Fantasy oil painting “Ram skull waterfall”

Initial thoughts I was thinking something about ram skull. I painted it before in 2018 and loved it. However this time I didn’t want to do the still life again. I was looking for something unusual but also peaceful. Although the skull was from a dead creature, it didn’t have to be gloomy or desperate. […]

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Fantasy oil painting “Blue serpent and glowing eggs”

Initial thoughts This concept started with eggs. I wanted to paint some golden eggs. Then I thought glowing golden eggs could be more interesting. Next, eggs should be in nest. To make a story scene I prepared a snake around the nest so it had some tension between these two parties. However, I was not […]

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Fantasy oil painting “Royal couple black and white swan”

Initial thoughts There are pair of white swan and pair of black swan. Why not one white swan and one black swan? In “Swan lake”, white swan is princess and black swan is evil. Why black swan has to be evil all the time? I am going to give the black swan a royal crown […]

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Fantasy oil painting “Bee house”

Initial thoughts The idea comes from Bug hotel. Although I am not a fan of bugs, I think this idea is cute and brilliant. So I made a house for bees. The house has no perfect straight-line. It looks crooked, unregulated. It is made of clay and wood pieces. The bee house only has windows, […]

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Fantasy oil painting “Leopard woman”

Background In 2002, animation version of <The Twelve Kingdoms> began to broadcast. At that time, I was not so interested in this story because the author, Fuyumi Ono (小野不由美) clearly borrowed almost entire mythology concept from ancient Chinese tales and history. The landscape, the names, the mystery creatures, the buildings and many many things are […]

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Fantasy oil painting “Owl messenger”

Initial thoughts I love to paint owl. I have ink drawing, gouache painting and oil painting owls. This time I want to challenge myself to paint an owl with its wings and body, not just a big face and partial body. I also want to put this owl into a story scene. Therefore I choose […]

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Fantasy oil painting “Checkerboard octopus”

Background As I mentioned in my post “Differences between Cuttlefish, Squid and Octopus“, both cuttlefish and octopus have excellent camouflage ability. Some experiments show that cuttlefish tries so hard to merge itself with a checkerboard surrounding pattern. I can see they are doing everything they can.🤣 So the idea comes as how about they actually […]

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Fantasy oil painting “Mushrooms shelter”

Initial thoughts This starts with the mushrooms. I like the idea of putting two tiny mice under the mushrooms. They are hiding from the hunter, in this case, yes, the cat. Soon I gather enough reference photos for this piece. But I do have hard time choosing the color theme. At first, I thought about […]

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Fantasy oil painting “The ugly duckling”

Initial thoughts Maybe we all know the story that a little grey ugly duckling grows into a beautiful white swan. To me, this story fits in the Chinese old saying “Dragon gives birth to dragon and phoenix gives birth to phoenix.” Despite the genetic issue, I believe the spirit behind it is to encourage young […]

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Fantasy oil painting “Mirror dimension”

Initial thoughts One day I found this free stock photo of two red foxes. I like it. These two red foxes have a potential story to tell. So I want to explore that story a little further. Rather than just two ordinary foxes meet each other in the wild, I try to make one of […]

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