English artist Ann Carrington uses hundreds, sometimes thousands of everyday objects to create awe-inspiring mosaics.

Not everyone looks at buttons, safety pins or metal coins and sees art, but for Ann Carrington, “all objects are saturated with cultural meaning. Mundane objects like knives, gloves, shoes, shells and tin cans come with their own ready-made histories.” Whenever she decides on what material she’s going to use for a certain work, there’s a certain reason for her choice. For example, her Pearly Queens series made with buttons was inspired by the Pearly Queens and Kings fashion movement, in London, while her bluejeans-made flag of America is a homage to this iconic American symbol.

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Located inside the Carton King Creativity Park, in Taichung City, Taiwan, the Carton Restaurant is a unique eatery where everything from the furnishings, to the decorations and even the plates are made from corrugated cardboard.

Unless you’ve actually been to Taichung, I assure you haven’t seen anything like the Carton King Restaurant before. Except for the food, the waiters and some cutlery, everything inside this place is made from cardboard and paper. It seems almost impossible, but you actually sit on cardboard chairs, sip drinks from cardboard cans, and eat your food out of cardboard bowls at a cardboard table. The food is pretty average, according to the reviews I’ve read, a bit on the pricey side, but that’s to be expected considering the amazing venue it’s served in. What’s great about this place is the recycling potential. In case anything breaks or becomes damaged, it’s simply recycled. That was actually the point of the whole Carton King Creativity Park, to show the real power of paper and cardboard, and convince people it can be used for a lot more than generic packaging.

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Irina Parosova, a self-taught artist from the Russian city of Syzran, creates mind-blowing artworks from straw. Work on just one of these masterpieces can take from one day to a whole month, depending on the complexity of the project.

Straw is usually defined as an agricultural byproduct that is mostly used for livestock bedding and fodder, thatching and basket making. But for Russian artist Irina Parosova straw is a complex artistic medium that can be turned into amazing artworks. The self-taught master started making straw art as a child, in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. She was 11 years old when her geography teacher came back from a holiday and brought them a photo album as a souvenir. But it wasn’t the photos that caught Irina’s attention, but the straw-inlaid cover of the album. She went home, climbed to the attic of her house where some straw-filled mattresses were stored, pulled out a few pieces of straw and started replicating the photo of a ballerina she found in an old magazine. It wasn’t her best work, but at that age she already thought of it as a masterpiece. But then she abandoned straw for the next 21 years. it was only after the birth of her second child that she rediscovered this amazing art form, when she used it to provide for her family. Her Russian husband had problems with the Uzbek language and couldn’t find a job, so she had to use her artistic skills to feed her children. Her straw art helped them overcome the financial crisis and since then Irina Parosova has become an acclaimed Russian artist.

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In order to better “dissolve the barrier between art and artist”, New York-based artist Vincent Castiglia uses his own blood as a medium for his disturbing paintings. Throughout his artistic career, he has used around 12 pints of blood. “My work is literally a blood sacrifice on the altar of art,”the painter says.

While many artists claim a lot of sweat, blood and tears go into their art, Vince Castiglia is serious about the blood part. During the last 10 years, the painter from Hell’s Kitchen, New York, has been using his own blood as material for his art. In a recent interview, Castiglia said he was first inspired to use the bizarre art medium by a need to connect to his work “on the most intimate level.” It just so happens that human blood contains iron oxide, a pigment found in many traditional paints, as well as in iron ore and common rust. The 30-year-old begins his artistic process by drawing pen or graphite sketches on a white canvas, before proceeding to extract the “paint”, in the privacy of his own studio. Then he dilutes the blood and uses paintbrushes to create creepy reddish characters with twisted limbs, or in different stages of decay. Read More »

Ever wondered what the sound of an airplane propeller looks like? Rainer Tautenhahn, a curious audio-visual artist from Germany can transform any sound into a colorful optic signal.

“The ears are the only ears we have that never switch off”, Tautenhahn told Deutsche Welle. “Ears never lie, in contrast to our eyes that sometimes deceive us”. He wanted to find out what a penetrating tone actually looked like, what’s the secret to a soprano’s voice that allows him to sing like that, and decided he could only reveal the magic of sound by turning it into light waves. He begins the artistic process by recording sounds with an ultra-sensitive microphone, but it’s not always as easy as it sounds. In order to get the right pictures, the 47-year-old waits until he gets the right levels. When he’s done, a computer software helps process noise into images, and although the final images look computer-generated, he never alters them in any way.

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How far would you go to find some peace and quiet for a nice read? French artist Abraham Poincheval stayed buried for a whole week in a tiny underground hole in the underpinning of a Marseille bookstore, with books as the only company.

On September 20, Abraham Poincheval began his unique performance, aptly entitled 604,800 seconds. Equipped only with a headlamp, some water, freeze-dried food, a camera and most importantly a small stack of books selected by the booksellers at the “Histoire d’un Jour” bookstore, he descended into a 62cm-wide and 1.7m-deep shaft dug in the underpinning of the Marseille venue. The size of the hole meant he couldn’t sit or stand up, making the claustrophobic experiment all the more difficult. He was covered with a stone lid and started enjoying his seven days separated from the outside world by reading. During all the 604,800 seconds he remained buried under the bookstore, Abraham filmed everything he did (which obviously wasn’t much, since he could hardly move), and the images were projected on the walls of the bookstore/gallery. He also stayed in touch with civilization via a microphone and speaker, which helped him communicate with visitors.

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It takes a great artist to show the true power of a pencil, and Newfoundland-based Randy Hann is one such artist. His breathtaking attention to detail translates into drawings that look more like shot with a professional camera than with a simple pencil.Randy Hann is definitely one of the most talented Canadian artists of our time.

The Newfoundland native takes inspiration from the people, wildlife and scenery that surrounds him every day to create spectacular works of art. Born in 1961, Randy says he can always remember being able to draw, even as a young child, but it wasn’t until years later that he started taking his innate abilities seriously. He didn’t attend an art school, but dedicated years to developing and refining his drawing technique. Today, the self-taught artist is internationally-known for his mind-blowing hyperrealistic works. His masterpieces have been exhibited in various art galleries, and many are found in private collections around Canada and throughout the world.

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The first time you see Dirk Dzimirsky’s hyperrealistic drawings, you’re convinced they’re black and white photographs. In fact, that’s the feeling you get when you see them for the hundredth time, they’re that good.

I love this kind of ultra-realistic drawings. Ever since I first saw Paul Cadden’s graphite masterpieces I’ve been pretty much hooked on these photo-realistic works of art. Dirk Dzimirsky is another one of those rare artists who have the capacity to practically create a photograph with their own hands. Using photos just for inspiration, he sets up basic proportions and then draws layer upon layer until he creates something incredibly realistic. He uses light and shadow to capture the emotional essence of each human being he portrays in his art. “I want to capture and describe a persons precence and specific inner self. Similar to what a detailed writer might employ in their analysis of an individual, I portray not only the physical attributes, but more importantly the subjects inner presence of life,” the artist says.

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Joe Wos, a Pittsburgh-based cartoonist and performer, is currently working on what he hopes will be the new world’s largest most difficult hand-drawn maze. Creating this thing is one daunting task, but nowhere as difficult as finding someone willing to spend approximately 40 hours trying to solve it.

Like all children, Joe Wos loved to doodle when he was young boy. He grew up to become an cartoonist, and as he approached 40 years old, he felt the need to achieve some “lifelong goals”, one of which was setting a Guinness record. He remembered that as a kid, he would create mazes on huge pieces of paper that often ended up on the walls of his home, and realized that could be his shot. After doing some research he learned Guinness had other maze-related records so he asked them if they were willing to acknowledge the world largest hand-drawn maze. They accepted, but with a number of conditions: Wos’ maze would have to be at least 10 square meters in size, it would have to be solvable, and drawn by him alone. Also, he needs five witnesses every time he goes to work on it. The 42-year-old cartoonist started this monumental project on July 27 and hopes to complete his intricate masterpiece by the end of September. “It’s not easy,” he told the Huffington Post. “One path has to remain open, but I have to keep about five paths available just in case I draw myself into a wrong path. And that will be terrible for the person who actually solves the maze because they may spend up to 30 minutes going down a wrong path as well.”

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Zachary Copfer, a former microbiologist recently turned visual artist, uses bacteria like E.coli to create detailed artworks in petri dishes. His weird technique is aptly called “bacteriography”.

If you’re hungry for some out-of-this-world art, then Zachary Copfer’s bacteriography series should feed your appetite for a while. His photo-printing technique is unlike anything you’ve seen before, in that rather than using photo-sensitive papers, chemicals, or ink, Copfer uses live bacteria. The University of Cincinnati MFA photography student actually controls how the bacteria grows in order to form detailed works of art. Copfer stars his unique artistic process by turning bacteria like E.coli into a fluorescent protein and spreading it across a plate. A negative of the photo he wants to reproduce is placed on top of the plate and exposed to radiation, causing the bacteria to grow in strategic places and recreating a detailed image. Once the photo is replicated, the bacteriography work of art is coated in acrylic and resin to stop it degrading.

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British artist Jonathan Yeo creates collages and portraits of various celebrities from adult magazine clippings. He doesn’t call them insults, but “comments on people who trade off their morality and sexuality.”

Yeo isn’t the first artist we’ve featured who uses the controversial medium as a means of expression. Brussels-based Tom Gallant creates intricate cutouts from hardcore adult magazines that make it hard for the viewer to identify the really NSFW parts, whereas Yeo’s art is more straightforward. All the viewer has to do is get closer to one of his original works of art and he’ll quickly be able to spot a series of reproductive organs from both sexes, lace panties, female breasts and other raunchy details. Jonathan Yeo rose to international fame in 2007, after creating a portrait of George W. Bush out of hardcore magazine clippings, and has since created a number of celebrity portraits out of the vulgar material. His “victims” include Sarah Palin, Sean Connery, Tiger Woods ans Sarah Palin.

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American artist Jacqueline Lou Skaggs uses tiny discarded pennies as canvases for her miniature paintings. The level of detail she’s able to achieve is truly awe-inspiring.

Initially these coins were going to be spent- nestled with other coins in an exchange of goods. Or tossed back to the sidewalks from whence they came. Nice thoughts. However, these works remain hoarded as art rather than currency or discarded, valueless copper.

Her series, Tondi Observations, consists of 12 pieces painted over the faces of presidents and monumental buildings.

This small body of twelve works consist of images painted on found, discarded pennies and reflect a decision to move away from making “pictorial” images. A grand finale of sorts paying homage to the binding ideologies that define our family, religious, social and political worlds. Paid tribute no less on the face of discarded coins these iconic images transcend the coins value while defacing it. 

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I love it when artists go to great lengths to create extraordinary art. Case in point, Nikki Douthwaite, a young British artist who uses tens, sometimes hundreds of thousands of tiny paper dots to assemble incredibly detailed artworks.

Nikki Douthwaite is a master of dot art. She uses colored dots produced by a hole punch, and painstakingly sticks them, one by one, on a canvas layered with double-sided sticky tape, with a pair of tweezers. Can you imagine spending up to 12 hours at a time arranging thousands of colored dots to create just one of these amazing works of art? It requires mountains of patience, but for Nikki every piece is a labor of love. Inspired by the pointillism work of 19th century French painter Georges-Pierre Seurat, she came up with the unusual technique during her Interactive Arts degree at MMU. Seurat created images using dots of coloured paint, which the human eye blends from a distance, but Douthwaite developed her own unique technique, by replacing the paint dots with tiny bits of paper. The dedicated artist, from Timperley, Cheshire, has suffered repetitive strain injuries in her arm, hand and shoulder after spending hundreds of hours sticking hundreds of thousands of paper dots, but has never considered giving up on her art.

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For most of us staples are necessary office accessories, but for French artist Baptiste Debombourg the tiny pieces of metal are a unique art medium that allow him to create detailed masterpieces inspired by Italian Mannerism and the German Renaissance.

We first featured Baptiste Debombourg on Oddity Central in March, after he unveiled a monumental mural made with 450,000 staples, but he’s been keeping busy and now has an impressive portfolio of new awe-inspiring staple artworks. For years, the French artist has been gradually perfecting his unique technique taking to a level where he’s now able to create detailed re-interpretations of famous classic paintings. Instead of relying on the usual art mediums, like acrylic or oil paints, he takes these simple objects we use in our every day lives and creates thought-provoking works that blend classic and contemporary art. His Aggravure series contains hundreds of thousands of staples and is currently on display at the Krupic Krestig Gallery in Cologne.

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You could swear these old photos were taken decades ago, and have been stored away some place collecting dust, but in fact these tiny artworks are painstakingly drawn by Paul Chiappe, with a simple pencil. Mind blown yet?

28-year-old artist Paul Chiappe, from Edinburgh, Scotland, has been drawing with pencils ever since primary school, and throughout the years his skills have improved to such a degree that he’s now able to create detailed photographic artworks. I remember even in primary school meticulously copying images for art class,” Chiappe remembers. “I would end up drawing dolphins and things from wildlife books. Basically, anything I would draw I’d make sure it was as realistic as possible.” Now he’s become an expert at creating Victorian-style photographic artworks in such stunning detail that you actually need a magnifying glass to tell them apart from real photographs.

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