#joebasara

Fan art of Mako Mankanshoku from ‘Kill La Kill’

Portrait of Tom Cruise from Edge of Tomorrow as William ‘Bill’ Cage

Fan art of Jinx from League of Legends

Snow White and Apple Sketch by joebasara

Ariel Skatechick WIP 2 by joebasara

Haha i just realized someone used my name and work in a book titled: 'Death Representations in Literature: Form and Theories' - Adriana Teodorescu, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. I contacted Adriana (who’s the editor) and learnt that the writer is Silvia Marin Barutcieff. She’s a Senior Lecturer at the University of Bucharest.  I find it amusing because so much thought and symbolism has been laid down by the writer onto my work. Those things weren’t even on my mind. This  reflects how establishments present art as an academic discipline, study of art history in schools etc. The passage: "In the case of the Chinese artist Pu Ziyang, who signs with the pseudonym Joe Basara, the graphic style is oriented, as the author declares himself, to a Walt Disney's direction, demonstrating the versatility of the digital media. In a red dress symbolizing the force of life, the virgin lets herself to be held by the scythe, which thus becomes a playing accessory, meant to outline the erotic relation with death. The blade of the scythe turns into a kind of shawl that the young woman holds above her shoulders, like gaining the upper hand on the skeleton in the right. The game makes us think undoubtedly about Melanie Blanchard's experience, the heroine of Michel Tournier, and about her fascination for sharp, cutting objects, about the absence of fear in the feminine characters of the 16th century, about Hans Baldung Grien, Nikkolaus Manuel or Hans Schwarz. Basara's girl seems to be a woman expert in eroticism, rather than a shy, lamenting virgin, a woman fed, like Melanie, on the mystery of carnal love, acquired in the world of shadows. In order to lead the reading, Basara introduces in it a caption in which Death says: "Ok babe, you win" Red is part of the accessories that other authors like Jamie Hernandez de la Torre, Tony Sandoval or Mike Davis, use to equip their heroines with. The red veils that the feminine characters of the three artists wear contrast strongly with the mortuary ambience in which they evolve. The reverse also exists, in Otto Schmidt, where the red cape does not belong to the young woman now, who wears a similar black item, but to death, a sign that the balance of power has shifted."

Beach Girl illustration. This work has significance to me because it was my first decently completed digital painting, and i had just left teaching to ‘step back’ into the creative field. One of the artists who greatly inspired me then was Alexandre "Zedig" Diboine. Do check out his works!I was captivated by his style of rendering and the design of his characters. This work was done using his Photoshop brushes.You can see it started out really sketchy, and refinement was done by overpainting on layers. I used Zbrush to project the tattoo on a cylinder to get a more accurate look of the tattoo on the girl's curved arm.