New Zealand-based tattoo artist Steve Butcher specializes in hyper-realistic tattoos that look like they’ve been printed on the skin instead of hand inked with a tattoo gun.

Working out of Matt Jordan’s Ship Shape Tattoo studio, in West Auckland, Butcher is one of the most in demand tattoo artists at conventions all around the world, and looking at his work, it’s easy to see why. Whether he’s doing portraits of NBA stars, animals or flowers, the end result is always breathtaking. His designs are perfect down to the smallest details, as he always seems to nail even the toughest elements like tiny drops of sweat, hair or reflections in the eyes of his characters.

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Artist Song Peilun is being hailed as “The Father of Yelang Valley” after spending the last two decades turning a forested patch of land into an artistic village as a tribute to the ancient civilization that once thrived in the area.

Yelang was an ancient political entity first described in the 3rd century BC centered in what is now western Guizhou province, China. Experts believe that many ancient cultures were rooted here, but there are unfortunately no architectural remnants left standing in the great valley. Inspired by Crazy Horse, a mountain monument dedicated to a Native American warrior, in the US state of South Dakota, after visiting the United States, Chinese artist Song Peilun dedicated his life to building a memorial to the artistic heritage of Yelang Valley and restoring part of its former glory.

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Turkish artist Garip Ay’s masterpieces sometimes only last a few moments, but they definitely make a lasting impression. He uses the ancient Ebru technique to recreate famous Van Gogh painting on the surface of water.

A video recently gone viral shows Garip Ay starting his creative process by mixing black dye and carrageenan, a thickening agent, into a bowl of water. He then drops various oil colors and uses a metal rod to manipulate the paint into Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Once the piece is completed, he just swirls it away with the rod and starts from scratch on one of the Dutch artist’s best-known self-portrait. It turns out just as detailed as his first endeavor, only this time the Turkish artist decides to keep a permanent copy of the artwork, so he just places a piece of paper on the water, and the painting magically transfers to it. The impressive video has so far been viewed over 26 million times.

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Classical ballet and hip hop don’t exactly seem like a match made in heaven, but a new dance form aptly called “hiplet” is proving otherwise.

A video of a group of young ballerinas performing hiplet to Jason Derulo’s “If It Ain’t Love” went viral at the end of last month and has since then gotten tens of millions of views on various social media platforms. Looking at how these young ladies are able to put a modern twist on classical ballet, it’s no wonder the world can’t seem to get enough of them. Frankly, neither can we!

Hiplet is the creation of Homer Hans Bryant, a famous dance teacher who has previously worked with celebrities like Lady Gaga and first daughters first daughters Sasha and Malia Obama. The talented dancers in that viral hiplet video are his young students at the Chicago Multicultural dance Center. Bryant said he came up with this strange yet intriguing combination in an attempt to keep up with the times and stay relevant with young people.

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You couldn’t tell by simply looking at them, but the fish, toast and various other foods depicted below are actually just blocks of wood expertly hand-carved and painted by Japanese artist Seiji Kawasaki.

Unsurprisingly, Kawasaki’s masterpieces have been getting a lot of attention online, ever since he started posting them on his Twitter and Instagram accounts. His creations are regularly featured on Japanese television and in various other media outlets, as well as art exhibitions around the country. Now, the internet has given the talented wood artist access to an international audience and they are just eating up his delicacies; not literally, of course, but I can understand being tempted to bite into one of his realistic-looking wooden croissants or chocolate bars.

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After French tattoo artist JC Sheitan Tenet lost his right hand 22 years ago, he never thought he would ever be able to use it again. He trained himself to use his left hand to do tattoos, but after recently receiving the world’s first tattoo machine prosthesis, he can proudly call himself ambidextrous.

Tenet got the idea for the unique steampunk-inspired prosthesis after seeing the work of Jean Louis Gonzales, a.k.a. Gonzal, an artist and engineer known for his mechanised taxidermies and skulls. After meeting Gonzal at various tattoo conventions, Tenet asked him if he could somehow mechanise an old prosthesis he had lying around the house, and the two started working on a prototype.

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With so much information available at our finger tips, at all times, it’s no wonder that most of us spend more time staring at our smartphones or computer screens than we do interacting with other real-life people. Some of us are so addicted to modern technology that we come up with all kinds of crazy ways to keep ourselves from using our phones or laptops all the time. One such solution is this pair of glasses that become opaque whenever you look at a screen.

The experimental glasses, called “Screeners”, were thought up by 28-year-old Chino Kim, as a way to rid his life of screens. “I’m tired of this mainstream tech culture that’s obsessed with things like virality and monetization and locking down our eyeballs for as long as possible,” he told VICE Motherboard at the recent NYU Interactive Telecommunications Program Spring Show. “I feel like the guy in A Clockwork Orange with my eyes clamped open. The Screeners address this head-on and they fit into my general interest in poking fun at the things I find alienating about everyday life by turning them on their heads.”

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Croatian artist Dino Tomic usually works with conventional materials like pencils and paper, but his latest project has him spreading kitchen salt on a black background to create insanely detailed portraits and Indian mandalas.

The Norway-based salt wizard, who works as an art teacher and tattoo artist, starts off with a large black canvas and uses a plastic bottle or a paper cone to painstakingly squeeze out the grainy mineral until he completes his mindblowing masterpieces. Believe it or not, Tomic just recently started working with salt, as a way of keeping busy while relaxing his wrist, which had started to hurt from too much hand-drawing.

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James Phillips, from Three Forks, Montana, has been collecting shed antlers for over half a century now. The 66-year-old takes long hikes in the foothills of the mountains, looking for antlers to take home. Over the last six decades, he has collected over 16,000 individual pieces that now cover virtually every inch of a specially constructed 30 x 64 foot building known as Antlerman’s Shed.

Antlerman recalls that his passion for collecting sheds began in 1958. “I, as a ten year old, took a short walk from my parents’ homemade trailer up a creek into the timber,” he wrote on his website, Antlerman.com. “I stumbled onto an old set of elk antlers and packed them back to camp. A few days later I hiked a little further and brought home a couple old white elk antlers. To this day, when I find a shed I get the same rush as I did then. Antler hunting is in my blood.”

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Tim Bengel, a young artist from Stuttgart, Germany, has returned to the childhood pastime of playing with sand for his latest art series. He uses only black and white sand on a sticky board to create spectacular paintings of people and places. 

Bengel, 24, starts off by covering a blank canvas board with a special type of adhesive that takes a long time to dry. He then sprinkles black and gold sand over the drying glue in the shape of the design he has in mind, and sometimes even adds individual grains of sand using a very fine scalpel. This ‘drawing’ stage can take him weeks to complete.

When the design is completed, he spreads white sand all over the canvas. Then, he shakes off all the excess sand in one sweeping motion to reveal the completed artwork underneath. The dramatic effect of this final step is well worth the hours of effort that he puts into each piece.

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Meet Moon Ribas, a ‘cyborg artist’ who is able to literally feel every single earthquake that takes place anywhere on the planet. She senses the tremors through a tiny sensor permanently grafted under her skin near the crook of her elbow, and dances to these vibrations during her performances.

“I want to perceive movement in a deeper way,” Ribas said. “The planet moves, constantly shaking and moving every day. I thought it would be amazing to translate the massive and natural movements of the planet in a different way.” So she had a tiny magnet implanted near the crook of her elbow that allows her to feel the Earth’s vibrations in real time. Her choice of body hacking may not be as obvious as the antenna sticking out of the skull of Neil Harbisson, or these LED lights implanted under the skin, but its purpose is just as bizarre.

Ribas, a choreographer who studied movement at Dartington College in the UK, described the physical sensation near her elbow as being similar to having a phone vibrate in your pocket. Of course, the stronger the earthquake, the stronger the vibrations she feels. For instance, during the devastating 7.8 quake in Nepal last year, Ribas woke up in the middle of the night with strong vibrations coursing through her arm. “It felt very weird, like I was there,” she said. “I feel connected to the people who suffer through an earthquake.”

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It never ceases to amaze me the kind of amazing things talented people can create using only the simplest of materials. Case in point, artist Shinichi Furuya, who uses pencils and paper to make these stunningly-realistic portraits of Japanese celebrities.

The level of detail in Shinichi Furuya’s artworks is so breathtaking that it’s hard to believe they are only pencil drawing. But even more unbelievable is the fact that Furuya is just an amateur artist. He describes himself as a “middle-aged businessman who wasn’t able to become a professional illustrator” and says that creates these masterpieces in his free time. So this guy couldn’t find a job as an illustrator?!? There must be something very wrong with the world…

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A pair of identical twin sisters from Los Angeles have come up with a bizarre way to make money – they’re ‘sleeping’ with superhero figurines and then selling each one for a whopping $333. In a bid to boost sales, they’re also posting highly suggestive photographs on Instagram of each night spent with a figurine.

Allie and Lexie Kaplan, 22, are working in collaboration with ‘The Most Famous Artist’ Matty Mo, who rose to fame after making $50,000 in one weekend by selling cash on Instagram. The figurine collection, named ‘The Boys Toys’, features seven fictional characters – Batman, Mario, Pikachu, Yoda, Chewbacca, The Hulk, and Darth Vader. The sisters revealed that they purchased the figurines for a total of $130 from LA’s Toy District and are selling each one for $333. According to The Most Famous Artist online shop, they are all sold out.

“Each ‘Boy Toy’ is signed on the tag and includes a signed Certificate of Authenticity sealed with kisses and a framed picture of us with the ‘Boy Toy’. And yes they smell like us,” the twins wrote on Instagram. “We are taking over @themostfamousartist this week to launch our new project ‘Boy Toys’. We slept with each one of them and have the pictures to prove it. This week we are going to tell you all about each ones dirty little secrets.”

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Take a look at the photo below. Can you believe this is not a photograph, but an (almost) pixel-perfect pencil rendition of a stock photo? Neither could eye (pun intended), but it’s true. This is the kind of work Italian artist Flavio Apel is capable of.

Apel says his passion for drawing started out as a simple hobby, which makes his amazing artworks that much more impressive. He definitely became quite serious about drawing at some point in his life, because he is currently able to draw human eyes and skin to perfection. From the tiniest of wrinkles to the slim veins in the eyeball, Flavio’s works seem flawless black-and-white photographs and you probably need an expert to tell them apart.

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Denver-based visual artist Landon Meier started making realistic latex masks as a hobby, but some of his creations got so much attention that he eventually built a business around them. Today, his aptly-named company Hyperflesh is renowned for making some of the most accurate Halloween masks in the world.

Landon’s rise to fame came in 2011, when he created a set of three hyper-realistic baby masks made of extra thick latex. Photos of the eerie masks worn by a muscular male model spread on the internet like wildfire and Hyperflesh saw its business skyrocket almost instantly. In a matter of days, the talented artist went from 25 orders a month to 25 a week, and had to hire extra help just to keep up with demand. It’s worth mentioning that at $350 a piece, Meier’s hand-crafted baby masks were definitely not cheap, but they still appealed to a lot of people, who either wanted to wear them in Halloween costume competitions or just add them to their mask collections.

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