Ivan Djuric, a talented pyrographer from Serbia, creates incredibly detailed portraits of celebrities by burning them onto pieces of wood using a special tool.

Pyrography, as an art form, can be traced back thousands of years, with evidence of its early existence discovered in countries like China, Egypt and the ancient Roman Empire, but modern artists have really elevated pyrography to an unprecedented level. take Serbian artist Ivan Djuric, whose incredibly detailed portraits rival black-and-white photographs in terms of realism. Using a pyrography tool, he applies varying and precise amounts of pressure to change the intensity of the burn, thus achieving various tones and contrasts.

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Talented makeup artist and self-described illusionist, Aurelio Sanchez, has been getting a lot of online attention for his ability to transform into celebrities like Mariah Carey or Shakira.

Aurelio Sanchez has always had a thing for impersonating people and film characters, but it wasn’t until one day, at age 18, when he acted out a character for his mom, that he knew that was what he wanted to do with his life. He went on to study makeup and used this newfound knowledge to fulfill his dream, turning himself into doppelgangers of celebrities like legendary Mexican singer, Selena, Oscar-nominated actress and singer, Lady Gaga, Mariah Carey, and many more.

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Aria, a 25-year-old self-taught artist from Japan, specializes in 3D color pencil drawings that look ready to jump off of the sheet of paper they are drawn on.

Despite what your eyes are desperately trying to make you think, Aria’s works are all two-dimensional. She just has this innate ability to draw a variety of objects in great detail, and present them from an angle that creates the illusion that they are three-dimensional. Every one of her artworks takes hours to complete and consists of several layers of colored pencils, but the end result is definitely worth the work.

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A security guard got so bored on his first day at work that he ruined a million-dollar avant-garde painting by drawing eyes on the faceless figures depicted in the artwork.

Anna Leporskaya’s Three Figures, an artwork painted between 1932 and 1934, was on display at the Boris Yeltsin Presidential Center in Ekaterinburg as part of an exhibition when someone noticed something strange about it in December of last year. The three figures depicted in the avant-garde piece were originally faceless, but now two of them had small dots for eyes. The vandalism was first noticed on 7 December by two visitors who alerted the Yeltsin Center staff about it, and a search for the perpetrator began. One thing that no one expected was for the security guard paid to prevent such things from happening to be the vandal…

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A South Korean porcelain painter specializing in watercolor-like designs, managed to adapt her art to a whole new, more sensitive canvas, the human skin.

Bucheon-based tattoo artist Abii had spent about six years working as a professional porcelain painter when her mentor encouraged her to start practicing tattooing as well. She had always wanted to expand the way she expressed herself artistically, so this was a welcome challenge. She started studying under a famous South Korean tattoo artist, and before long, Abii was inking the same beautiful motifs from her porcelain masterpieces on human skin.

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Brenda Delgado, a self-taught artist from Manila, in the Philippines, paints dead cockroaches into miniature artworks inspired by classics like Starry Night or Girl With a Pearl Earring.

When it comes to unusual art mediums, it’s tough to find something more bizarre than Brenda Delgado’s choice for a canvas. The 30-year-old resident of Caloocan City in Manila came up with the idea to paint on dead cockroaches while sweeping some dead bugs from her working space. She noticed how shiny and smooth cockroach wings were, paused, and somehow thought about painting on them. She started using oil paints to recreate tiny versions of classic masterpieces like Van Gogh’s Starry Night or Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring, and her works soon started attracting attention online.

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Danila Shmelev aka Shozy, is a talented street artist from Moscow, Russia who specializes in hyperrealistic optical illusions that capture the viewer’s imagination.

Born and raised in Moscow, Danila was first introduced to graffiti street culture in the early 2000s. Showing a strong talent for drawing and painting, he spent 4 years at the MHIP (Moscow Institute of Art & Industrial), while at the same time attending workshops of famous Russian painters. Still, graffiti remained Shozy’s biggest passion, and since 2010, he has been developing his unique style of street art, one that has won him international acclaim and the opportunity to travel the world to showcase his talent.

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Albert Zakirov, an artist from the Russian Federation’s Tatarstan Autonomous Republic has an original, albeit controversial painting technique – he uses women’s naked bodies as his paintbrushes.

Albert Zakirov started drawing and painting at an early age and spent much of his childhood preparing for art school. After studying with an excellent teacher for a couple of months in tenth grade, he picked up the necessary knowledge to get admitted into art school, where he quietly studied the basics while experimenting with all sorts of unusual techniques and mediums. He never graduated from art school, but it was there that he first used a woman’s body to paint on canvas, and it was this experience that inspired him to make the technique his own.

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A talented artist working under the pseudonym ‘Hirothropologie’ has become world-famous for his ability to create photo-like portraits using paint, brushes and lots of skill.

It might sound like an exaggeration, but having to distinguish between one of Hirothropologie’s paintings and an actual photo of his model is a very challenging endeavor. Every little detail in his paintings, from loose strands of hair to freckles or creases in his subjects’ clothes, are expertly reproduced on canvas, creating an almost eerie hyperrealistic illusion. It’s hard to believe Hirothropologie is able to achieve this with just paint and a set of fine brushes, but then again, as he puts it, “I put my entire life into this”.

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Dmitry Bragin is a Ukrainian artist who specializes in steampunk masks that make the wearer look more machine than man.

While most of Dmitry Bragin’s stunning-looking masks aren’t technically steampunk, as they contain no moving parts, it’s clear that the sci-fi genre served as the main inspiration for them. The talented artist starts off with a flimsy plastic mask that’s easy to shape as his base and adds all sorts of decorative elements to it in order to transform it into the wearable wonders you see below. The materials in his arsenal range from motorcycle parts and discarded camera lenses to metallic children’s toys, although you couldn’t really tell by looking at the finished product.

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Johannes Wessmark is a self-taught Swedish artist who specializes in hyperrealistic acrylic painting that rivals high-resolution photography.

Johannes Wessmark was born in Karlstad, Sweden in 1962. He had a happy childhood, but he wasn’t the most popular of his peers, preferring instead to observe without interacting. Looking back, the Swedish painter remembers some quirks that hint at the attention to detail his art is now world-famous for. When he was 10, he decided to start cleaning his own room, just to make sure it was done exactly the way he wanted. He sorted all of his toys in straight lines and in color order, which was a bit odd for a kid his age. He also drew and painted a lot, and his mother encouraged him to develop his artistic side, which turned out to be a great idea, as Johannes is one of the world’s most respected hyperrealistic artists.

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Nguyen Phat Tri, a young hairstylist from Vietnam, has been getting a lot of attention for his eye-catching floral hair designs.

28-year-old Nguyen Phat Tri graduated from An Giang University, with a degree in Biotechnology,  in 2015, but as he always had an inclination for the arts, he decided to go to Ho Chi Minh City to study makeup and hairdressing. That may have seemed like a controversial career choice, but time proved that it was the right one, as young Phat Tri quickly made a name for himself on the Vietnamese hairstyling scene, thanks to some truly innovating techniques and designs.

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Armed with an Xacto knife and mountains of patience, Japanese artist Gaku turns all kinds of fruits and vegetables into ephemeral works of art.

Inspired by the Japanese traditional food carving art mukimono, Gaku takes fruits or vegetables from the grocery store and carves them into a variety of intriguing patterns, from geometrical designs to traditional motifs and symbols, and even animal models. But apart from the skill and patience required to create these stunning food carvings, the most impressive thing about Gaku is his speed, as many times the artistic process is a race against time to make sure that oxidation doesn’t ruin his artwork. Weh working on apples or other produce that tends to oxidize quickly, he has to finish his designs in just a few minutes and still have time to photograph them.

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Julie Rhodes is a UK-based artist who specializes in photo-like hyperrealistic paintings of wildlife, particularly big cats like lions and tigers.

You’d be forgiven for mistaking Julie Rhodes’ paintings for photographs, as the differences are very hard to spot for the untrained eye. From her subjects’ intricate fur patterns, to the perfect coloring of the cats’ thick coats and the reflections in their eyes, these paintings are almost perfect. A professional artist with over 20 years of experience, Rhodes specializes mainly in paintings of big cats (lions, tigers, and leopards) but doesn’t shy away from portraying other animals as well, like elephants and zebras.

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The New York Earth Room at 141 Wooster Street is a unique NYC attraction created in 1977 by local artist Walter De Maria by filling an apartment with 140 tons of dirt.

Consisting of 250 cubic yards of fertile dirt covering the floor of an apartment located on the second floor of a building on Wooster Street, The New York Earth Room is one of NYC’s most unusual artsy attractions. The Dia Art Foundation commissioned local artist Walter De Maria to create it in 1977, and it was opened to the general public in 1980. De Maria had previously created two other earth rooms in Germany, but the one in New York is the only one in existence today. Art lovers can visit the unusual attraction, gaze upon the mass of dirt and take in its earthy fragrance, but they are forbidden from stepping on the dirt or even touching it.

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