Yang Xueguo works as a professor in CG at Yunan Art University, showing his digital paintings in galleries, online and working for heavy metal bands and horror fiction publishers in his spare time.
"Tower of Evil" - http://yangxueguo.deviantart.com/art/Tower-of-evil-342477532
This is one of my favourite pieces that I've found in my exploration of the surreal, it combines amazing composition, with interesting foreground elements and characters, with landscapes that defy logic. The image shows what resembles a grave yard with creatures growing from the ground like tombstones, the one closes to the camera has a mouth and tiny small arms clasped over a glowing blue heart, with blue cracks down its lower body. These contrast the over all warm tone of the image drawing the eyes towards it.
Behind the rows of stones there are two monstrous towers reaching to the skies with a root like network extending up to the top of the canvas. One of the towers has humanoid features on both sides, with large eyes, nasal cavities and mouths, watching over the fields of stones. The other tower doesn't have facial features but still looks vaguely facial due to two almost eye sockets.
Around the tops of the towers glowing lights, the same blue as the highlights on the creature, orbit the roots, possibly the souls of the creatures below. The scene is lit by a fire like glow behind the clouds and fog in the background, revealing small bits of detail, hinting at more towers in the distance.
If i were to recreate this using 3D i would make the closest creature and the tower in 3D then render them separately combining them to make a single image. The rest of the details i would paint in in photoshop, along with the background and landscape.
"Unforgive Siner" - http://yangxueguo.deviantart.com/art/Unforgive-siner-349295717
This is a portrait of a man sitting in a wheel chair, in a hallway. There are many things about this image that i love, for instance even the hallway, a seemingly normal environment is given bizarre twists. The roof isn't flat its tilted very slightly, giving it an odd appearance and the window is in the roof, in an irregular oval shape, that just isn't seen in everyday architecture. There are also horrible looking holes burrowing deep into the walls, making you wonder what made them.
The figure itself is obviously meant to be a human, but is sliced down the middle and melded into its seat, its fingers becoming amorphous blobs attached to the wheelchair. The head and shoulders rise to a point, with a maw where the head should be, and the skin shows the ribbed fossil like structure that is prevalent in a lot of surreal work. The skin appears almost wax like, or concrete, pooling around his feet with tubes or buckets protruding from the grey mass.
The walls and shadows are blue tinted, making the orange light that comes more visually striking and brings the image together as a whole. The skin also rides the line between these two colours, seeming brown and purple at the same time.
If i were to recreate this id make the creature and his wheel chair in Zbrush, along with the floor , then either paint in the background or make a simple hallway in maya to render the lighting as well, making it look more realistic than my attempts would be.
"Masquerade" - http://yangxueguo.deviantart.com/art/Masquerade-339058863
This is a landscape showing a centaur like figure and three female figures with their heads malformed and covered in growths. The centaur like figure is walking away from the camera, the orange light of a setting sun playing across its back,while on the right of the image the three female figures appear to almost "sit" on a bench,but they are entwined with it, their hands and legs becoming a part of the support. The bench is held up by hundreds of rootlike tentacles, stretching down into the fog.
Because of the height of the fog and the way the centaur is, whether purely because of perspective or sheer size, besides the moon in the sky, it seems as if this is taking place on a grand scale, with each figure being astonishingly massive. The detailing over the faces and the bench is the same ribbed, diseased looking texture present in both his and many other surrealists work.
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