Malaysian artist Brian Lai takes photorealist drawing to a whole other level by creating sketches with inverted colors. Seeming like a film negative, each of Lai's illustrations are like abstract works of art until a filter is applied to invert the colors, allowing one to admire the photorealistic portrait and, thereby, appreciate the artist's creative rendition.
Lai has currently produced two such illustrations, each one depicting X-Men characters (most prominently featuring Wolverine). The artist's skilled work is a testament to his keen eye, as he's able to translate normal images into inverted ones. However, Lai admits that he does need time to adjust the tone and shading details of his work. For his Wolverine portrait he even had an inverted image of a photograph for reference.
Be sure to check out the quick video, below, of Lai demonstrating his ability to turn a realistic sketch of an eye into an equally realistic negative image version.