18-year-old artist draws amazing hyperrealistic portrait of Morgan Freeman

Jack Ede is not a photographer, but you wouldn't know it by looking at his portrait of Morgan Freeman.

The 18-year-old British artist spent 137 hours over two weeks drawing a hyperrealistic sketch of the 77-year-old actor.

"I am a huge fan of Morgan Freeman," Ede told Yahoo News. "I always wanted to draw him but I never had time due to commissions, so I eventually just made time."

Ede, who works as a self-employed artist from his Sleaford, Lincolnshire, home, documented his progress on Instagram, letting thousands of followers in on the process.

"After 2 hours of endless frustration caused by a million measurements and a million mistakes I've finally managed to sketch the outlines and structure of this piece," Ede wrote on Nov. 5. "I'm glad that's done but I've come to the conclusion that this will be at least 200-250 hours of work and will probably take me until after Christmas to complete as I'll be doing commissions and other drawings as well. This is really gonna test my patience."

"3 hours in and Mr. Freeman is currently looking like E.T.," he wrote. "Not sure whether to sleep or carry on drawing."

"Think I've made a fair bit of progress today," Ede wrote. "Starting to get a bit scary, feels like Morgan's staring at me."

"Finally finished my portrait of Morgan Freeman!" a triumphant Ede announced on Nov. 18. "Done completely in Prismacolor and Faber-Castell pencils on Frisk A2 Bristol board (16"x21"). Took me 137 hours over the space of 2 weeks. #morganfreeman."

It's not the first time Morgan Freeman has been hyperrealistically — and painstakingly — rendered.

Last year, it took Kyle Lambert over 200 hours and 285,000 brushstrokes using an iPad application to create his digital portrait of Freeman.

Lambert documented his work in a time-lapse video: