These images appear to be mundane photographs, capturing scenes that we all see in our daily lives. Jumbles of newspapers, peeling paint on a wooden gate, jars full of marbles, glass bottles shining in the sun. Look closer, and you still may not even realize that they’re not photographs after all.

Down to unimaginable details like stamped-on ‘best-by’ dates, tiny snippets of text, drops of dew and wood texture so well realized you can almost feel it, these hyper-realistic paintings by Steve Mills leave no doubt as to the talent they take to produce.

Early in his career, Mills “had collectors literally airing in line outside the gallery before an opening; creating such a frenzy, one show sold out in 10 minutes. However, with the time it takes to paint in the photorealist technique – some paintings taking over 500 hours – it has proven impossible to do more than one gallery opening a year.”

At his website, Mills not only displays dozens of these paintings, but offers high-resolution images of them that allow you to get a practically microscopic look. Even then, it’s hard to spot brush strokes or any other signs that they’ve been created with a human hand.

How would you react if you were walking down the street and happened to notice a pair of hands or a face pressed up against a ventilation grate on a wall? Getting over the initial shock of fear that someone really was trapped inside, you’d marvel at the incredible realism of these street art stickers by pioneering Brooklyn-based Dan Witz.

The artist is a trained realist painter, and his figures are stunningly lifelike. For his series ‘Ugly New Buildings‘, Witz places these tromp l’oeil figures in places where vehicles tend to bottleneck, telling SF Weekly, “People are in their cars and inching forward, and they’re like, ‘What’s that?,’ but they can’t get out and steal it because they’d be crazy to get out of their cars.”

Of the series, Witz says, “In the past few years much of my neighborhood in Brooklyn has been torn down to make way for luxury housing. For better or worse it’s a whole new street-scape out here. Personally, I can’t say I like the new modern architecture very much, it’s sterile and so arrogantly disconnected with its surroundings sometimes it seems like giant alien space ships have landed in the night.”

Dan Witz – What the %$#@? : San Francisco 2011 from Colin M Day on Vimeo.

“But, at the very least, there’s some interesting new textures and surfaces to interact with. These are photo-based, heavily re-painted stickers, mounted on plastic and glued to the walls of the Ugly New Buildings. I hit the Lower East Side and East Village in Manhattan, and Bushwick, Dumbo, Greenpoint and Williamsburg out here in Brooklyn.”

Witz, who has been covertly altering billboards and performing other “corporate vandalism” since the 1970s, appeared in Banksy’s 2010 film ‘Exit Through the Gift Shop’, featuring his ‘Do Not Enter‘ sign in Brooklyn. See a selection of Witz’ art from the 1970s to today at his website, or check out his latest book, ‘In Plain View: 30 Years of Artworks Illegal and Otherwise.’

There are many immensely talented artists out there who go to great lengths to make their paintings look as realistic as possible, mimicking the nuances of three-dimensional form, texture and lighting. But it’s rare that the opposite is true – wherein an artist seeks to make reality look like a painting. Meet Alexa Meade, who paints subjects not on canvas but right on top of themselves.

Meade’s thick acrylic brushstrokes turn living subjects into exaggerated, flat, painterly versions of themselves that are so accurately rendered two-dimensional, it’s difficult to tell immediately that there’s a real person under all that pigment. When the subject’s environment is painted as well, the effect is so complete that onlookers are stunned when what looks like some kind of painted sculpture suddenly moves and breathes.

“My painting technique pushes the boundaries of perception, compressing 3D space into a 2D plane and effectively blurring the lines between art and life,” Meade told Juxtapoz in a recent interview.

“Typically, when you look at a painting, you’re looking at an artist’s interpretation of the subject painted on canvas. In my artistic interpretation of the subject, I paint directly on top of the subject I am referencing rather than using canvas. Essentially, my art imitates life – on top of life. For example, with Portrait of a Self-Portrait you are simultaneously looking at a portrait I painted of myself, a photo I took of myself, and at me.”

Meade didn’t go to art school – in fact, she graduated from Vassar College with a degree in political science. When asked if her background in politics has influenced her art, she explained slyly, “My projects spin reality.”

If you were to round a corner in a building you thought empty and come face-to-face with one of these figures, you might experience a moment of heart-thumping fear before realizing that there’s nobody there. Painter David Jon Kassan has not only mastered an incredible 3D effect in his wall paintings, but manages to capture the true essence of his subjects rather than a flat but finely rendered likeness.

Based in Brooklyn, Kassan leapt into full-time painting after being laid off in the aftermath of 9/11. Determined to find a way to do what made him happy, he put himself through art school and emerged with an even bigger thirst to learn and improve. His signature style of realism is multi-layered, with a darkness influenced greatly by his urban environment.

The grit of the wall itself – grit of the city – is subtly incorporated into the image in a way that gives it more than just a bit of extra physical substance. It speaks to the subject’s environment and how they interact with it. Kassan combines the imperfections of the wall surface with a keen eye for nuances in each model’s facial expressions and posture for highly emotionally charged results.

“My work is a way of meditation, a way of slowing down time though the careful observation of overlooked slices of my environment,” Kassan says in his artist statement. “It is the subtlety of emotion in my acquaintances that inhabit the aforementioned environment which intrigues me. My paintings strive for reality, a chance to mimic life in both scale and complexity. The viewer is given an eye level perspective of the subject. A view that is unbiased and in its most raw condition.”

“It is my intent to control the medium of oil paint so that it is not part of the viewer to subject equation. The image stands alone without evidence of the artist. I displace textures from their natural environment by moving them out of the context they exist in. Taking the abstract form from the streets where they get lost and moving them into the gallery space where they can be contemplated as accidental abstractions.”

What can’t artists do with 3D computer graphics these days? Fantasy can be brought to life in ways never before imagined, and realistic scenes as clear as a digital photograph are illustrated with stunning vitality. These 18 CG images from 15 talented artists will blow you away with their depth and attention to detail, from the tiniest little pores on the skin of an elf to the fibers on a fuzzy sweater.

Piotr Fox Wysocki

(image via: cgsociety.org)

The texture of the fabric. The gleam of the metal helmet. The pores, tiny hairs and imperfections of the skin. Piotr Fox Wysocki proves his mastery of 3D art with “The Last Elf”, a truly mind-blowing testament to how powerful 3D modeling programs have become. The project was certainly a labor of love, as Fox Wysocki notes that “As far as I
remember there were 1,300,000 small hair in the fabric.”

Juan Siquier

(image via: siquier.cgsociety.org)

3D artist Juan Siquier has managed to stir together a complex pot of magical ingredients to make this image so believable and moody: perspective, lighting, texture, and all of the little details that make up a personal space. See it full-sized on CGSociety.org to really appreciate the artistry of this image.

Arthur Wiechec

(image via: djdrako.deviantart.com)

Polish artist Arthur Wiechec may design everyday items like wine glasses and chess boards, but he infuses an incredible amount of life into them. Only the physical impossibility of floating wine and precariously balanced quarters of a glass betray the source of the image.

Kuanfu Sun

(image via: apollo13c.cgsociety.org)

Macro photo of a bee, or work of computer art? Kuanfu Sun makes it hard to tell in this image, which is richly detailed down to floating bits of dandelion in the background.

Rodrigue Pralier

(image via: 3dtotal.com)

Principal Artist at Bioware Montreal , Rodrigue Pralier has worked on 3D characters and backgrounds for games like Mass Effect 2 . This particular piece was done using Zbrush, 3Ds Max and Photoshop.

“I wanted to do a piece with an old Samurai. He just had a fight and won over another samurai. He is completely detached, he has done it so many times before. Now he just awaits for the one who will beat him, and end his nonsense life.”

Hong Phi

(image via: hongphi.deviantart.com)

If you saw one of Vietnamese conceptual 3D artist Hong Phi’s interiors in a magazine, you’d never guess that it wasn’t a photograph of a richly appointed home. But all of these images – including the incredible food spread above – were made using CG.

Rick Baker

(image via: monstermaker.cgsociety.org)

Renowned makeup artist Rick Baker turned to CGI to create a stunning likeness of Frankenstein’s monster. “This piece entitled “The Monster” is based on one of my favorite stills, of my all time favorite monster Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s Monster,” he writes on CG Society.

“I used Modo ZBrush and Photoshop to create this piece. Jack Pierce had crude materials in 1931 to create this makeup but managed to create an image that the whole world knows. Besides trying to do a likeness of Karloff I hoped to show some of the emotion that he put into this character.”

Mauro Corveloni

(image via: maurocor.cgsociety.org)

Mauro Corveloni’s “Muriel” may not quite look like a real woman – there’s something sort of waxy about her – but what’s truly impressive here is both the lighting and all of those tiny, fuzzy fibers on her hat and sweater.

Finn Meinert Matthiesen

(image via: madmaximus83.deviantart.com)

It’s an idyllic scene – a romantic picnic with textured table linens, a glass wine bottle, fruit and a basket full of bread with a lilypad-covered lake in the background. German graphic designer Finn Meinert Matthiesen says he used 3D-Studio Max 2009, VRay and Photoshop to create this image.

Max Wahyudi

(image via: student.vfs.com)

It’s tempting to assume that Max Wahyudi must have just edited an image of Heath Ledger as The Joker for this image – such is its realism. But you can see the whole fascinating modeling process laid out step-by-step at Max’s website, as each element is carefully arranged and enhanced.

Max Kor

(image via: mkor.cgsociety.org)

Each tiny eyelash, fine little hair, bump, wrinkle and scar make this 3D CG image by Max Kor astonishingly realistic – not to mention the reflections on the figure’s chain mail. And this image isn’t even an example of the latest and greatest 3D technology – it was created in 2005, making it all the more impressive.

Ed Whetstone

(image via: edthehobbit.cgsociety.org)

“This project was all about texturing something deceptively simple, the Sultan of Slime, the humble snail,” artist Ed Whetstone explains. “Then, the challenge was to composite it convincingly onto a photographic plate. The trickiest bit was replicating the very particular pattern of bumps and protrusions that snails always exhibit. This particular snail isn’t based on any specific species, but a mishmash of ones I thought looked interesting.”

Pasquale Giacobelli

(image via: karma3d.cgsociety.org)

Pasquale Giacobelli’s images may not have quite the crispness and shocking realism as some of his fellow 3D artists, but his art has a special something that many of them are lacking – humanity. There’s something in the eyes of his subjects that seems more fully alive than most computer-generated portraits.

Cornelius Comanns

(image via: cernulois.cgsociety.org)

Reflections can be tough to get right in any artistic work, but Cornelius Comanns has certainly crafted them convincingly in this piece, featuring an ice cube and two ladybugs.

Alex Stratulat

(image via: alexstratulat.cgsociety.org)

It really takes a moment to realize you’re not looking at an actual photograph of a young woman in this 3D work of art by Alex Stratulat.