Osaka-based artist Mito Nishikura painstakingly recycles plastic bottle caps into tiny artworks by painstakingly painting detailed landscapes on them.

We’ve seen bottle caps being used as mosaic pieces in the past, but Japanese artist Mito Nishikura has a different way of using them for artistic purposes. At first glance, plastic bottle caps don’t really make the best pointing canvases – at least not individually – because of their very limited surface, but the talented Japanese illustrator has found a way to create detailed works of art on these tiny bits of plastic.

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If you’ve ever used a pencil, you know how brittle and delicate the pencil lead is. Somehow, Japanese artist Shiroi is able to carve that fragile material into stunningly detailed micro-artworks.

Mr. Shiroi (@shir0003) took up pencil lead carving seven years ago, after watching a segment on renowned Japanese pencil carver Toshiyuki Yamazaki on TV. He was blown away by the level of detail the master lead carver could achieve, and decided to give it a try for himself. As you can imagine, simply keeping his hand steady enough to keep from breaking the fragile lead was a huge challenge in the beginning, but he kept at it. Today, Shiroi is a pencil lead carving master in his own right.

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