Dalton Ghetti's Teeny Tiny Pencil-Tip Sculptures

Quite a few folk artists specialize in miniatures (like Willard Wigan’s unbelievably tiny scenes recreated in the head of a needle), but few use a medium as messy and tenuous as pencil graphite. Dalton Ghetti’s intricate sculptures on the head of a pencil tip seem to defy the limits of the material.

Ghetti told The New York Times in 2007 that he’s been carving different materials since he was a child, starting with bark from trees and moving to soap and chalk before sticking with graphite. His sculptures range from busts of Elvis to interlaced hearts to the full alphabet over 26 pencils, the last of which took a full 30 months to complete.

His pencils aren’t for sale but Ghetti displays his work from time to time and sells postcards and posters of his sculptures.

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