Take a look at the photo below. Can you believe this is not a photograph, but an (almost) pixel-perfect pencil rendition of a stock photo? Neither could eye (pun intended), but it’s true. This is the kind of work Italian artist Flavio Apel is capable of.

Apel says his passion for drawing started out as a simple hobby, which makes his amazing artworks that much more impressive. He definitely became quite serious about drawing at some point in his life, because he is currently able to draw human eyes and skin to perfection. From the tiniest of wrinkles to the slim veins in the eyeball, Flavio’s works seem flawless black-and-white photographs and you probably need an expert to tell them apart.

Judging by the level of detail displayed in his artworks, it’s no surprise that Flavio Apel spends between 20 and 150 hours working on a single drawing. Interestingly, only two eyes from his extensive drawing collection are of strangers, the rest are all of people he knows very well, including his own oculist’s, which he thinks is “pretty ironic”.

His works have captured the attention of millions, both online and offline. As you can imagine, the vast majority has trouble coming to terms with the fact that his works are hand-drawn and not snapped with a high-resolution camera, and though I couldn’t find any footage of the artist at work, I did find some images of his work in progress and they seem genuine. Also, Apel is one of the artists whose works are permanently displayed at the Gallery Rasch, in the German city of Kassel, and I suspect the people there are much better at spotting forgeries than online haters.

Unfortunately, Flavio Apel won’t be drawing any more hyper-realistic eyes, as his focus has apparently shifted to experimental artworks related with empty spaces and tableware.

Photos: Flavio Apel/Deviant Art

via Scene 360