3d illusion arts: Oddity Central

Oddity Central

The Awe-Inspiring Matchstick Architecture of Patrick Acton
This Photo Is Actually a Pencil Perfect Drawing
Cheesy Presidential Portraits Made from Cheetos

The Awe-Inspiring Matchstick Architecture of Patrick Acton

Posted: 24 Oct 2012 03:51 AM PDT

Patrick Acton is known as the world’s best matchstick artist for a reason. His extensive collection features scale wooden models of iconic film locations like Lord of the Rings’ Minas Tirith and Harry Potter’s Hogwarts School of Wizardry, made from hundreds of thousands of matchsticks.

Acton was one of the first artist I wrote about, when I started Oddity Central, almost five years ago. He was working on one of his masterpieces, a detailed model of the famous fortress city Minas Tirith, as seen in the Lord of the Rings 3: The Return of the King, from 420,000 matchsticks. Since then, he’s built lots of other astonishing matchstick sculptures and he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon. The 59-year-old American artist, who works as a career counselor in Gladbrook, Iowa, started his career as a matchstick modeler back in 1977, when he pieced together a small-scale replica of a local church from 500 matches. He did it all with only Ohio Blue Tip matches purchased at the grocery store, a bottle of school glue, a utility knife, and a piece of sandpaper. He had always enjoyed working with wood and tinkering with things around his parent’s home, and after graduating from college, matchstick modelling became an enjoyable hobby. Although he has achieved worldwide notoriety for his mind-blowing creations, Patrick Acton continued to work as a counselor and dedicated only a few hours a night working on his fragile models. He recently accepted Ripley’s offer to build models for their Odditoriums, full time.

But he has started taking matchstick architecture a bit more seriously, and nowadays, instead of buying his supplies at the local craft shop and cutting off the sulphur tip, he bulk buys specialist non-sulphur tipped matches and gallons of glue. This allowed him to work much faster and increase the size of his models from inches to feet. Throughout the years, Acton also managed to develop his own technique, which allows him to curb the matchsticks using pliers, and create exact replicas, down to the finest details. So far, the Iowa native has created around 60 highly-detailed matchstick models, numbering up to 600,000 matchsticks, and which took between two and three years to build. His most famous creations include a matchstick replica of the US Capitol, made with 500,000 tiny pieces of wood, a model of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris, from 175,000 matchsticks, and a scale wooden version of Hogwarts from over 600,000 matches. Scheduled for 2013 is a detailed model of the new World Trade Center in New York, a project that might see him reach the 1 million matchstick mark.

To see more of his fantastic wooden masterpieces, just visit Patrick Acton’s Matchstick Museum.

The Awe-Inspiring Matchstick Architecture of Patrick Acton was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

This Photo Is Actually a Pencil Perfect Drawing

Posted: 24 Oct 2012 02:03 AM PDT

At just 22 years old, Italian artist Diego Fazo has developed the skill to create photo-realistic drawings using a simple charcoal pencil. His latest creation, pictured below, has drawn hundreds of positive comments on his Deviant Art profile.

Don’t tell me you can tell the image below is a drawing and not a high-definition photograph, because I don’t buy it. In fact people were so skeptical this incredible piece of art was drawn by hand that young Diego Fazo had to put up some photos of the work in progress just to lay doubts to rest. And looking at his-mind-blowing masterpiece, can you really blame people for questioning it’s hand-drawn?

Like other talented artists who started their careers on Deviant Art, Diego is a self-taught pencil master whose technique matured with the passing of the years. He started out as a tattoo artist, and developed a passion for creating photo-realistic drawings. Inspired by the works of Japanese artists from the Edo period, like Katsushika Hokusai, he managed to capture people’s imaginations with his precise lines and oriental drawing techniques.

Scroll down for more of his awesome drawings, and check out his Deviant Art profile, as well.

This Photo Is Actually a Pencil Perfect Drawing was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Cheesy Presidential Portraits Made from Cheetos

Posted: 24 Oct 2012 12:29 AM PDT

Cheetos commissioned artist Jason Baalman to create portraits of presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney out of their puffy orange snacks. Unveiled on October 3, the edible artworks measured 3 feet by 4 feet and numbered over 2,000 individual Cheetos.

Jason Baalman, who’s known for his portraits of celebrities created in alternative materials (ketchup, barbecue sauce, etc.), is no stranger to Cheetos. In the past he has used the popular snack to make detailed portraits of pop icons like Conan O’Brien, CeeLo Green and Rachel Ray. This time, the PepsiCo-owned company asked him to do two portraits of the presidential candidates, based on two recent Facebook profile photos. Not one to say no to a challenge, Baalman started work on the the two “big cheeses” in his Colorado Springs, Colo., studio. Painstakingly sorting over 2,000 Cheetos for each portrait, and gluing them in just the right position on a black canvas, the young artist spent around 100 hours on the project. Just like his previous cheesy portraits, the ones of Obama and Romney look good enough to eat.