You’ve seen them on your feed. You’re scrolling through Instagram or TikTok, and you stop because you think you’re looking at a high-resolution, black-and-white photograph of an old man with every single wrinkle mapped out in agonizing detail. Then, the camera zooms out. A hand appears holding a tiny piece of wood and graphite. It’s a drawing. Specifically, it’s one of those life like pencil drawings that makes you question if your own eyes are functioning correctly.
It’s a weird feeling.
There is something inherently visceral about seeing a person recreate reality using nothing but carbon and pressure. In an era where Midjourney or DALL-E can spit out a hyper-realistic image in six seconds, the manual labor of photorealism feels almost rebellious. It’s slow. It’s tedious. It’s honestly a bit insane when you think about the sheer number of hours required to render a single pore on a nose. But that’s exactly why we can’t look away.
The thin line between "pretty good" and hyperrealism
Most people think drawing is about "talent." Sure, a steady hand helps, but creating life like pencil drawings is actually more about the boring stuff: observation and value control. If you look at the work of Kelvin Okafor, a British artist known for his breathtakingly detailed portraits, you realize he isn't just "drawing a face." He’s drawing the way light hits a specific curve of the eyelid. He’s drawing the moisture on a lip.
The trick is the "value scale." In art, value just means how light or dark a color is. Most beginners are scared of the dark. They use a standard HB pencil—the kind you used for Scantron tests in school—and they never push the shadows deep enough. To get that "pop" that makes a drawing look like it’s breathing, you need the pitch-black 8B or 9B pencils. You need that high contrast. Without it, the drawing stays flat. It stays a "sketch."
Why your brain thinks it's a photo
Our brains are lazy. They love shortcuts. When you look at a person, your brain doesn't see every individual eyelash; it sees "eyelashes" as a collective shape. Hyper-realistic artists, like the Italian master Emanuele Dascanio, exploit this. They don't give your brain the shortcut. By rendering every single follicle and every microscopic skin texture, they force your brain to process the image as a physical object rather than a representation.
Dascanio often spends hundreds of hours on a single piece. He uses a combination of graphite and charcoal. Charcoal gives you those deep, soul-sucking blacks that graphite just can't reach because graphite has a natural shine (that annoying "lead" glare) when it gets too thick. By mixing the two, he creates a depth of field that mimics a 35mm camera lens.
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The tools aren't as fancy as you’d think
You might imagine these artists have some secret, high-tech gear. Honestly? Most of it is stuff you can find at a local hobby shop.
The secret weapon for many is the Tombow Mono Zero eraser. It’s a tiny, pen-shaped eraser that lets you "draw" highlights. Think about hair. You don't draw every dark strand; you draw the shadows between the hairs and then use a tiny eraser to pull out the highlights where the light hits the curve of the head. That's how you get that shimmering, lifelike effect.
Then there’s the paper. You can’t do this on standard printer paper. It’s too thin. It has no "tooth." Tooth is the texture of the paper that grabs the pencil lead. For life like pencil drawings, artists usually go for something like Bristol Board (smooth finish) or hot-pressed watercolor paper. The smoother the paper, the easier it is to blend skin tones without it looking grainy.
- Blending stumps (tortillions): These are basically rolled-up paper sticks. They’re used to smudge the pencil so you don't see individual strokes.
- Chamois cloth: Sometimes artists use actual leather to buff the graphite into the paper for a soft, out-of-focus background.
- Electric erasers: These are great for punching in those tiny, bright white highlights in the pupils of the eyes.
The controversy: Is it even "Art"?
Here’s where things get salty in the art world. There is a long-standing debate about whether hyper-realism is actually creative or just a technical flex. Critics often argue that if you’re just copying a photo pixel-for-pixel, you’re basically acting like a human Xerox machine. They ask: "Why not just take a picture?"
It's a fair point. But it misses the emotional weight of the process.
When you look at a piece by someone like J.D. Hillberry, who specializes in trompe l'oeil (trick of the eye), you aren't just seeing a copy. You're seeing a heightened version of reality. These artists often manipulate the reference photos. They sharpen edges that would be blurry in a photo. They adjust the lighting to create a mood that a camera might miss. It’s about the effort. We value these drawings because we know a human spent three months staring at a square inch of paper to make it perfect. In 2026, when an AI can generate "perfection" in seconds, that human obsession becomes even more valuable. It’s a testament to patience.
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Common mistakes that kill the realism
If you've ever tried to draw a portrait and it ended up looking like a potato, you probably fell into the "symbol drawing" trap. This is where your brain draws what it thinks an eye looks like (a football shape with a circle in the middle) instead of what it actually sees.
In real life, the white of the eye is rarely white. It’s usually grey, shadowed by the eyelid, and filled with tiny, almost invisible veins. If you draw it pure white, the eye looks like it's glowing. It looks fake.
Another big one is outlines. Real objects don't have black outlines around them. They are defined by where one value ends and another begins. A face is defined by the shadow it casts against the neck, not a hard line drawn with a pencil. To create truly life like pencil drawings, you have to throw away the idea of "lines" entirely and think only in "shapes of shadow."
Texture is the final boss
Skin isn't smooth. Even the most photoshopped model has texture. To get that realistic look, artists often use a technique called "indented lines." They take a tool with a blunt point (like a dried-out ballpoint pen) and "draw" wrinkles or hairs into the paper without any ink. Then, when they shade over it with a soft pencil, the graphite skips over the indentations, leaving behind perfect, crisp white lines. It’s a game-changer for drawing white beards or scratches.
How to actually get started with photorealism
If you’re sitting there thinking you want to try this, don't start with a full portrait. You’ll get frustrated and throw your sketchbook across the room. Start with a marble. Or an egg.
An egg is the ultimate test of shading. It has no hard edges. It’s all subtle gradients. If you can make a drawing of an egg look like you could pick it up off the page, you’ve mastered the basics of light and shadow.
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- Get a range of pencils. At least a 2B, 4B, and 6B. Don't worry about the 9H stuff; it's like drawing with a nail.
- Use a grid. Even pros use grids to make sure their proportions are 100% accurate before they start shading. There’s no shame in it.
- Work in layers. Don't try to get the darkest darks on the first pass. Build it up. It’s like painting; you need a foundation.
- Keep your pencils sharp. You can't draw a realistic pore with a dull pencil. You should be sharpening your pencil every few minutes.
The future of the craft
It’s weirdly comforting that life like pencil drawings are still popular. You’d think we’d be bored of them by now. But as our world becomes more digital and more "fake," there is an increasing craving for things that are undeniably "hand-made."
We see the flaws. Even in the best hyper-realistic drawings, if you look closely enough, you can see the texture of the lead. You can see the slight wobble of a human hand. That’s the "soul" people talk about. It’s the difference between a calculated image and a felt one.
Art isn't just about the finished product. It’s about the observation. To draw something that realistically, you have to love the subject enough to look at it for 200 hours. You have to notice the tiny scar on the chin, the way the light catches the stray hair, the slight asymmetry of the nostrils. It’s an act of intense, focused attention. In a world that is constantly trying to steal our attention and flip it to the next ad, spending a month drawing a single face is a radical act.
If you want to dive deeper, go look at the works of Armin Mersmann. His drawings of trees and weathered faces aren't just realistic; they feel heavy. They feel like they have a history. That's the goal. Not just to fool the eye, but to move the person behind it.
Next Steps for Aspiring Artists:
Stop looking at the "whole" face. Pick a high-resolution photo, crop it down to just the left eye, and spend three hours drawing just that. Don't worry about the rest of the head. Focus entirely on the textures—the wetness of the tear duct, the reflection in the pupil, the thickness of the lashes. Once you stop drawing "an eye" and start drawing "the shapes of light," you've officially entered the world of photorealism. Grab a 4B pencil and some decent paper. It's time to get your hands dirty.