Samuel Silva is not your regular artist. Aside from that fact that he is actually a lawyer, he is also a master of using a not-so-ordinary drawing tool – the ballpoint pen. While most of us use ballpoints for doodling, he uses them to create photorealistic drawings.
Silva is so good at his craft that you’d mistake his drawings for actual photos. Breathtaking and so lifelike, his incredible works are now starting to get people’s attention. Not bad for someone who does his art only as a hobby.
These drawings are 100% ballpoint pen creations. Each drawing would take between 5 and 50 hours to finish. According to Silva’s DeviantArt page, he has eight colored Bic ballpoint pens he got from both online shops and local office supply stores. (He used six of the pens plus a black one in drawing the Redhead Girl). For his technique, he explains that he simply crosshatches the ink colors in layers since they dry quickly and cannot be erased. This allows him to create the illusion of blending as well as the illusion of using other ink colors that he doesn’t have.
Who would have thought that ordinary ballpoint pens are capable of producing such amazing drawings. But as Samuel Silva said in his DeviantArt page, “It’s not about what you use, it’s about how you use it.”