It’s hard to believe that this Diego Fazio’s work is not a photograph, and that’s probably why this 22-year-old artist added plenty of pictures of him in the process of work. The self-taught Italian creates stunningly photorealistic drawings using nothing but a pencil – which is almost impossible to tell just by looking at the portraits alone.

Also known as DiegoKoi on Deviantart, the guy started off as a tattoo artist, but eventually came to realize he actually wanted to draw the bodies themselves. One meticulously detailed portrait takes him around 200 hours to complete. Even though his Deviantart profile says that Diego creates “faces that seem to scream desperation and the anger of a whole society today”, the first thing his drawings actually scream is pure talent and passion.

Website: deviantart