Artist Turns Cardboard Boxes and Recycled Paper Into Life-Size Sculptures

Claudio Barake is a realist sculptor from Sao Paulo Brazil. He makes life-size sculptures inspired by nature using cardboard. Before Claudio started to make sculptures he worked with various mediums. It was the growing awareness about the planet and depleting natural resources that made him start experimenting with recycled materials. His sculptures constructed using cardboard are robust and sturdy, almost like metal sculptures.

He uses only cardboard boxes, paper scraps and pick up boxes that are collected by him on the streets. He finds cardboard boxes as a suitable "raw material taken from nature unworthy to us."

Each sculpture can take up to eight months to complete from beginning till end, until it's completely dried. Each part is separately sculpted, and dried slowly to prevent parts from bending during the drying process. Once dried, the details are added using acrylic paint which makes the sculptures come to life. His sculptures, prints, drawings and paintings can be found at Saatchi Art.

Hyper-Realistic Wildlife Drawn on Wood Panels by Raffaella Picotti

Raffaella Picotti is freelancing artist born in Rome, Italy. She majored with advanced graduate diploma certificate in Graphic Designs at the Institute of Fine Arts in Rome. After school, she worked for various advertising and publishing agencies designing motorcycle parts for an owner’s manual of a big motorcycle company, drawings for anagrams and other technical illustrations using rapidographs, and illustrations for children's books.

Raffaella's work is inspired by nature, she draws hyper-realistic wildlife in colored pencils. Her subjects have captivating eyes that spark life into the piece and draws the viewer's attention to observe the tiny details. Besides drawing on conventional medium - paper, the artist has decided to take colored pencils to wood panel in addition to acrylics and gold leaf. "My works are an awakening of a dormant soul that is in-prisoned in the harshness of a monotoned mundane."

The accuracy of colors and precision of details in her drawings make her animals look almost real peeking from behind the vine of flowers or perched on a branch. You can follow her work on Facebook.

Japanese Mixed Media Artist: Yuko Ishii

Yuko Ishii is a self-taught artist from Japan who currently works from Washington. She finds inspiration for her photography and mixed media artwork from the nature around her especially the mountains. Birds are the recurring subject matter in her work, she loves to communicate with the birds to get a better understanding of their habits and their natural habitat.

"In nature I feel invisible things and hear beautiful sounds which I have never witnessed in city life. My background as a musician and poet allows me to sharpen and expand a whole range of elements together, and intuit the spiritual matters more into my everyday life." via

Yuko creates digital photographs by editing and printing them with archival pigment inks on printmaking paper. To make her work look more like a painting, she goes over the finished piece with colored pencils. The final artwork is affixed onto a wood panel and sealed a coat of wax. Through her art she has been exploring a whole range of mediums.

Her work is also an intriguing mix of found objects such as bottles, junk metals, and sticks. Yuko creates shrines and assemblages with handmade paper and organic materials like ash, sand, soil, grass, and soot. You can find her work here and here.