An artist has gone viral on TikTok (seriously viral, it has 2.3million views at the time of writing) for his absolutely breathtaking photorealistic portrait of his mother. The video shows the artist's process from start to finish over the course of the two years it's taken to get to this stage of the artwork. You get to see how he added in all that incredible detail to make such a textured, hyper-realistic finish. It is one of the best realistic pencil drawings I've ever seen – and artist Gurekbal Bhachu deserves all the praise he is getting in the comments.
Using a variety of different textured pencils, the woman's face is built up – creating unbelievable texture by layering different shades on top of one another, filling in colour and using dots. He would certainly need some of the best pencils for this as the pigment needs to be spreadable, smoothable and blendable. See the process below, in the YouTube version of his video, which currently has 1.1 million views.
I'm especially amazed at how realistic the eyes look, the artist has been able to create the appearance of moisture just like a real eye, and they're so reflective. Each eyebrow hair is carefully crafted with pinpoint accuracy, and you can even tell that the lips have lipstick on them because the colour and texture is perfect.
"THE WAY YOU DREW EVERY SINGLE PORE 😭" one comment gushes.
"Eye detail is on point. real talent," says another.
Gurekbal is a self-taught artist, if you can believe it, from London. He has even more brilliant videos on his YouTube channel, which is crammed with process videos and tutorials to help you make your own art.
Gurekbal's TikTok and YouTube feeds also include videos that break down the process into smaller chunks so you can focus in on the different features.
When you're finished with this artwork, you can dive into even more of his realistic art, some drawn in colour like this one and some in black and white, but all equally as skilled.
See our how to draw tutorial roundup for lots of how tos on the basics and beyond.
