Diminutive flags wave in the wind, ferris wheels the size of clock gears turn, cranes rise and fall and tiny cars zoom around in this three-dimensional world made out of paper. Artist Charles Young has been working on his ‘Paperholm’ project for years, typically completing one miniature building every single day, mounting them to wood or stone and creating stop-motion animations from their moving parts.

Today, Young has amassed over 635 paper buildings, rollercoasters, vehicles and other elements of his miniature cities, putting them together into an impressively well-organized whole. A graduate of the Edinburgh College of Art with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture, Young initially took on the 365-day project to explore architectural forms in paper, hand-cutting them from watercolor paper and assembling them with PVA glue.

The first time Young created an animated GIF of one of his creations, he just wanted to demonstrate how smoothly a particular element spun in a circle. This turned out to be a pretty cool way of showing them off. He sketches, cuts and assembles each structure in a single sitting.

The resulting city is gleaming white and surprisingly well realized considering its two-dimensional origins. Each element is individually documented on the Paperholm tumblr so you can see how it works, and then take in entire blocks of the tiny creations as a whole.

Expanding upon a previous body of work that’s more graphic in nature, paper artist Yulia Brodskaya presents a new portrait series capturing the expressive qualities of aging faces in vibrant hues. The Russia-born artist and illustrator is known for rolling strips of paper into ‘quills’ and painstakingly gluing them together into colorful, three-dimensional designs. The new portraits are named Jade, Topaz and Amethyst, and reveal a more painterly method that tightly packs folded pieces of paper into each composition.

The effect mimics the look of brushstrokes, with wrinkles, folds and other sculptural details rendered in lush jewel tones for an expressionistic result. The former graphic design major discovered her love for the tactile qualities of paper art and abandoned computer programs, producing hundreds of projects and commissions over the last 7 years.

“The new expressive way of using the strips of paper that I discovered recently (and first time used as a primary technique in the Wimbledon artwork) is really exciting – it allows me to achieve more ‘sketchy,’ artistic look for the paper art and I’m excited to keep experimenting with it (though it’s a shame that this method is not much faster than the neat and refined way of gluing strips one by one)… Despite the slow process I enjoyed working on this portrait tremendously: the abundance and richness of colors makes me feel good,” says Brodskaya.

“I used to say that I’m ‘drawing with paper’, now I found a way of ‘painting with paper.’ These artworks are all about color and the unique tactile feel that paper strips add to it. The portrait resembles an oil/acrylic painting (especially from the distance,) but with a paper twist…”

Few people outside of research scientists are quite so well-acquainted with the bacteria that grows inside the human body as artist Rogan Brown, who spends up to four months studying, cutting and assembling his paper reproductions of microbes and pathogens.

The series ‘Outbreak,’ completed in 2014, was inspired by a meeting with a group of microbiologists planning a new exhibition center focusing on the human microbiome, and its exhibition just happened to coincide with the deadly ebola outbreak last summer, when everybody had infectious diseases on the brain.

“Fascinated by this hidden world I spent months researching the strange shapes and forms of microbes and pathogens,” says Brown. “I wanted to create a piece that examined our fears of the microbiological world, so out of one of the petri domes a group of bugs burst forth, full of ferocious uncontrollable energy.”

Stacks upon stacks of finely-sliced white paper make up each organism, nestled into white foamboard dishes. A more recent piece, ‘Cut Microbe,’ measures over 44 inches in length, about a half a million times the bacterium’s actual size.

The details are scientifically accurate, including the tentacle-like flagella that allow the bacteria to swim through our intestinal tracts, yet rendered in white paper, they become something aesthetically pleasing to gaze at, removed from the grotesque nature most often associated with them.

“People often marvel at the time I spend on a sculpture but Time is the fourth dimension that gives my work part of its value. Few other art forms foreground the amount of time spent making them as a paper sculpture does: every cut is a moment. The end result is the sense of something incredibly hard won and precious which is precisely the message I wish to convey: we need enormous concentration and effort to really SEE and appreciate what we see.”

Deceptively solid-looking when seen from either side, the delicacy of these paper sculptures is revealed if you simply shift your position to view them straight on. Korean artist Ho Yoon Shin coats strips of paper with urethane and attaches them to each other with paper joints to create Buddhas, replicas of famous sculptures and other human figures.

The translucency of the sculptures is a commentary on what Shin sees as the vacancy of modern society, relating social and political conditions in Korea to Buddhism’s philosophy of emptiness.

“I am interested in social phenomena and approached the essence of it,” says Shin. “I realized that the closer I approached it, I realized there is no essence. I think it is already intrinsic in me or in you, being judged and evaluated by the inherent values in our things. Therefore, if examined in that viewpoint, I begin to understand why the power group of Korea has wanted to split all kinds of social systems – the right and the left, social classes divided on its economic structure, dominance and subordination, etc.”

“In the end, it’s a story about the situation and a point where we fill a surface that doesn’t exist… and console and satisfy ourselves.”

In addition to his human figures, Shin’s paper work includes large-scale installations of highly detailed, curtain-like sheets of paper, including ‘Imegrated Flowers,’ which filled an entire hallway at the Kobe Biennale.

Most artists approach paper as a two-dimensional surface upon which to draw or paint. Others see it in an entirely different way, using it as an architectural material for the most unexpected of three-dimensional works. From wispy, dynamic cut-outs hovering in the air to replicas of entire cities, the works of these 14 (more!) paper artists astonish and amaze.

Eerie Flexible Paper Works by Li Hongbo

What appear to be porcelain or ceramic sculptures stretch and bend in ways you’d never expect – because they’re made from thousands of layers of paper, glued together into accordion-like configurations. Their true nature is only revealed when they are manipulated. Artist Li Hongbo got his inspiration from traditional Chinese toys made from folded and glued pieces of thin paper.

Hand-Cut Paper Sculptures by Nahoko Kojima

A single sheet of paper becomes a leopard, a peacock, a forest, a skull or a masterful life-sized swimming polar bear in the hands of Japanese paper artist Nahoko Kojima. A single piece can take up to six months to create. Byaku, the polar bear, is inspired by the forces of nature.

Amazingly Intricate Paper Scenes by Allen and Patty Eckman

Have you ever seen paper look so dynamic, so infused with life? Allen and Patty Eckman met at Art Center College and soon put their talents to work in collaborative efforts focusing primarily on Native American history. The artists make their own paper pulp, casting it in clay molds to capture this level of detail.

City Maps by Matthew Picton

Matthew Picton creates detailed paper street maps of cities, often using the delicacy of the material to remark upon traumatic events in each location’s past. London in 1940 after Waterloo, Dresden, and Hiroshima all bear the destruction of war in the form of burn marks and tears.

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Awe Inspiring Art 14 More Masters Of Paper Sculpture