It’s hard to believe, but your eyes are playing tricks on you. The black liquid you see being poured into the cup in the photo below is actually just expertly sculpted and painted wood.

A year ago, Japanese wood carver Kibori no Konno (@kibori_no_konno) took to Twitter to share photos of some hyper-realistic coffee beans he had sculpted out of wood and then painted. They looked just like the real thing, and people couldn’t stop praising his talent. Since then, he has created all sorts of interesting sculptures, and to celebrate the piece that really kickstarted his year-long artistic journey, the Japanese artisan decided to do something really special. And that he did…

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You’ve probably seen wood artists carve impressive sculptures out of giant logs, be it with a chainsaw or hammer and chisel, but you probably haven’t seen anything quite like what Spanish artist Gerard Mas is capable of.

By tirelessly chiselling away at logs cut from mature tree trunks then smoothing out his artworks with fine sandpaper, Gerard Mas is able to produce these almost perfect animal sculptures that literally look like photos of living creatures. And as if his works weren’t impressive enough, the dark tones used to expertly recreate the fur of a doberman or the black snout of a German shepherd are achieved only by charring the wood with an open flame. The results are simply breathtaking.

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Estonian chainsaw artist Igor Loskutow recently shocked the internet with one of his newest masterpieces, a magnificent dragon bench carved out of a giant log.

It’s not clear whether Loskutow is a big Game of Thrones fan or if he just likes dragons, but there’s no question that he has incredible talent. Born in Talin, Estonia, the artist has been creating chainsaw wood carvings for the last 15 years, and it shows. He is currently a part of the Husqvarna chainsaw carving team, with which he travels across Europe, showing off his incredible skill. Although he uses a variety of tools for the really intricate details, the bulk of his work is done with an arsenal of chainsaws, which makes his intricate masterpieces even more impressive.

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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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A landscaping company in China recently angered nature lovers by carving dragons and other art forms on live camphor trees. Workers apparently cut off all the branches and stripped the top layer of bark before carving intricate figures into the soft wood underneath. The sculptures were then painted in gold.

About a dozen such trees are currently located on a roadside plot of land in Xiangshan county, in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province. The owner of the company, who prefered to remain anonymous, said it took 100 days to carve each tree. He also admitted that most of the trees couldn’t withstand the carving process and died soon after. As pretty as the carvings are, not many people are impressed with the cruelty involved.

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At first glance, Wendell Castle’s “Ghost Clock”, an art piece on display at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, looks like an old grandfather clock covered in a white sheet. But looks can be deceiving.

What’s the point of displaying a covered up old clock in a museum, right? You’d be tempted to think the exhibit is temporarily covered up for reconditioning, but a plaque at the base of the artwork quickly clears things up for those interested enough to read it. Castle’s Ghost Clock was expertly hand-carved from a large block of laminated mahogany, white cloth, rope and all.

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China has a long-standing tradition in wood carving. For centuries, its chisel-wielding masters have been turning bland pieces of wood into awe-inspiring masterpieces, but none as impressive as the mind-blowing creation Zheng Chunhui. This talented Chinese artist spent the last four years painstakingly carving a detailed replica of Along the River during the Qingming Festival, a famous traditional Chinese painting, into a 12-meter-long tree trunk. The breathtaking beauty of his work simply cannot be expressed into words, you just have to see it for yourself.

As you can imagine, Zheng Chunhui needed mountains of patience to complete his wooden masterpiece, but it was all worth it. Apart from the praise of everyone who got to see the artwork up close at its recent unveiling, the Chinese artist was also honored by the Guinness Book of Records with the new world record for the longest wood carving. It measures 12.286 meters long, 3.075 meters high and 2.401 meters wide.

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For the past seven years, Vietnamese artist Huynh Phuong Do, from Hoi An, has been making a name for himself by carving beautiful portraits of Buddhist deities and historical figures out of bamboo stumps and roots.

Huynh Phuong Do relaunched his artistic career completely by accident. He had been carving wood since he was 15-years-old, but living in Hoi An, famously known as Vietnam’s Bamboo Village, it was hard for him to stand out among dozens of other talented craftsmen and sculptors. But one day, seven years ago, floods in the upper reaches of the Thu Bon River brought bamboo stumps to the river bank in front of his house. The debris stirred something in Do’s mind, and he took a few stumps to make sculptures out of them. Little did he know this was the beginning of a very successful business. Today, Huynh Phuong Do has his own sculpture showroom, and his works can be found in over 20 Hoi An souvenir shops. He spends all his days contemplating bamboo roots, thinking of ways to give them a realistic human appearance, and struggles to make between 200 and 300 pieces a month to keep up with demand from tourists.

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Whether painted or sculpted, I’ve always found hyper-realist artworks fascinating, but Bruno Walpoth’s masterpieces are particularly impressive simply because they are carved from large pieces of wood.

I’m not saying working with other materials to create realistic shapes is easy, but turning something as rigid as wood into works of art that seem almost alive takes something truly special. Bruno Walpoth uses simple carving tools to turn pieces of wood (lime and walnut) into human sculptures with detailed features that seen from afar look incredibly life-like. Only on closer inspection does one notice the carving marks on their skin, left intentionally as quiet reminders that these mind-blowing figures are not human. “Contrary to Geppetto, who constructed himself a child (Pinocchio) out of a piece of wood to banish his loneliness, Bruno Walpoth attempts, perhaps out of awareness of life’s transience, to immortalize the volatile spark of youthfulness he catches in the eyes of his models – sometimes his own children – into a wooden sculpture,” Absolute Art Gallery‘s Diana Gadaldi says about Walpoth’s work.

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What do you get if you combine the old fashioned skateboard with the talent of a dozen Indian woodcarvers? The answer can be admired in the photos below.

All commercially-available skateboards are artistically designed, but companies usually opt for spray paint, abstract graphics and prints to personalize the board. German curator Tobias Megerle teamed up with a dozen traditional woodcarvers from Mumbai to give the skateboard a brand new make-over inspired by traditional Indian patterns.

Megerle remembers “The very first time I drove past I was magically attracted to the carved wooden objects in Mahim, all the open workshops, the woodcarvers sitting on the floor with their traditional tools, working on their items, the whole atmosphere”. As an artist he wanted to do something with their work, and after several visits studying their craft, he picked the good old skateboard to undergo the carvers’ artistic treatment.

Tobias Megerle’s art project was named Final Cut, and its main goal was to keep the skateboards functional even after Mumbai’s carvers were done with them. The results are truly amazing, and the German curator hopes his project will lift India’s woodcarvers from the state of craftsmen to that of artists.

These traditionally carved Indian skateboards are currently on exhibit at The LOFT at Lower Parel, in Mumbai, where they will remain until April 12.

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Sculptor Ian Brennan has spent 5,000 hours, in the last 17 years, carving a piece of timber into a miniature replica of admiral Nelson’s famous HMS Victory.

60-year-old Brennan, from Warsash, England, only became a full-time sculptor when he was 34, but in just five years time he became a sculptor of the Royal House. That’s how he ended up doing restorative work on the real HMS Victory, for about a year. As recognition for a job well done, Ian Brennan received a piece of timber from the legendary ship, which he later decided to use as material for a small scale replica of the Victory.

While you may think centuries old wood would be easier to carve, this particular piece of timber was as hard as concrete, and Ian had to much more work into it than expected. 5,000 hours, throughout 17 years, to be exact, during which he went through several pairs of overalls and cut himself countless times. Just like the original HMS Victory, Ian’s replica features 104 guns, 37 sails, flags bearing Nelson’s inspirational signal ‘England expects every man to do his duty’, as well as 200 feet of intricate rope.

Ian Brennan knew he only had one chance at doing something like this, as he would never again get another piece of timber from the original HMS Victory, so he made sure his 47-inch replica was just perfect. His family has been very supportive throughout the 17 years of work, although I’m sure his wife Suzanne wished her husband spent more of his free time with her.

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An Australian wood sculptor has created an amazing wooden replica of the Ferrari 365GTB V12 engine and is now selling it on eBay.

I couldn’t find much info about this one-of-a-kind wooden masterpiece, other than it’s entirely handcrafted from wood, including the manifold, and it weighs approximately 25 kilograms. It’s roughly the same size as a Ferrari 365GTB V12 engine, and unlike it the original, all it needs is care and love to run for a lifetime.

Most of us will probably never get to own a real Ferrari engine, let alone a whole sports car, so this wooden replica of the engine could be the closest you’ll ever get to owning an Italian wonder of engineering. The asking price is $6,000 and the owner is willing to ship it anywhere around the world.

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