Feif Dong is an exceptionally talented artist who specializes in creating ultra-realistic, almost life-like three-dimensional fish paintings in transparent resin.

The art of 3D resin fish painting was made famous almost a decade ago by Japanese artist Riusuke Fukahori, whose amazing works we featured on Oddity Central back in 2012. Since then, the art form has been adopted and taken to new heights by other artists, one of whom we’ll be covering in this post. Feif Dong, who goes by @backgardenjewelry on Instagram, creates ultra-realistic goldfish that appear to be swimming in bowls or shells filled with transparent resin.

Technically, Dong’s goldfish are as much sculptures as they are paintings, as they consist of dozens of layers of painstakingly hand-applied acrylic paint, each of which is sealed in transparent epoxy resin. Even a single mistake by the artist can ruin work done over weeks, sometimes months, so it’s definitely an art form that requires patience and concentration to get right.

After pouring a layer of transparent resin into the vessel of his choice, and letting it dry for at least 8 hours, Feif Dong starts painting the fish with acrylic paints. He then seals the layer with resin and once again waits for it to dry. This process is repeated as much as 20 times, until the artwork is finally complete.

The delicately-painted 3D fish end up looking life-like, as the artist has the ability to depict their swimming motion perfectly, making it seem like they are simply frozen in place, and could come to life at any moment.

Feif Dong showcases his hand-painted masterpieces on Instagram, where he has a following of over 26,000 people at the time of this writing, and sells his work on Etsy, for anywhere between a few tens to several hundreds of dollars, depending on the size and complexity of the artwork.