Are you a patient person? You might think so, but a look at the artwork of Xavier Casalta, and you may rethink your patience levels.
Not only does he create drawings so detailed and realistic they appear to pop off the paper, but he does it all in a method called stippling, which uses tiny dots to create the forms.
In the pieces you're about to see, there are no solid lines, just dots in various densities to create areas of light and shadow.
And it takes a really, really long time. Spending hundreds of hours on a single piece of artwork is nothing out of the ordinary for Casalta, and even though that would be daunting for many, Casalta loves it!
For anyone who wished they could create lifelike works of art, Casalta's work shows that if you want to capture all the intricacies of life, you need some serious patience.
Just like these startlingly realistic dolls made from clay and paint, imitating the real thing requires dedication. It's not just about innate talent, it's about discipline!
Check out his work below and be blown away — or to be totally inspired to try some stippling yourself!
[H/T: Colossal]
The piece he recently finished is titled Autumn, and it features fall-themed fruits and flowers in a beautiful celebration of the season.
Casalta began the drawing in late 2015, completing it only recently. So consider how long this single drawing took to create!
By his own estimation, Autumn took about 370 hours to finish, and every shade of gray you see is actually just a more or less dense collection of black ink dots on white paper.
He uses a pen with a 0.1 millimeter nib (which is very small), and the paper measured about 22 by 22 inches. Imagine trying to cover all that space with such a tiny pen!
Casalta also estimates that, thanks to his practice and dedication, he can stipple about five to eight dots per second, which means that he's actually moving pretty fast!
He concludes that in all, there are about 7 million dots that make up Autumn, although there may well be more.
This is the finished product, and it's incredible! The detail is just amazing, and the fact that it's nothing but dots — no lines, no shading — makes it all the more impressive.
Of course, even after 370 hours of work, Casalta isn't about to rest. He has to get started on his next project, which will be dedicated to winter.
And in case you're wondering how he can do this, Casalta lives by two simple tenets…
