It’s hard to believe, but your eyes are playing tricks on you. The black liquid you see being poured into the cup in the photo below is actually just expertly sculpted and painted wood.

A year ago, Japanese wood carver Kibori no Konno (@kibori_no_konno) took to Twitter to share photos of some hyper-realistic coffee beans he had sculpted out of wood and then painted. They looked just like the real thing, and people couldn’t stop praising his talent. Since then, he has created all sorts of interesting sculptures, and to celebrate the piece that really kickstarted his year-long artistic journey, the Japanese artisan decided to do something really special. And that he did…

Photo: @kibori_no_konno/Twitter

A couple of weeks ago, Kibori no Konno once again surprised his Twitter followers with another mindblowing artwork inspired by coffee. At first glance, it looked like a photo of coffee being poured into a white cup, but then he followed that up with photos of the making-of process, which showed him meticulously sculpting the black liquid out of a block of wood.

In an interview with Japanese magazine J-Town, Kibori no Konno said that he carved the artwork out of a cypress block, removing the excess material with a saw and multi-tool, and then drilled the foam bubbles with a hand drill. But the real challenge was applying the paint and varnish layer in such a way as to create the illusion of transparency.

Photo: @kibori_no_konno/Twitter

“It was difficult to color a block of wood that had no transparency so that it would have a sense of transparency, so I had to make fine adjustments while painting,” the artist said.

Considering that Kibori no Konno only worked on this project for a total of 12 hours, I’d say it turned out pretty great, and Twitter seems to agree, as his original post has gotten over 64,000 likes on that social network alone.

If you liked this type of optical illusion, make sure to check out the wooden sculptures of Toru Fukuda as well, you won’t regret it!