After experimenting with candy and toothpaste paintings, Mexican artist Cristiam Ramos is now working with preserved butterflies. He spends several hours pouring over each wing, painstakingly decorating them with detailed replicas of classical paintings.

Butterfly wings don’t naturally make for good canvases – they’re small, and the texture isn’t altogether right for painting. They’re each about 12 cm in length, so Ramos has to use a magnifying glass to get the intricacy and details right. He spends a good 56 hours painting each wing, meticulously applying one brushstroke at a time.

Ramos says he’s been fascinated by butterflies ever since he was a child. “Since I was a child I was always struck by the color of butterflies and their transformation, and as I got older, my fascination with them never disappeared,” he said. The preserved butterflies he uses now have been donated to him by his fans from across the world.

“I am the only artist in the world who has done works of art on the wings of butterflies, and I have won several awards and a world record,” said Ramos, whose attention to detail is clearly phenomenal!

To us, the work that clearly stands out from the rest is a butterfly with two Da Vinci replicas on each wing – the Mona Lisa, and the Lady with an Ermine. Despite working with such a small canvas and incredibly tiny brushes, Ramos managed to capture the expressions and essence of both iconic paintings quite perfectly.

Cristiam Ramos is not the only artist who paints on real butterflies. Two year ago, we featured the works of Hasan Kale, who likes to paint detailed landscapes of his home town of Istanbul on butterflies and other tiny objects.

Photos: Cristiam Ramos/Facebook