Awesome Portraits

João Paulo Gonçalves creates mind-blowing works of art that transform dramatically with the flick of a switch. He makes his dual-state art by precisely cutting and placing angled and curved blocks to produce the shadow of an entirely different image when illuminated from the center using a reflector bulb.

Artist Niu Yifei creates incredible works of using items found in nature. His impermanent portraits include birds, wolves, people, and even video game characters. He starts by sketching outlines in the dirt, and then places items like twigs, leaves, and grasses to complete the images. Head to Instagram to see more of his ephemeral pieces come together.

Artist M’Brick makes portraits from LEGO bricks. But rather than keeping things simple with 1×1 pixels, he uses a seemingly random assortment of parts to create depth and textures. The originals are hard to come by, but limited-edition prints are for sale at M’Brick’s Art Shop. His Frida Kahlo and Bruce Springsteen portraits are extraordinary.

We’ve previously seen art that was made by cracking sheets of glass. Artist Uncle Liu uses a pointed hammer to create tiny chips in glass, creating pointilist portraits from the indentations. You can find more of his astounding glass artworks on his page on Chinese website Douyin.

Most portraits are painted on canvas or paper. This skilled artist paints on the inside of glass bottles. The process doesn’t just require a steady hand and precision but the ability to think about images in reverse. While the results are impressive, this isn’t a unique talent – the practice of painting inside small snuff bottles dates back to the 17th century in China.

DP Truong is an expert at creating portraits using unconventional techniques. In this video, he imitated the way that a flatbed scanner captures an image, masking off a stripe to draw an image 0.5″ tall section at a time. Adding to the challenge, he drew the same image with his left hand simultaneously.

Artist Ed Fairburn creates incredible portraits by drawing intricate crosshatch patterns on maps. His precision penmanship works hand-in-hand with the underlying map lines to produce outlines of his subjects and explores the relationship between people and the world around us. You can find prints and originals of Ed’s work on his website.

Artist Justin Bateman creates incredible images using rocks he finds on the ground. Collecting and arranging various shapes, sizes, and colors of pebbles, he creates the illusion of light and shadow in his portraits. You can view more of Justin’s works on his Instagram.

South Korea-based artist Drawholic wows us with a colored-pencil portrait of Din Djarin and Grogu. The time-lapse video lets us observe the entire process from start to finish, as the rough outlines give way to color, shading, and a background that makes the image pop off of the page.

Petros Vrellis created an amazing kind of portrait inspired by philosopher Heraclitus, whose doctrine was that everything is both connected and not connected. Each image in the artist’s Out of all things one, and out of one all things is an individual abstract pattern but reveals a face when layered. Matthew 21:31 combines multiple faces.

Creating a grid over a source image can make it easier to copy or change its scale. Artist DP Truong shows us how modifying the shape of the destination grid allows him to distort an existing image, using none other than Jenna Ortega’s warped Wednesday Addams as his subject.

Located in Playas de Rosarito Centro, Mexico, the Straw Art Gallery specializes in portraits created by placing thousands of tiny pieces of naturally dyed broom grass into beeswax. We won’t spoil the subject of this particular work, so you’ll have to hit play to see the finished product.

Artist Deniz Sağdıç creates amazing works of art out of recycled junk. She has used everything from wire to bottle caps to integrated circuit chips to buttons to create her works. Every single one of her portraits is incredible, but the one of Steve Jobs is our favorite. The images in the video were on exhibit at the Istanbul Airport.

Artist Dylan Eakin is a master at drawing photorealistic images using pencils. In this video, he shows off some of his favorite portraits, all of which are indistinguishable from black-and-white photographs to the naked eye. His ability to emulate light and shadow is uncanny. Dylan sells limited-edition prints on his website.

Illustrator DP Truong chose Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow as the subject of a pencil drawing. After he finished the 21 cm (8.26 in) black-and-white portrait, he kept going. Only for the next drawing, he went with a smaller piece of paper. Then he repeated the task over and over until he got down to a 0.2 cm (0.07 in) image.

Artist and filmmakers Niall Shukla shows off Orion – an incredible portrait he created by cracking a single sheet glass. It took a lot of practice to perfect the technique, eventually tapping the glass over a thousand times to produce the 4.5-foot square portrait. He since sold it with an accompanying animated NFT.