Renderings Created with Only a Pencil

> The online attention hasn't always been helpful; Omori recounts someone commenting "You should have just taken a photo." And as his symptoms worsened, he stopped drawing altogether and resolved to burn his drawings.

Amazes me how some people can be so daft to say such things to someone, maybe a way to feel superior or some messed up psychological aspect.

Those who are curious about the tools part..

He uses Mitsubishi Uni pencils. His recommendation of sharpening the pencils "[Make the exposed pencil lead long] By making it sharp and long, the sharp will continue and it is easy to re-sharpen"

His YouTube video [1] shows his collection of pencils (the various grades) and the meticulous attention to pencil sharpening - which seems to be in two stages, the first is using a normal mechanical pencil sharpener and then the second stage is handcrafting the length of the lead.

[1] https://youtu.be/gSXBsItNMcM

These are amazing. Some people just perceive light and the world around us differently and more perfectly than the rest of us.

Reminds me of one of my favorite artists I’ve ever seen at a museum, Vija Celmins. Her ocean drawings are remarkable: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/vija-celmins-2731/explor...

I know a guy, in jail, with a weird brain injury[1] who they call the human photocopier. He has this ability.

The problem is people are always asking him to "draw Mickey and Minnie and a big love heart with my wife's name in it" and it is close to impossible for him. He almost completely lacks the ability to draw anything novel. If you give him pics of Mickey and Minnie he can combine them and copy them perfectly.

[1] he has an enormous scar from ear-to-ear from where apparently they had to do work on his skull as a small child because his brain outgrew it. He's not clear on the details as he was adopted at birth, his mother was an addict.

https://imgur.com/a/pE6Y032

I wish there were high-resolution scans making it possible to see up close what techniques were used to create these drawings.

This is nuts!

This is so accurate that it really can only be compared to photography.

I'd ask 'why,' but I know the answer already. Much respect to the artist.

Quoting Michael Nyqvist playing Viggo in John Wick: "I once saw him kill three men in a bar... with a pencil, with a fucking pencil."

I can't believe these renderings were created /with a fucking pencil/

> This one in particular blew me away, where he nails the fonts traveling over a curved surface

Did he? https://i.imgur.com/COKNqo7.png

His work is very impressive in some cases and extremely impressive elsewhere. But I think the curving on the can might be one of the weakest aspects of his art. In particular he seems to make a classic example of drawing a sphere/cylinder like this:

→ ⦇

Where the arrow symbolizes the camera and the tangent of the silhouette never comes close to parallel to the viewing angle - the horizon is sharp.

I could be wrong of course but I've seen (beginner!) tutorials teaching how to avoid exactly that.

I remember when I was young, and when looking at art I had this depressive feeling I could never make something so beautiful. I have just now repeated this experience.

This reminds me of works of Maurits Cornelis Escher. I believe his extraordinary observation skills are only part of what makes his work so remarkable. His deep understanding of mathematics and geometry is equally crucial to his creations.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_with_Reflecting_Sphere

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Spheres_II

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_Life_with_Spherical_Mirr...

There is a girl on Twitter who does perfect photo-like drawings of Formula 1 drivers, I think she deserves more publicity

https://twitter.com/zielinskaaart

There's microscopic details, and very shallow depth of field, so the nut and bolt was drawn through a lens, if not from a macro photograph.

Why isn't the artist visible in the reflections in #6? When Escher drew "hand with reflecting sphere" he drew every detail, including himself.

What is reflected? Is that a Japanese toilet, or ... a go-kart with a bucket seat?

What does the Casio use bluetooth for? (I searched and found out, it just lets you change the time via an app. Turns out you can buy absurdly expensive premium Casios, although they look much the same as cheap ones.)

In this video https://youtu.be/lVKT09eLTn8?si=ODZRS3cMvvDqlTOz it looks like he traces only the rough outline and fills in the details free hand. If so it is amazing. It's amazing too if he traces the whole thing from a photo. Chuck Close transfers the photo into canvas in small squares and paints the squares, so his style is more mechanical.

The world of art was completely transformed by the introduction of photography in the 19th century, because the capturing of lifelike scenes was no longer part of the goal, and we entered an era dominated by the artist’s imagination.

Now here we are on the internet and by far the most popular art is glammed-up photorealistic renderings of everyday scenes. The less detectable the artist, the better.

Something like this or maybe the Olympics keep reminding me how much better the real pros are compared to the average Joe.

when I see things like this and people that are not just on another level but are at superhuman ability it really makes me wonder. I am pretty scientific minded and like to think of rational explanations but when I see things like this I wonder if this person is somehow distinctly different from myself. Do we have aliens among us? Is this Neo in the Matrix? I am not normally like that but how is it that some people have such a super ability like this, it is hard to comprehend.

I'm totally stunned by this, I think I'm in complete disbelief. It's truly incredible what humans can do; wow.

OMG! The most incredible thing I have seen in a long time. The casio watch I thought was an ad in the webpage!

Cool, interesting, art is something else! No words needed :)

Strange title. It's equivalent to "pencil drawings" but trying to take the long way around to evoking a CAD model render, but not using the relevant parts of that term.

"Photorealistic pencil drawings" is more clear description of the art.