Pictures of Incredibly Good Thumb-Portraits of famous faces

Finger puppets can provide hours of amusement. But this talented artist has put his digits to even more impressive use by turning them into lifelike recreations of famous faces. The inventive Italian, from Bologna, has produced versions of everyone from Dalai Lama and Jesus to Colonel Gaddafi and Hitler.He works under the pseudonym Dito Von Tease, in reference to the burlesque dancer Dita and because 'il dito' means 'the finger'. The 'Ditology' project aims to look at our sense of identity and how we use disguises - particularly when we leave a 'digital fingerprint' online. 

It all started three years ago, when Von Tease, 33, was looking for an original avatar to use as his profile picture on Facebook. Von Tease said he chose a finger as a disguise because he was not keen to reveal his identity. He said: 'In Italian someone could say I wanted to "hide myself behind my finger [trans: nascondermi dietro un dito]" - it's a metaphor to indicate a not-very-effective hiding place.