Pencil Sculpture

Chain links

Dalton Ghetti is no ordinary sculptor. He’s an artist who’s chosen a remarkably unique medium: the standard wood-and-graphite pencil. And you won’t believe he can carve out of them.

As you can see from the pictures above and below, Ghetti creates incredible intricate sculptures out of pencil graphite, and sometimes the wood, too. He says that he does it as a form of meditating on patience — which is a good thing, since his work is painstaking, requiring that he move so slow that only tiny specks of graphite are removed at a time. He works primarily with a sewing needle and a special triangular blade that’s triangular and super sharp. Ghetti says that it’s taken months to finish most of his pieces, and even years in some cases.

Ghetti’s work is not for sale, though you can buy postcard-sized photo prints of most of them for $2 from his online store. Take a look at some of his amazing work below (I’m partial to the saw myself, because of how it uses both the graphite and the wood), and then head over to his website to see more.