It Looks Alive (9 Photos)

September 27, 2026

By Vidar

Nine works that look ready to move

A man sits face to face with a giant painted frog. A wooden troll towers above a child. These nine works use scale, shadows and natural materials to look almost alive.

🧌 Long Leif — By Thomas Dambo in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota, USA 🇺🇸

A child in a red shirt looks up from between Long Leif’s feet. Thomas Dambo’s 13-meter (43-foot) wooden troll stands beside a wooded trail at Detroit Mountain Recreation Area, with a long neck, oversized ears and a grin above the trees. Dambo called him the tallest troll he has ever made.

💡 Troll Fact: Long Leif is part of Alexa’s Elixir, a Detroit Lakes installation built with Project 412 in 2024 from recycled materials. Its story revolves around a five-ingredient recipe, one of which is “a tree planted”, and living trees were planted as part of Long Leif’s build. Each troll also wears a necklace with a number and a symbol from a troll alphabet, and the location of the hidden Golden Rabbit is still a secret.

More: 10 Giant Trolls Hiding in Forests, Lakes and Ruins

🔗 Follow Thomas Dambo on Instagram

🐸 A Frog Across the Room — By Odeith

A man settles into a folding chair while a huge blue frog appears to lean out of the wall toward him. Odeith shared the piece in July 2019 as a “super distorted frog”, adding that the challenge was marking the outline without damaging the old wall texture or using a projector. Shadows and perspective give the animal a body, and the peeling wall stays visible around it.

More: 3D Art By Odeith (20 Photos)

🔗 Follow Odeith on Instagram

🦢 Mute Swan — By Curtis Hylton in Lincoln, UK 🇬🇧

An orange beak emerges from pale flowers and overlapping petals, with the swan’s wings spread across the wall. Curtis Hylton, a Reading-based muralist known for birds and flowers, painted it in October 2022 as the third large-scale mural of the Sincil Bank Art Project, saying a swan “felt fitting for Lincoln.” The wall faces the parking lot of Webbs Motorcycles on Portland Street.

💡 Royal Fact: Lincoln’s St Hugh is also the patron saint of swans. And the King still retains the right to claim ownership of any unmarked mute swan swimming in open water, a right dating back to the twelfth century. Today it is mainly exercised on stretches of the River Thames during the annual Swan Upping, when Crown birds are the ones left unmarked.

🔗 Follow Curtis Hylton on Instagram

🐺 A Wolf of Stones and Petals — By Hannah Bullen-Ryner

From a distance, the pointed ears and dark eyes form a wolf. Look closer and the coat breaks up into stones, shells, feathers and flower petals arranged on the ground. Hannah Bullen-Ryner is a land artist based in Hertfordshire who works only with materials she finds locally and uses no permanent fixings. She leaves the edges loose, so you can see what the wolf is made of.

🔗 Follow Hannah Bullen-Ryner on Instagram

🐿️ A Squirrel Through the Wall — By Iockas

A squirrel grips the edge of a painted hole in this green gable. Its whiskers reach across the wall, while broken bricks and dark shadows give the opening depth. One ear almost touches the roofline.

🔗 Follow Iockas on Instagram

Quick question: guess the city

Seen from above, a flat rooftop is painted like a huge display case of butterflies, surrounded by glass towers, a pool with palm trees and a busy street.

A giant butterfly collection is pinned to this rooftop. Which city is it in?

Show answer

Miami, Florida, USA 🇺🇸

🦋 The Miami Collection — By Mantra in Miami, Florida, USA 🇺🇸

Seen from above, this Miami roof looks like an enormous butterfly collection. Painted frames, labels and shadows make the flat surface look like a display case. Mantra’s The Miami Collection is a 35,000-square-foot freehand rooftop mural that includes the endangered Miami blue, a butterfly native to South Florida. The surrounding towers offer a view of the whole piece.

Curated by Justkids, the mural was painted in late 2024 on a rooftop at the Southeast Financial Center, 200 South Biscayne Boulevard.

💡 Nerd Fact: The Miami blue was thought extinct until 1999, when it was rediscovered in Bahia Honda State Park in the Lower Florida Keys. Its caterpillars have been observed interacting with at least 17 ant species. In laboratory trials, Florida carpenter ants helped protect the caterpillars from predators.

More: 15 Buildings Full of Butterflies (Street Art by Mantra)

🔗 Follow Mantra on Instagram

🌍 Play our Guess the City quiz: 10 more cities →

🐉 Daenerys and the Dragon — By Alkimist in Barcelona, Spain 🇪🇸

A dragon’s open mouth faces Daenerys across this long wall. Alkimist uses cool blue light on one side and fiery orange on the other, drawing the two faces toward the center. The dragon gets most of the detail: scales, teeth and a narrow eye.

🔗 Follow Alkimist on Instagram

🐸 Dyeing Poison Dart Frog — By Hannah Bullen-Ryner in the UK 🇬🇧

Yellow pieces trace the frog’s back and head, while blue and violet fragments form its legs and long toes. The crouching pose makes it look ready to spring off the ground. Bullen-Ryner made the frog entirely from natural materials.

More: Hannah Bullen-Ryner Made These From Nature (18 Photos)

🔗 Follow Hannah Bullen-Ryner on Instagram