The Democratic Republic of the Congo’s misfortunes have often eclipsed its good news, with ongoing armed conflicts and most recently an Ebola outbreak. Much of the world knows little of the country’s vibrant arts scene, and last weekend in the capital, Kinshasa, models showed off daring new looks dreamed up by local designers on the catwalk. (Photo by Olivia Acland/The Guardian)

Artist Paolo Curcio craves tiny bas-relief sculptures into coins – a traditional art form known as the hobo nickel. Curcio’s coins feature intricately detailed hobos, skulls and a variety of pop culture characters. Plastic castings of his works are available online.

“Jason deCaires Taylor is an English sculptor specialising in the creation of contemporary underwater sculptures which over time develop into artificial coral reefs. Taylor integrates his skills as a conservationist, underwater photographer and scuba diving instructor to produce unique installations that encourage the habitation and growth of corals and marine life”. – Wikipedia. Photo: “The Silent Evolution”. Underwater Sculpture, Museo Subacuático de Arte, Cancun. (Photo by Jason deCaires Taylor/UnderwaterSculpture)

Shuichi Mizoguchi is the forerunner of Japanese digital graphic art. He is known for his fantastic Japanese feminine beauty imagery. SHU can get the best of his talent to use various colors freely and uniquely to create fantastic imagery of ancient scenery, robots on top of the Japanese feminine beauty. His imagery has been captivated by Japanese young and middle class generations.

Anne London found her focus at the age of 19 while working for Tippi Hedren, founder of Shambala , a refuge for big cats, elephants and other species located in California. There, as she walked among the animals, she realized that the commercial art field was not for her, and she dedicated her life to bringing about awareness of the plight of endangered wildlife across the globe, and raising money for conservation efforts.

Jack Tia Kee Woon is an artist from Singapore. He is famous through his technique of watercolor painting in acrylic environment. His painting style is very light and radiant, where the watercolors add the transparence to the picture, while acrylic make the colors look very deep. One can see the influence of Chinese and Japanese culture on his art.

French artist Julien Breton aka Kaalam started calligraphy in 2001 by copying Arabic calligraphers. Self-taught, he began to incorporate long exposure photography to create incredible light paintings around the world. All of the images in this gallery were created in-camera, meaning there is no Photoshop trickery or post-production manipulation involved in creating these works of art.