'Who is this?' asks Howard Lee, and the comments answer Tom Holland
A pencil short that kept its subject's name out of the title woke up two weeks after it was posted, and nearly all its comments arrived in a single day.
Howard LeeStory of Why this story? The video is running at 131,233 views a day, 22 times its usual pace (5,846).
Who is this? #art #drawing #shorts #howtodraw #easydrawing #pencildrawing
Howard Lee posted "Who is this?" on September 17, and for two weeks it moved along at a few thousand views a day. Then it took off. In one day it drew more than twenty times its usual pace and climbed to nearly 200,000 views.
The short is a guessing game. The title keeps the answer back, and the description promises only a pencil drawing tutorial, so the face takes shape stroke by stroke and the viewer has to work out who it is. The comment section has turned into the scoreboard. Most of its comments came in over that same day, and the name that keeps coming up is Tom Holland. Commenters compare notes on the exact moment they knew: some say it was the hair, some the mouth, others the zoom-out at the end. One person says they guessed before even pressing play.
That last claim may not be a boast. The short belongs to a run of celebrity hairstyle drawings on the channel, with Rowan Atkinson, MrBeast and Keanu Reeves as John Wick. The Tom Holland one from August has passed 14 million views, as we reported here. Perhaps some of the viewers recognized that pencil hair from the earlier short.
The face may come from the movies, but the skill behind it comes from somewhere else. Lee's channel is built on photorealist illusions in Prismacolor, Copic marker and pastel pencil, and a guessing game only works when the likeness is good enough to be guessed.
Published on Trari
What viewers say
I guessed Tom Holland as soon as the hair was done and you zoomed out! Amazing work!!
@RichieSillsSee it on YouTubeI guessed before clicking this video
@BelleCraft28See it on YouTubeI guessed tom holland at the mouth
@HenryLikelSee it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- Howard Lee
- Subscribers
- 2,440,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 370,282 (on a normal day: 555,541)
- Video published
- September 17, 2026
- Video views so far
- 193,324 (15 days online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 131,233 (on a normal day: 18,385)
The numbers
A two-week-old short suddenly running more than twenty times its usual daily pace, with a comment section that filled up almost overnight.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which director made all three Spider-Man films starring Tom Holland: Homecoming, Far From Home and No Way Home?
Jon Watts directed Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), Far From Home (2019) and No Way Home (2021).
