Incredibly Bizarre Painters and their Weird Techniques

The painter who paints with basketballs

Hong Yi painted a strikingly detailed portrait of Yao Ming, a basketball player who recently retired from the Houston Rockets. She decided that a basketball would be a more appropriate instrument than a brush.

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The painter who uses human blood

Vinicius Quesada is a talented street artist from Brazil who likes to add a shock value to his artwork. His series entitled, Blood Piss Blues, were created using exactly what it says – blood and urine. The Brazilian street artist makes incredibly detailed psychedelic art of violent geishas, smoking monkeys, and other apocalyptic images.

The underwater painters

A group of artists in the Ukraine dive into the water of the Black Sea to compose paintings. With scuba gear, they can stay underwater for up to 40 minutes. During that time, they apply paint to canvases under challenging conditions.

Painting under the sea is virtually the same as drawing above it. But the divers' canvasses are covered with a waterproof adhesive coating before they take the plunge.

The painter who paints with his tongue

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Struggling painters must suffer for their art, slumming it in filthy digs and eating whatever's in the fridge, even if it's not food. But Ani K licks those lightweights – he paints with his tongue and regularly, if not surprisingly, deals with nausea, cramping and headaches.

When he first started, he got severe head and body aches every time he tried to use his tongue. He was sick because of the pungent fumes but has grown immune to the effects, he claims. So far, the drawing teacher has finished 20 watercolors including – rather appropriately – a 2.4m (8ft) wide rendering of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, featuring Jesus and his disciples. It took him five months to finish it. 

The painter who uses dead ants

Artist Chris Trueman used an unusual medium to paint a piece he calls "Self-Portrait With Gun." Trueman used dead ants—200,000, to be specific—to paint a portrait of his little brother holding a rifle. Chris Trueman's "Self-Portrait With Gun" was a labor of love because the artist hated killing the ants needed to complete it. The end result was worth the ant genocide, as the painting is fetching offers of $35,000. 

The painter who uses his eye

Take a look at this artist's strange method. Xiang Chen is from the Hunan province of China. The painter and calligraphy artist attaches a giant paintbrush as big as 4.4 pounds to his eye, by inserting the flat metal end under his eye lids. He drags the brush with his eye to paint calligraphy paintings. While the paintings aren't great, you still have to admire this bizarre painting technique.

Outside of just painting and writing, Chen can also hold a stick in his eye and play the piano.  

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