How is it even possible that a mess of steel wires or a pile of useless scraps of trash can produce shadows that so perfectly mimic human faces and figures? Whether bringing forth unexpected shapes by combining abstract sculptures with a light source or exploring the psychological connotations of shadows, artists make light and darkness a physical element in each of these works.

Amazing Illusions by Kumi Yamashita

Faces appear out of the most unlikely shapes and materials, from scrunched fabric to numbers mounted on a wall, while figures spring out of thin strips of metal. Says artist Kumi Yamashita, “I sculpt using light and shadow. I construct single or multiple objects and place them in relation to a single light source. The complete artwork is therefore comprised of both the material (the solid objects) and the immaterial (the light or shadow.)”

Steel Wire Shadow Art by Larry Kagan

Though they do have a certain beauty in and of themselves, look at Larry Kagan’s wire sculptures on their own, without a light source, and you may find yourself scratching your head at what the word ‘art’ even means. But when they’re illuminated from just the right angle, they transform into something different altogether, becoming birds, insects, ladders and maps of the world.

Plasticine Body Cast Shadow by Rook Floro

Artist Rook Floro made a plasticine cast of his body to create this eerie shadow sculpture, which he displayed in a gallery while sitting nearby with his entire body painted black. “My sculpture/performance piece is inspired by Carl Jung’s psychological theory about the shadow. It concerns with the repressed ideas, weakness, and desires of oneself that the conscious mind refuses to acknowledge. It represents my ‘shadow’ which involves my hidden desires to be different and become perfect in y own right. We always feel the pressure to be perfect by everything around us such as the media, social network, advertisement, friends, and family.”

Interactive Shadow Picture Book by Megumi Kajiwara and Tathuhiko Nijima

This adorable Japanese children’s book by Megumi Kajiwara and Tathuhiko Nijima is enhanced with the use of a flashlight to bring out extra figures via pop-up silhouettes. The book is hand-made to order.

Dancing Shadow Sculptures by Laurent Craste

Two static sculptures suddenly start to dance as a light source swings maniacally around them in this interactive art installation by Lauren Craste, created for the Chromatic festival in Montreal. It seems straightforward at first, but then the figures seem to take on a life of their own, moving in ways that don’t make sense. The secret is a hidden projector that tracks the movements of the light source to create certain effects.

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Drawing With Darkness 24 Incredible Works Of Shadow Art

Regular readers will remember parts one and two of our ongoing series about amazing art from ordinary objects, so get ready for a new batch featuring everything from Cell phone sculptures to push pin portraits. Recently a number of readers have written in to submit their own works or works they have constructed from everyday materials. Guido Daniele is an accomplished painter who transforms ordinary individual hands into art, Robert Pettit has assembled some strangely inspiring art from discarded cellular phones and Eric Daigh has created some rich and complex works from a simple push pins.

Guido Daniele‘s art ranges from gigantic murals to minutely detailed hand painting. This Italian-born artist started out as a sculptor but now primarily focuses on painting and illustration. His designs have been used to create advertisements as well as to raise global awareness about environmental and other social justice issues. He is perhaps most famous for his body painting works which range from full coverings to small pieces, often with a purpose (commercial or good-cause) and often stunningly realistic.

We all know that cell phones these days can call, text, surf the web and remind you to pick up your dry cleaning … but they can also be used for artistic purposes to create drawings, floor sculptures, light and sound installations and more. Artist Robert Pettit has a show up at the SMFA in Boston featuring these and other creative uses of over 5,000 cellular phones he collected for artistic purposes. As more and more cell phones fall by the wayside each and every day, scrapped for the latest model, one has to wonder if there are other things (artistic and otherwise) that these strangely ubiquitous objects could be used for.

Push pins are pretty unlikely candidates for an artist’s toolbox but have become a staple for Eric Daigh. Originally from Southern California Eric now works and displays his art in Northern Michigan. As most artists know sometimes limitations in terms of materials and color palette can be assets. Given the simple (and fairly bold) range of colors available for this type of tack work the range of results is impressive. His process is just like a printing press sorting out valves in blue, red, black and yellow and the finished pieces involve 10,000+ pins.

“It’s always portraits. I just don’t think anything else would be compelling. I think the faces are the interesting part, the method , the fact that I’m using push pins, has to take a second place to them. And the piece needs to convey something about the subject, which usually means no smiling. I’m looking for the most unaffected or unprojected gaze. I want it to look more like a question than a statement. A piece can take anywhere between 2 days and months and months, depending on how much time I can devote. Technically, if I just sat in front of one and didn’t stop, I could do a big one in about 8-10 hours.”

Eric’s talent is his eye, and his technique is better defined as color, not push pins. He intends to leave the pins behind when he finishes his current piece and begin a series in (what else?) torn pieces of colored duct tape. “It could be anything, really.” he says, “colored thread even.” Well, that’s true, it could be anything.

Previously: Extraordinary Art from the Ordinary

And: More Extraordinary Art from the Ordinary

Never underestimate the power of simple office supplies. Post-It Notes come in many vibrant colors and provide everything from a building block for engaging sculptures to a collection of blank slates for interactive community art projects. Here are 16 projects that involve covering, cladding, sculpting and decorating with simply sticky pieces of paper. And see more in our huge collection of Extraordinary Art from Ordinary Objects.

Do you suppose the owner of this vehicle was entertained or furious when he came back to find his car plastered in bright pink, blue, purple and green sticky notes? It might not be high art but it certainly makes a pop impression Warhol may have admired.

It’s almost hard to look at this incredibly vibrant wall of notes by PostTypography without your vision swimming somewhat. The stark contrast between the wall and the rest of the room creates a surreal backdrop an otherwise ordinary space.

There’s no reason that this kind of art needs to be limited to non-representational forms. In this case the artists playfully took advantage of multiple stories of glass frontage to create a nifty illusion recalling a classic video game that appears both day and night.

If Donkey Kong, then why not Ray Charles and Elvis as well? Once you get started with this kind of art there really aren’t many limitations, particularly at a larger scale and from a distance. The outcome is predictable but the effect is nonetheless interesting.

Post-It projects also don’t have to simply be interesting things to look at. In this case, passers by were encouraged to contribute to the wall by writing their to-do lists and leaving them in place for all to see – a kind of civic group exercise in sharing and organization.

Taking things a step further, each note can become a blank slate, a simple and small canvass that can be individualized at a limited scale and then begins to form accidental visual patterns when viewed from a distance.

But why stop there? Why not just plaster everything in notes like Rebecca Murtaugh has done in the photograph above? She didn’t stop with the living room, either, but also covered her bedroom and various other furniture objects.

It may be a bit too much if your boss catches you, but you don’t necessarily have to stick to posting over your own furniture and spaces. Still, smothering an office with sticky notes is at least a good alternative to staring at the clock waiting for the day to end, right?

So you have the theory down, now there are a few other creative ways to put this art into practice. Since Post-Its are simple to use, compact and easy to rearrange they make perfect material to form the basis of a stop-motion animation film such as the one above.