Courtesy Jamie Salmon
British-born Jamie Salmon takes it to the next level. His work plays with scale -- crafting eerily real, too-large 3D self-portraits and figures to create a sense of "heightened reality."
Courtesy Jamie Salmon
The Vancouver-based artist began his career as a commercial artist, making hyper-real bodies for the movie effects industry, and using silicone rubber, resin, fabric and hair.
Courtesy Studio Helnwein
Gottfried Helnwein frequently depicts children in his gigantic, mesmerizing portraits, along with "low culture" icons including Donald Duck, with the loss of childhood innocence as a reoccurring theme.
Courtesy Studio Helnwein
The Austrian artist doesn't shy away from controversial themes, but has been praised from his realistic depictions. In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting, Forbes magazine published an article titled "Why Every American Ought To See The Paintings Of Gottfried Helnwein."
Courtesy Robin Eley/101 Exhibit
Australia Robin Eley takes weeks to produce these awe-inspiring portraits, reproducing every crease in the plastic wrapping in intricate detail.
Courtesy Robin Eley/101 Exhibit
The 36-year-old London-born artist renders these materials using just oil paint and miniature brushes. One work -- featuring a giant ball of aluminum foil -- took over 500 hours to produce.
Courtesy Lee Price
Lee Price paints women and food. The sumptuously detailed images are often taken from a bird's-eye view, giving a glimpse into the relationship between women and the food they eat.
Courtesy Lee Price
Many of Price's works -- such as this self-portrait -- take place in private places, and display the comfort that can come with indulging in food, but also the forbidden or compulsive side of eating.
Courtesy alyssa monks
Brooklyn-based Alyssa Monks images blurs the line between hyper-real and painterly. From across a room, her paintings first strike you as incredibly true to life...
Courtesy alyssa monks
...but, as you approach, they reveal the thick paint and clear brush strokes that make up the image. The 36-year-old says she doesn't merely aim to copy photography but go "beyond what even a photograph can portray."
Courtesy Samuel Silva
Portuguese Samuel Silva, 31, calls art a hobby -- in the daytime he's a practicing lawyer. Try playing spot-the-difference with his portraits and see if you can tell the photograph from the hand-drawn art.
Courtesy Samuel Silva
What does the practicing lawyer use to create these astonishing images? Just eight store-bought BIC ballpoint pens.
YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images
Australian-born Ron Meuck led the way in hyper-realistic sculpting. His sculptures manipulate scale and age to create giant babies and infant-sized adults, among other works.
THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images
The London-based artist's background is also film -- mostly children's entertainment and puppetry -- working on the film Labyrinth before turning to fine art with unnervingly lifelike results.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Chuck Close is the granddaddy of hyper-realism, starting out creating photo-real images -- like this famous self portrait from 1967 -- in the days when art theorists were claiming that portraiture was dead.
Paul Courson/CNN
The American painter's more recent works are still as huge -- six feet plus -- as ever, but break up the portrait image into mosaic-like grids which warp and distort the appearance.
Courtesy Kelvin Okafor
Internet sensation Kelvin Okafor has earned a legion of followers with his impressive photo-realistic images. The artist's work start as simple pencil outlines, drawn using charcoal and graphite.
Courtesy Kelvin Okafor
Pictured here, this portrait of Zoe Saldana is actually a drawing, eat strand of hair intricately produced.
Courtesy DiegoKoi
The sparkling, liquid sheen over the photo-real human subjects is so realistic, it's hard to believe they're drawn in pencil.
Courtesy DiegoKoi
25-year-old Italian artist Diego Fazio (DiegoKoi) creates incredible portraits that look almost wet to the touch.
Courtesy Kelvin Okafor
The artist's fascination for drawing with pencils began at eight years old. Pictured here, an early drawing of Adele, before the artist refined his skills further.
©Alexa Meade
Artist Alexa Meade paints directly on to her models, using humans as a walking, talking canvas.
©Alexa Meade
She paints directly on their bodies, and uses brushstrokes to camouflage figures into their background.
©Alexa Meade
3D scenes therefore appear as if they are a 2D image.
Young-sung Kim
Korean artist Young-sung Kim has been producing hyperrealist oil paintings for 20 years.
Young-sung Kim
The artist, who tends to paint small animals, wants to encourage young artists to "create things that don't exist in the world."
CNN  — 

The images you are about to see may shock or confound you. When portraiture looks this realistic, it can be hard to accept that what you see is just paint on a canvas, or ink scratches on a page.

Each image takes weeks to produce, and the artists have used an array of materials on paper, from paint to ballpoint pens.

Discover artists from around the world who are recreating humans and animals in their art – and producing strikingly lifelike results – in the gallery above.