One of the easiest materials to get your hands on is paper, yet, ironically, it is also one of the most difficult to work with. Paper is fragile and the slightest bend can leave a sheet with an unwanted crinkle in it. That’s why it takes true masters of their craft to produce stunning work. While many attempt to manipulate the material, few succeed in captivating audiences with not only with their artistic renditions but also their visionary techniques. Today, we’ve compiled a list of some of the most amazing paper artists whose expert abilities are translated through their craftily constructed art.

1. Yulia Brodskaya

Russia-born, UK-based Yulia Brodskaya is an artist that paints beautiful pictures with paper. The creative produces powerful portraits as well as stylized typography with her brilliantly rich color palette. Best known for her masterful skills in quilling, an art form that involves the decorative arrangement of rolled strips of paper, Brodskaya creates a feast for the eyes with each new addition to her growing collection of work.

2. Peter Callesen

Peter Callesen is an artist who utilizes not only the paper he works with but also the negative spaces cut out of each sheet. For his smaller projects, the artist tends to use one page with cutouts that are then incorporated into the design. No matter the size, though, Callesen often plays with perceived dimensions and silhouettes, presenting a duality of 2D and 3D. The artist says, “I find this materialization of a flat piece of paper into a 3D form almost a magic process.”

3. Diana Beltran Herrera

Colombian paper sculptor Diana Beltran Herrera focuses her talents on creating several artistic renditions of three-dimensional birds. From the hummingbird’s long, stem-like beak to the bright chest of the Orange-breased Fruiteater, Herrera captures the signature look of each species. She also takes basic paper bird sculpting to another level with her Disecciones set in which she offers a glimpse of the anatomical inner workings of our feathered friends.

4. Jen Stark

Jen Stark is a Miami-born, Los Angeles-based artist who started working with paper by chance. It was the cheapest material for the artist-on-a-budget to experiment with. Luckily, it proved to be a wise purchase that was more than just easy on the wallet. Stark uncovered her raw talent for complementing colors and carving aesthetically pleasing patterns. Combining these two thing have resulted in a number of remarkably psychedelic sculptural creations.

5. Anja Markiewicz

Anja Markiewicz is a German artist who has taken to the Japanese art of paper folding known as origami. What sets her work apart from other origami enthusiasts is the size of each of her figures, most of which require a magnifying glass to take in the intricate details. The tiny pieces in Markiewicz’s “nano-origami” series are made from squares of paper that are as small as 9mm and result in little sculptures that are minute enough to rest on one’s fingertips.

6. Simon Schubert

Artist Simon Schubert uses paper as both his canvas and his brush by folding the delicate material to create his unbelievably realistic images. Focusing primarily on architectural landscapes, Schubert manages to recreate curving perspectives of winding staircases and arched windows in addition to the endless geometric details in each created environment simply by meticulously creasing the page.

7. Kristi Malakoff

Canadian artist Kristi Malakoff is another paper artist who has an interesting approach to origami. Rather than using basic pieces of paper, the artist uses international currency to construct her intriguing geometric sculptures. Several colorful “money pieces” are folded, reshaped, and woven into one another to create each complex polyhedron.

8. Ingrid Siliakus

Ingrid Siliakus is an Amsterdam-based artist who creates remarkable architectural landscapes with paper. The three-dimensional cityscapes from her series titled Paper Architecture are most notable for their intricate details. Often presenting a busy sense of symmetry, the figures offer a complex design pattern that echo an urban skyline in an interesting manner, similar to the construction of a pop-up book.

9. Sabeena Karnik

Sabeena Karnik is an artist based in Mumbia, India with an eye for color. Focusing primarily on typography, Karnik constructs beautifully radiant messages by meticulously arranging strips of paper. By honing in on her specific craft, she has mastered the art of paper typography. Like Yulia Brodskaya, the artist incorporates the art of quilling to add flare to her text-based paper art.

10. Jeff Nishinaka

Jeff Nishinaka is a paper sculptor based out of Los Angeles. Equipped with nothing more than some paper, glue, and a knife, the artist manages to carve and construct some truly animated sculptural pieces. He takes months at a time for each of his works which vary in size, from 2 feet to 20 feet high. His subject matter is equally broad, ranging from wildlife and mythical creatures to urban architecture and natural landscapes.