instagram account where he shares his amazing designs with over 300,000 followers. The 36-year-old has been drawing since he was just a kid and he’s been doing tattoos for 18 years now, specializing in all sorts of intricate, colorful designs. But it’s Turcotte’s comic book and video game-inspired works that have attracted the most attention of late, and for good reason – they’re stunning!

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Hikaru Cho is a Tokyo-based body painter who specializes in surreal body art created using a combination of body paint and makeup.

Tokyo-based artist Hikaru Cho may only be 27-years-old, but she is already one of the most highly regarded body painters in the world, having worked with big brands like Samsung or Shiseido, and organizations like Amnesty International, among others. A graduate of Musashino Art University, Cho is one of the world’s most promising young body painters, and if her work so far is any indication, there’s a lot of impressive stuff to look forward to in the future.

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Gesine Marwedel is a talented body-painting artist who has the power to transform the naked bodies of her models into mind-bending optical illusions.

From swans, to owls, to dolphins, there doesn’t seem to be anything that German artist Gesine Marwedel can’t morph her models into, using body paint. But while most of her works are illusory in nature, obscuring parts of the human body, while transforming others into something new entirely, some are simply abstract works of art, with a deeper meaning.

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From rendering parts of her body invisible, to transforming into a variety of fictional characters, there’s no optical illusion Mirjana ‘Kika’ Milosevic can’t pull off with her makeup skills.

Serbian “skin illusionist” and makeup-artist extraordinaire, Kika Milosevic has never been interested in expressing her talent on conventional canvases. As a child, she would crawl under tables and draw on the backside of them, as well as on the doors and walls of her home. As an adult, Kika chose her own body as a canvas, using makeup and body paint to create the most stunning optical illusions.

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Artist John Poppleton combines his love of painting and his knowledge of photography to create stunning landscapes that glow under black light.

Poppleton’s Bodyscapes feature mesmerizing scenes – right from summery African savannas to electric lighting storms – on the soft curves of the human form. The breathtaking images usually span out from the model’s back, branching out on to the arms, legs, neck, and even the head. His unique style and the type of scenes that he chooses to paint have earned Poppleton the title ‘Bob Ross of Black Light Body Painting’.

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German body-painting artist Jörg Düsterwald is a master of camouflage, taking nude female models and using body paint to conceal them in various environments.

Looking at one of Jörg Düsterwald’s signature camouflage pieces is like trying to solve a Where’s Wally’s puzzle, with some of the models blending so well into the background that you actually have to struggle to spot them. Düsterwald has been producing body art projects for the last 25 years, showcasing his body-painting skills in creative projects, including advertising and TV marketing campaigns, but it was his camouflage series that really made him internationally famous.

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An 18-year-old girl suffering from a skin condition called dermatographia, which causes her skin to swell up when touched, is using her own body as a canvas for playful doodles.

18-year-old Emma Aldenryd creates her very own type of body art by running a pencil over her skin, which causes the lines she traces to swell and redden, leaving behind temporary doodles that fade after about 30 minutes. The Danish teen discovered that she had dermatographia three years ago, after a friend noticed that her arms turned red and swollen. Instead of hiding away her skin condition, Emma decided to embrace it and use her own body as an artistic medium.

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After using her face for stunning make-up illusions that left people scratching their heads, Instagram superstar Mimi Choi is focusing on other body parts, primarily her arms and legs, with similar results.

A former schoolteacher turned makeup artist, Vancouver-based Mimi Choi took social media by storm three years ago with her incredible optical illusions. Using makeup, body paint, mountains of patience and innate talent, Choi managed to turn her face into a canvas for all sorts of trompe l’oeil artworks that fascinated millions of people around the world. It’s no wonder that she boasts over 1 million followers on Instagram alone, as her account is definitely one of the most attention-worthy on the popular social network.

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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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Georgina Ryland, a makeup artist and beauty blogger from Brisbane, Australia, creates incredible body art using her own body as the canvas.

We’ve all seen impressive body art before, but what sets Georgina Ryland’s works from those of other talented body painters is that she actually paints the artworks on her own body, instead of using a model. All I can tell you about the artistic process is that it involves using a mirror, as well as a steady hand and mountains of patience. I for one can’t understand how she can paint backwards, by looking in a mirror, but judging by the quality of her work, she’s gotten really good at it.

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Looking at most of Adam Curlykale’s Instagram photos you would think he used a negative filter, but that’s actually how he really looks. After tattooing his entire face – including his eyes – graphite grey and dyeing his facial hair white, the 32-year-old tattoo enthusiast looks like a real-life negative version of himself.

Adam got his first tattoo when he was 20-years-old, a small message on his arm that read ‘I am’. But that was only the beginning of a transformational journey that the 32-year-old claims is far from over. He has so far covered 90% of his body with tattoos, and doesn’t plan on stopping until 99% of his skin has been covered in ink. As for the 1% Adam plans to leave untouched, he says they are “secret”.

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Ash Soto was only 12 years old when she was diagnosed with vitiligo, a rare skin condition that causes patches of skin to lose pigmentation. Dealing with the changes to her appearance and the social stigma associated with vitiligo was tough for a teenage girl, but she ultimately managed to accept her condition and make the best of it. Today, Ash even incorporates the unique patterns on her skin to create beautiful body art that inspire and empower people to embrace that we are all different and that’s what makes us special.

It all started with a small spot Ash saw on her neck one day. It looked like a sun spot, so she didn’t pay much attention to it, until another one appeared a few months later. She went to see a doctor about it with her mother, and was diagnosed with vitiligo, a rare and incurable skin condition. Soto was just 12 at the time, and couldn’t yet understand how much this diagnosis would affect her life.

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Body Marbling stations have been popping up at festivals across the United States and people are already calling it the future of body art. It’s based on a centuries-old technique called marbling, which involves applying colors to the surface of water and imprinting the designs on various surfaces, from paper and fabric to metal. But one company has figured out a way to make it work on human skin, and the results are visually stunning.

Body Marbling is the brainchild of College for Creative Studies (CCS) alumni Brad Lawrence. Diagnosed with chronic tendonitis in his wrists at the age of 23, he could no longer practice his biggest passions, drawing and sculpting, but he didn’t let that stop him from expressing his artistic talent. Motivated by his friend and Purple Heart Marine, Michael Zach, Brad got into abstract painting as a form of therapy, and started experimenting with marbling. Together, they started Black Light Visuals, a company that relies on marbling to create all kinds of “trippy” looking products, from hats and shirts to bags and backpacks. In 2013, they introduced body marbling at the Electric Forest Festival, which allowed people to turn their arms into psychedelic artworks for a few hours. Everybody loved it, and since then Body Light Visuals marbling stations have become popular at festivals all across the U.S..

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While solid black tattoos are gaining popularity in some circles, others seem to prefer getting their skin etched with white ink. The new trend involves the use of only white ink, without any black outlines or additional color. So a white ink tattoo is pretty much just an outline – it could look amazing if done well, but there’s a high chance of it turning into a disaster as well.

There’s a lot of mixed information about white ink tattoos on the internet – while some sources think they’re brilliant, others believe that no professional tattoo artist would ever recommend them, mainly because they’re too faint and can end up looking like scars, or worse still, a skin disease. To make matters worse, the white ink have a tendency to fade much faster than regular ones, taking on a yellowish tinge that looks absolutely horrible, especially when low quality paints are used.

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Comic book makeup is a huge trend these days, but a few artists truly stand out for their spectacular work. Joining the ranks of Lianne Moseley and other Marvel makeup gurus is Argenis Pinal, a California-based cosmetologist.

Argenis is insanely popular on Instagram with over 100,000 followers. The man is a wizard with makeup – he’s managed to transform himself into almost several comic book characters and he’s done such a good job of it that you only realise you’re looking at a living person and not an illustration when he moves.

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