It's all about a steady hand and a whole lot of patience to bring this creativity to light.
Cronulla artist Dean Spinks has got the craft that propels his vision to such form, you would think it's shifting from its paper base.
His photorealistic pen drawings, many taking between 50 and 100 hours each to complete, use the painstakingly slow cross hatching technique.
By layering thousands of tiny lines to create deep, dramatic and detailed work, he envisages detail in fine style. It takes a second blink to see it's actually a drawing.
Obsessed with the symmetry of the human face, the majority of his work is focused on larger-than-life portraits, native animals and everyday objects including basketball cards and beer and soft drink cans.
"Creativity, and drawing in particular, to me, is an escape from the day to day noise," Spinks said. "I started drawing as an escape from a corporate job and it wasn't until I started drawing with pens that my career really started to take shape."
The Sutherland Shire artist recently held his first solo show, titled Hatched, a collection of Australian native animals, at North Epping. From quokkas to koalas, wallabies to cockatoos, emus to kangaroos, each was as intricate as emotive.
He has also exhibited at Barangaroo and Hazelhurst Arts Centre Gymea.
