New dimensions:3D street painting

From top: 3D painters Wan Yiju and Wan Yiheng sit on their record-breaking anamorphic painting, Fashionable Ideal City. A visitor steps on the twin brothers' another 3D painting, West Tower Impression. The brothers pose with another work. Photos Provided to China Daily

3D street painting is rising in China, with artists setting world records. Xu Jingxi reports in Guangzhou.

Two Harley Davidson motorcycles growl and drag away the blue curtain to reveal an underground city to thousands of astonished spectators. Skyscrapers are linked by elevated walkways. Spacecraft zip around, carrying human beings and robots. The spectators are even more amazed when they try to take the escalator to the underground city and discover it's all an illusion. The escalator, the underground cityscape and the spacecraft are all a giant street painting. Those present witnessed a magic moment and a new world record. The 148.63-meter painting, Fashionable Ideal City, was named the world's longest anamorphic painting on Feb 18, during its exhibition in Zhongshan, Guangdong province.

The painting's creators, the new Guinness World Records holders, are 3D painters Wan Yiju and Wan Yiheng, based in Guangdong province's capital Guangzhou.

The 30-year-old twins are two of the country's three most famous 3D painters. The other is Beijing's Qi Xinghua.

Qi is the former record holder of the world's longest anamorphic painting. His work, Macao's One Impression, measures 128.7 meters and took the title last December.

Chinese 3D painters are attracting global attention by winning consecutive listings in the Guinness Book of World Records. But the genre was still new in the country when the Wan brothers drew their first 3D street painting back in 2004.

Qi is often hailed as the person who introduced 3D street painting to China with his 2005 work, Whirlpool. But the Wan brothers had finished two 3D street paintings - Iceberg and Woman - for a real estate developer in Guangzhou in 2004.

"However, those paintings were far from being satisfactory," Yiju says.

"We basically imitated Western artists' works. But we had to do so to decode the tricks of creating 3D effects on flat ground. At that time, no one in China knew the techniques. We had to teach ourselves."

The brothers were pushing to develop their own styles and present their signature drawings after developing their painting skills.

They love drawing typical Chinese cultural elements. Peonies spring out of the ground and blossom under their brushes. Phoenixes fly through underground waterfalls and zoom up to the sky.

"Our paintings are also different from Western artists' in that they tell stories rather than just demonstrate the capability of making a scene lifelike," Yiheng says.

For example, their Guinness record-breaking work shares their fantasy about how people will live in a deteriorating environment hundreds of years from now: People no longer eat food, which is all contaminated by radiation, and have to charge up with solar energy like robots. So, some people in the painting are clad in armor-like solar outfits.

"Telling a story can create more interaction between the painting and spectators," Yiju says.

"People have more fun wondering what the story is."

Sometimes, the playful twins hide interesting details in their paintings or provide props for spectators to stage shows.

They placed a desk at the exhibition of their work about universe so spectators could move the "control board" onto a "floating" meteor and pose like a spaceship commander.

"What makes 3D street painting cool is that it is interactive," Yiju says.

"While there is always glass between the audience and a painting in museums, people can step on a 3D street painting, perform creative poses and become part of the painting and the story. Only by interacting with people can 3D street painting stay alive."

The twins have completed more than 50 3D street paintings, some of which are combined with 3D wall paintings, in the past eight years. People can see their works in Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangsu and Hunan provinces, and Hong Kong.

In 2010, the Wan brothers were invited to Hong Kong to work with Manfred Stader, a worldly renowned 3D street painter from Germany, on a series of 3D street paintings about Easter for a local shopping mall.

The twins also displayed their latest work about their vision of a future eco-friendly city at the Ambassador Hotel in Taiwan this week.

A growing number of enterprises in China are realizing large 3D street paintings' publicity potential. This creates more job opportunities for the genre's painters.

The number of 3D painting companies in China reached about a dozen in 2010, but only three or four have survived, Yiju says.

"As a new market in China, the job opportunities are still limited," Yiju says.

Many companies take any job, including painting house walls, he says.

"When a job opportunity for a large outdoor 3D street painting came, the artists often found themselves short of the skills needed to accomplish the task because they had spent too much time and energy completing irrelevant commercial works," Yiju says.

Even the acclaimed brothers must take side projects in other media, such as sculpture, to support themselves.

Few of their Western counterparts are able to live off 3D street painting.

"But Western artists enjoy more locations to create their works," Yiju says.

"They are free to draw on the street. Local governments zone certain blocks to serve as 'canvases' for street artists."

The brothers have created many works inspired by Guangzhou landmarks, including the Canton Tower and the International Financial Center. They also completed a painting depicting the Asian Games to celebrate the 2010 Guangzhou Games.

"3D street paintings can be better than commercial advertisements," Yiju says.

The brothers plan to develop the art form in China and win government support.

"We hope to prove that it can fit in well with the urban environment and serve as a name card for a city," Yiju says.

To promote the genre to the general public, the brothers opened their admission-free exhibition hall in Guangzhou in 2011.

They also staged an activity to teach children the basics of 3D street painting in 2011.

More importantly, the twins are determined to make the voices of Chinese 3D painters heard around the world.

Breaking the Guinness World Records is just the first step, they say. They are planning an exhibition tour around Europe this year. And they want to combine 3D street painting with other visual art forms, such as body painting.

"I hope people overseas realize that there are also talented 3D painters in China," Yiheng says.

Yiju adds: "We are not trying to beat anyone. There is no good or bad when it comes to art."