Japanese artist creates amazing paper art filled with delicate details

Paper

From well-known anime characters to traditional Japanese imagery, this artist creates an astonishing amount of detail with card and a paper cutter.

Attention to detail and beauty amongst the smallest of things is always captivating, and when it’s done at the hands of a skilled professional, the results can often blow us away. That’s certainly the case with the extraordinary paper craft of Mr Riu, a Japanese artist who’s built up an impressive portfolio of paper-craft works with the help of some card and a paper cutter. Mr Riu has created gorgeous pieces of art, filled with amazing details and dozens of tiny images that have us peering deep into the depths of each picture, making it almost impossible to look away.

To get an idea of the attention to detail contained in each artwork, these are some of the tiny cutouts made during the process.

This piece, titled “Samurai Spirit”, shows a variety of different details, including falling sakura cherry blossom petals, the word “samurai” written in both English and Japanese, and three different warrior silhouettes contained within one striking image.

Some of his pieces, like this one, entitled, “Negative Twelve Leaves (Zenflower10)”, are so delicate they look like lace.

The “Mandala with 21 circles (Zenflower09)” is equally as beautiful and intricate.

The Zen Flower series draws attention to the beauty and importance of light and shade and negative space.

The paper cut-outs look even more spellbinding when held up to a light source.

There are a number of contemporary artworks in his collection too, which start with just a small section.

Before gradually growing into a gigantic masterpiece.

Whether it’s an emotion or a cute animated character, their essence can be captured in a paper cut-out.

Robonyan from the popular anime franchise Yokai Watch is filled with a huge number of tiny details.

Including cut-out images from the Studio Ghibli animated film Castle in the Sky.

And Totoro looks absolutely beautiful, surrounded by black soot sprites and other adorable details.

Showing such immense skill, the artist has been receiving recognition for his impressive work, with the Maple Peacock being awarded first prize in a competition held by online photo-sharing platform Instagram.