Hyper-real pencil drawings look just like photos

Paul Cadden's painstaking portraits look like they were taken by a camera

Landscape: The car is carefully crafted

Solent

They say the camera never lies - but these images prove you can't believe everything you see as they are not photos at all.

Instead they are amazingly highly detailed pencil drawings, the work of Scottish artist Paul Cadden.

Every hair, wrinkle and bead of water in these images has been drawn by hand, mainly with a pencil, in a pain-staking process which takes up to six weeks to produce a single picture.

The poster size pieces on A1 (80cm x 60cm) or A0 (1.2m x 80cm) paper sell for up to £5,000 each.

Horse play: Neigh, this isn't a photograph

Paul Cadden

Close-up: Water appears to run down his subject's face

Solent

Dubbed hyper-realism, Cadden's work is featuring in a new London exhibition which brings together work by artists who craft such intricate drawings and paintings they look just like photographs.

It is not until you get up really close to the finished pieces that you can tell how they have been created.

Cadden, 47, from Glasgow, has been drawing since he was a child.

Working with graphite and white chalk the former 3D illustrator is most proud of the picture showing a bearded man with water running down his face.

Smoking: The pair's cigarette break is captured

Solent

 

Experience: This woman's life is written in her face

Solent

He also reproduced a street scene featuring two men smoking with the wisps of smoke drifting away into the night.

He often draws portraits of homeless people and elderly subjects as he feels they have more character in their faces.

One of an old wizened lady shows the incredible detail of her deeply lined face and unruly hair.

Cadden said of his work: "Although the drawings and paintings I make are based upon photographs, videos stills etc, the idea is to go beyond the photograph.

Cadden's Big Apple: Stunning attention the detail on New York street scene

Paul Cadden

New York New York: So good he drew it twice

Paul Cadden

"The photo is used to create a subtler and much more complex focus on the subject depicted.

"The virtual image becomes the living image, an intensification of the normal.

"These objects and scenes in my drawings are meticulously detailed to create the illusion of a new reality not seen in in the original photo."

A spokesman for the Plus One Gallery said: "When you look at a picture of his work, they do look like photographs.

"But when you see it in a gallery up close, you can tell it's a drawing. The detail is incredible."

Now his reputation is growing internationally, with exhibitions planned in Japan and America.