A Japanese mother-of-three who took up food art as a way to entertain her daughters struck gold on Instagram after specializing in cute fried egg artworks.

Etoni Mama is often described as a master of kyaraben (or Charaben), the Japanese art of arranging various foods as elaborate, eye-catching designs, but it was her fried egg ideas that really helped her made a name for herself on popular social networks like Instagram and Twitter. Using fried eggs as the main element of her artistic kyaraben pieces, and various other edible ingredients as accessories, the Japanese mom creates all kinds of edible renditions of popular cartoon characters, iconic scenes and cute animals.

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Chicago-based Jim Bachor is one of those rare street artists’ whose works can be classified as both art pieces and a public service. The man specializes in fixing up pot holes by filling them up with his beautiful and durable mosaics.

In fact Jim’s career as a pothole artist began with a trip to the ancient city of Pompeii, in Italy, where he learned just how durable mosaics really were. The tour guide pointed at a 2,000-year-old artwork and said that although it had been set in mortar, the marble and glass pieces had not faded. The realization of the artwork’s staying power blew him away, and a few months later he was in Italy learning the secrets of ancient mosaic art. He pursued it as a hobby for a few years, but then he started doing commission works and in May of 2013 he got the idea of applying his skill to fixing a pesky pothole in his neighborhood.

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The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania, Australia, isn’t the only museum to have shut its gates because of the Covid-19 pandemic, but it stands out because of its unique, human artwork.

As hard as it is to believe, Tim is both a man and an artwork. A former tattoo parlor owner from Zurich, in Switzerland, he agreed to have his back tattooed by artist Belgian artist Wim Delvoye in 2006, and has been exhibiting his body art in museums and art galleries ever since. He has been coming to MONA since 2011, for stints that can last up to six months at a time and see him sitting with his legs crossed on a plinth, in complete silence, showing off Delvoye’s artwork. And even though MONA closed down on March 18, he continues to sit in the empty museum for six hours a day. That is his job…

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Johannes Stötter is a world-renowned body-painter whose artworks are so incredibly realistic most people would never guess they are actually made up of people contorted in just the right positions and photographed from the right angle.

We originally featured the magical body-paintings of Johannes Stötter back in 2014, when he made international news headlines with a mind-blowing project where he turned two of his models into almost perfect Ara macaws. sitting on a branch. He has been keeping busy since then, coming up with all sorts of stunning compositions, from a near-perfect frog made up of several painted human models, to a single person posing as perfectly-detailed butterfly sitting on a sunflower. But, as always, even knowing the secret of Stötter’s art, you still have to squint to make out the people hidden in the artworks.

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Liz Y Ahmet is a self-taught artist who uses a seemingly messy technique to create incredibly detailed and expressive female portraits.

A ‘scribble’ is usually defined as “a piece of writing or a drawing that is done quickly or carelessly”, but that certainly doesn’t apply to Liz Y Ahmet’s work. While her style certainly looks very similar to scribbling, it’s not done quickly and it certainly isn’t careless. The talented artist’s technique is intentionally messy so as to “portray the chaos of emotions that are hidden beneath” her characters’ mask-like visage.

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A Japanese mother-of-two has been getting a lot of attention on social media sites like Instagram and Pinterest for her incredibly detailed and colorful anime-themed bento boxes.

If you’re even a little familiar with Japanese culture, you probably know about “kawaii”, the people’s affinity for all things cute, and the attention to detail present in almost every aspect of daily life. Food is no exception, not even the school lunch Japanese mothers prepare for their children every day. While some just patiently arrange rice balls, sliced rolls or pickled veggies nicely in a box, others spend extra time creating an entire ensemble, complete with rice balls shaped like panda bears or sausages carved to look like octopuses. And then you have mothers like @ryiuyuda, who take the process of arranging a bento box and turn it into an art form.

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Be honest, looking at this hyper-realistic drawing of a squid, could you ever tell it apart from a real-life cephalopod? Most people couldn’t which is why Japanese illustrator Yuuki Tokuda’s artwork has been getting so much attention on social media.

Yuuki Tokuda is a talented illustrator whose cartoony characters have been immortalized in books and magazines. But the Japanese artist has recently been enjoying praise for his hyper-realistic drawings as well, particularly that of a mind-blowingly realistic squid done with a pen, pencil, airbrush and a copic marker. Looking at his masterpiece and the level of detail he has been able to achieve with such a limited arsenal of tools, it’s easy to see why Tokuda’s pictures have been liked and shared by hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter alone.

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A young art teacher from China’s Shanxi Province was recently praised online for spending three months working on a detailed chalk rendition of a traditional masterpiece.

When Zhao Wenrui, an art teacher in Fanzhi County, decided to draw a chalk version of Along the River during the Qingming Festival he just wanted to do something interesting for his students, to surprise them when they cam e back from the coronavirus quarantine. He certainly didn’t set out to use eight chalkboards side by side, five buckets of chalk and work on it for no less than three months, but then he found himself unable to ignore any of the details depicted in the treasured panoramic artwork.

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If you’re looking to have some goofy fun while quarantined in your own home, how about investing in a high quality portrait of your pet as a pompous royal?

Enter Crown & Paw, a company dedicated to helping pet owners honor their bundles of joy by creating hilarious digital portraits of them as generals, princes, or ladies, whatever title the client desires. The company curates a collection of authentic 19th century portraits and rare Renaissance era oil paintings, and combine them with pet portraits to hilarious effect. Seriously, just look at the examples below.

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Akie Nakata describes herself as a “stone artist”, but there is more to her craft than simply painting river stones into familiar animal shapes. Every one of her pieces goes through a complex process that begins with choosing the right stone and continues with bringing out the life in it.

The Japanese artist, who goes by Akie on social media, has a very special way of looking at looking at stones. While most of us choose to ignore them, she considers them similar to living organisms, in that there is a rich history behind them and they all have a story to tell. She is just someone enabling that story to come out with her paintbrush. She believes that every stone she chooses in turn chooses her, giving her the ok to paint what she sees on it. Akie feels that her art is a collaborative effort of hers and the stones’, and she always shows her respect by never altering or processing a stone to better suit her design.

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We originally featured the amazing ballpoint pen drawings of Portuguese artist Samuel Silva back in 2021, but he has been buys over the last eight years, and I though we’d take a look at what he’s been up to.

Looking at some of Silva’s incredibly realistic artworks, it’s clear why many consider him the no. 1 ballpoint pen artist in the world. The photo-like level of detail in his masterpieces is simply uncanny, making it hard to believe that he is a self-taught artist who never went to art school. He started drawing when he was 2-years-old, and developed his own style and technique by creating “simple classroom sketches in the back of exercise books”. A lawyer by by training, Samuel Silva doesn’t create new works as often as other artists, but when he does, you better believe it’s something special.

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London-based Ben Koracevic is a young, self-taught string artist determined to push the boundaries of the art form. Looking at the insanely detailed portraits he is able to create using only black string and expertly placed nails, I’d say he has already succeeded.

Using thousands of nails carefully positioned on a blank white canvas, and pieces of string with a collective length of over one kilometer, Ben Koracevic spends dozens of hours painstakingly recreating iconic portraits of celebrities, movie characters and even animals. The level of detail in his works is simply uncanny considering the materials he works with.

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If you’ve ever dreamed of wielding your favorite sword or mage staff from the video game that most impacted your childhood, there’s a company that can make that dream a reality, sort of…

Let’s face it, taking a life size replica of Cloud’s Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII to work with you isn’t very practical, unless you’re a professional cosplayer, but there’s still a way to carry it with you everywhere. Hero’s Armory is an online company that specializes in everyday items and accessories shaped like mythical and fantastic weapons, from intricate blades to sorcerer wands. Ever dreamed of unlocking your front door with a tiny replica of Frostmourne, the legendary sword of the Lich King from World of Warcraft, done! Need a tie clip shaped like Thor’s Hammer? they have that too.

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When it comes to fondant modelling, there are few food artists in the world who can even hold a candle to Zhou Yi, China’s famous “Sugar King”. His amazing sculptures are so incredibly detailed that even though they’re edible, they definitely qualify as ‘too good to eat’.

The first time we featured Sugar King on Oddity Central was in early 2018, just after he blew everyone’s minds at the International Cake Competition, where he and his team managed to win three gold medals and one bronze, with an incredible cake featuring an awe-inspiring fondant sculpture of Empress Wu Zetian, the only female ruler in China’s history, as a young woman. It was so detailed that judges could literally count her eyelashes. He was the first Chinese artist to get a gold medal, and even though he was already very popular on Chinese social media, his fame grew even more after being featured in national and international news outlets.

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Samia Al Homsi Dagher, a software engineer and illustrator from Lebanon, has made a name for herself by creating stunningly realistic ballpoint pen portraits. From celebrities to commission portraits of everyday people, this talented artist’s artworks are sometimes hard to tell apart from photographs.

Born in 1987, the Tripoli-based artist started drawing when she was only five years old, and as you can see from the images below, she has gotten a lot better since. She is now considered one of the world’s best ballpoint pen illustrators, and it’s not hard to see why. The attention to detail, the precision of every stroke and dot, the perfect proportions of various facial features, all come together to form drawings that are sometimes indistinguishable from photographs.

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