Li Jiayue is a talented young artist from China’s Sichuan province who specializes in extremely detailed three-dimensional optical illusions.

Growing up in Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County, Lia Jiayue has always been passionate about art, and despite majoring in electrical automation, it was no surprise to anyone who knew him that he opted for an artistic career. He focused most of his time on developing unique and eye-catching optical illusions, where he camouflaged various objects like lamp posts, tree trunks, and even large buildings in the background using his expert painting skills. Li made a name for himself on Chinese video-sharing platform Douyin (TikTok), but he has also been featured on mainstream television over the last few years.

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Cosimo Caiffa is a talented Italian graffiti artist who uses spray cans to create some of the most fascinating street art illusions you’ve ever seen!

44-year-old Caiffa, who also goes by ‘Cheone’, paints most of his impressive artworks in his hometown of Nerviano, near Milan. Most of his street art projects not only integrate perfectly with their surroundings, but they also have this uncanny depth to them that often fools passers-by. Having grown up around art and artists in Gallipoli, Leece, Cosimo started painting on canvas at a very young age, but as soon as he discovered graffiti, he knew that was what he wanted to do for the rest of his life. He taught himself the 3D street art technique, and he has been using it for years to great effect to turn bland, boring urban spaces into outdoor works of art.

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Kurt Wenner, a former NASA illustrator turned professional artist, specializes in chalk-drawn three-dimensional illusions that seem carved into the pavement rather than drawn on it.

Born and raised in Santa Barbara, California, Kurt Wenner attended both the Rhode Island School of Design and Art Center in Pasadena and was quickly recruited to work for NASA while studying at the Art Center. There, he was among the few highly skilled artists whose work was done solely by hand. Eventually, Kurt eft the agency and moved to Europe to study some of the world’s greatest works of art. Disappointed to find no class on the principles of classicism, the young artist came up with his own self-learning program which involved spending countless hours drawing from the magnificent art collection of the Vatican Museums and the Pantheon.

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Lithuanian artist Toma Skabeikyte uses body paint and makeup to turn her own body into various optical illusions.

Toma Skabeikyte, a 32-year-old makeup artist and body painter extraordinaire, has been getting a lot of attention on social media for her intriguing optical illusions. Using her own body as a canvas, Skabeikyte, who hails from Akmene, in Lithuania, spends hours creating all sorts of surreal designs inspired by anything from films to videogames and other artworks.

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Sergey Artemyev is a Russian artist who specializes in oil on canvas and pastel on canvas paintings, including some of the best optical illusions we’ve ever seen.

When creating painted replicas of real-life objects, depth and thickness are some of the toughest things to pull off, which makes sense, as creating painted renditions of three-dimensional objects is anything but easy. Still, we’ve some pretty impressive optical illusions in the past, so it’s definitely doable, but few can do it better than Sergey Artemyev. The Russian artist is so confident in his ability to paint hyperrealistic replicas of various objects that he places them right next to his artworks and you still can’t tell which one is real.

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A 33-year-old artist from Chenzou, China, has been getting a lot of attention for turning trees, utility poles, and road signs into optical illusions that blend into their backgrounds.

Huang Yao is a talented 3D painter who showcases his skills by turning local infrastructure and plant life into original artworks. The young Chinese specializes in creating perfect camouflage for his creations, which makes them blend into the background perfectly. But that would mean that most people either walk right by them without even noticing his stunning work, or run straight into them and injure themselves. Neither case is ideal, so Huang usually adds certain elements to make his optical illusions stand out.

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A former secretary turned confectioner has been making a name for herself on social media by creating ultra-realistic cakes shaped as everyday objects.

29-year-old Marian Sarkisian used to work as a secretary in Los Angeles, but after a week-long course in Britain, she fell in love with the art of cake-making and decided to turn her passion into a career. It all started in 2016, after a birthday cake made for her sister got a lot of attention from friends and family. Marian started a cake business and as her creations became more and more elaborate, she started getting flooded with requests for special events like weddings, birthdays and christenings. But just as things were starting to pick up, the pandemic hit and the young confectioner found herself with a lot of free time on her hands. That’s when she started experimenting with edible illusions.

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Esther Aular, a talented makeup artist from Bogota, Colombia, has been attracting a lot of attention on social media because of her impressive optical illusions.

The 29-year-old influencer, who goes by ‘Nekita’ on TikTok and Instagram, has been posting photos and videos of her transforming herself into various pop-icons and fantastic creatures using only her makeup skills and rudimentary props. From characters of popular cartoons like The Simpsons or Naruto, to brain-twisting illusions that leave viewers scratching their heads about how she did them, Nekita always finds ways of leaving her tens of thousands of fans in awe.

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Israeli artist Vika Bren paints her left hand to create various optical illusions that capture the viewer’s imagination when placed against a dark background.

Vika Bren is a young artist from Haifa, Israel who has been drawing a lot of attention online with her eye-catching hand-painted illusions. From realistic holes in her palm to making her whole hand look realistically skeletal, there doesn’t seem to be an end to Vika’s talent and imagination.

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Aria, a 25-year-old self-taught artist from Japan, specializes in 3D color pencil drawings that look ready to jump off of the sheet of paper they are drawn on.

Despite what your eyes are desperately trying to make you think, Aria’s works are all two-dimensional. She just has this innate ability to draw a variety of objects in great detail, and present them from an angle that creates the illusion that they are three-dimensional. Every one of her artworks takes hours to complete and consists of several layers of colored pencils, but the end result is definitely worth the work.

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Japanese artist 慧人 (Keito) has been drawing a lot of attention on social media with his incredibly realistic colored pencil drawings which are almost impossible to tell apart from actual objects.

Trompe l’oeil (literally “cheat the eye” in French) is a centuries-old painting and drawing technique design to do just what its name implies. Obviously, the degree to which the viewer is deceived depends mostly on the talent of the artist, and in the case of Keito, an 18-year-old youth from Japan, the deceit is almost always guaranteed. The young artist’s 3D rendering skills are so off-the-chart that some of his artworks don’t even look like drawings.

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Hikaru Cho is a Tokyo-based body painter who specializes in surreal body art created using a combination of body paint and makeup.

Tokyo-based artist Hikaru Cho may only be 27-years-old, but she is already one of the most highly regarded body painters in the world, having worked with big brands like Samsung or Shiseido, and organizations like Amnesty International, among others. A graduate of Musashino Art University, Cho is one of the world’s most promising young body painters, and if her work so far is any indication, there’s a lot of impressive stuff to look forward to in the future.

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For at lest 300 years, hikers in California’s Santa Lucia Mountains have been reporting sightings of shadowy, mysterious silhouettes popularly known as “dark watchers”.

The first reports of giant figures ominously perched on mountaintops date back to the 1700s, when the Spanish first came to California. They were actually the first to dub these mysterious strangers “los Vigilantes Oscuros” (the dark watchers), but the first Anglo-American settlers that came after them reported similar sightings, and the figures eventually became part of the local folklore. The strange thing is that dark watchers still show themselves to hikers in the Santa Lucia Mountains, and some have even been captured on camera.

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It’s hard to believe, but the bag of potato chips you’re looking at right now isn’t real, it’s just an expertly drawn optical illusion.

Twitter user Shinoo (@ Shinoo_0215) has been getting a lot of attention this week thanks to his incredibly detailed color pencil drawings. Actually, calling his artworks “detailed” is a bit of an understatement, considering how life-like they look. Take the bag of potato chips bellow, if you didn’t know it was only a drawing, could you tell it apart from an actual, three-dimensional bag? Heck, I know it’s a drawing and I still can’t believe it.

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From rendering parts of her body invisible, to transforming into a variety of fictional characters, there’s no optical illusion Mirjana ‘Kika’ Milosevic can’t pull off with her makeup skills.

Serbian “skin illusionist” and makeup-artist extraordinaire, Kika Milosevic has never been interested in expressing her talent on conventional canvases. As a child, she would crawl under tables and draw on the backside of them, as well as on the doors and walls of her home. As an adult, Kika chose her own body as a canvas, using makeup and body paint to create the most stunning optical illusions.

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