What we love about thse photoreal drawings by Diego Fazio is that he also gives us a bit of behind-the-scenes process shots as well. Using only pencil and paper, Fazio began as a tattoo artist and now can spend up to 200 hours on a single pencil portrait.

A great use of graphite from artist Linda Huber. From the artist: I started work on this 2 foot drawing 1-3-11 and finished on 1-26-11. The reference was small but very clear so I was able to work from it. I used a 2 inch grid, have to say working on such a large drawing can be difficult so that grid was a huge help. Since the David statue is made out of solid marble I needed to visualize the smoothness, the slight imperfections, the veins...

Lionel Bawden constructs elaborate and fluid sculptures strictly with Staedtler pencils. As it is noted on the Australian artist's site, "Bawden’s core practice exploits hexagonal coloured pencils as a sculptural material, reconfigured and carved into amorphous shapes, mining the material’s rich qualities of colour, geometry and metaphor."

Wow. Working with pencil is one thing, but to create large-scale, massive pencil on paper works as Adonna Khare creates is just stunning. Winner of the Art Prize 2012, Khare lives and works in Southern California, and is a member of the Drawing Center in New York. If you draw like this, it makes sense.

At first these portraits by Irish artist, Denise Nestor look simple, but then you begin to see her work with facial structure, cheek bones, and expression has us wanted to know what's inside the head of each subject. Nestor's capturing of these intricacies make for a compelling series of pencil works.

Kate Russo is an artist working out of Rockland, Maine. Her meticulous and detailed colored pencil on graph paper drawings evoke something about her surroundings in the colder and quieter environment of the northeastern United States. Each work unfolds with repetitive and unrelenting replication of a series of marks and patterns requiring a sort of meditative and hyper-focused state.

These wonderfully dark illustrations by Laura Geurten have a playful and quick folk art aesthetic that has a subtlety of shuddering and detailed line work that reminds us of Goya's Disasters of War. Although not nearly as graphically realistic or horrifying as Goya in subject matter or style, Geurten playfully dances around what is psychologically deep and consuming...

To us, the simple will always win out. A pencil, a piece of paper, that is the best. Slovakian-born artist, Stefan Zsaitsits, who has a nice series of paintings, also creates these fantastic, detailed, notebook-esque pencil drawings of various characters and a bit of dream scenarios around each's head. Simple, powerful, great work.

Colorado based illustrator Monte Moore uses graphite and paper to bring to life other-worldly pin-up creatures. He has specialized in comics, gaming, pin-up and entertainment illustration for more than 20 years and has designed over 100 resin fantasy and gothic sculptures for 3 different international giftware manufacturers, and its not wonder, look at the obvious sex appeal his characters portray!

All you need is a pencil, and you can go far. British illustrator Stuart Whitton does fantastic works with just a pencil, using wonderful shading techniques and detailed layering to create portraits, both for personal work and commercial endeavors. We like this piece in particular, a commission by German publication Zeit Magazine to create a portrait of fashion designer, Marc Jacobs.