Russian Artist Creates Portraits of Famous Characters Giving His Own Unique Twist

What started as a school hobby went on to become his passion. It was sketching that got Vlad Yashin totally hooked and he started sketching everything that caught his fancy. This Russian artist soon turned his attention to oil painting and today he uses both colored pencils and oil paints to create his artworks.

This Russian artist from Moscow was encouraged to pursue his passion by a girl artist he met on Instagram. She provided the much-needed motivation to him to start doing his own thing. He started off by painting pop icons, YouTubers, characters from Netflix, and others. He even created his own characters.

However, not content with simply replicating portraits that looked exactly like photos, he started adding his own twists to his works. Take for example his portraits of characters from the popular South Korean television serial ‘Squid Game’. They have been depicted in a totally different light.

According to Yashin, giving his own twists to portraits is not his goal. In an interview on oldholland.com, he states, “I think that hyperrealism shouldn’t be the main goal in art, it’s just an instrument to represent your true feelings and ideas.” Basically, his paintings represent pop culture and mirror reality. Such is his painting prowess that his work ‘Contamination’ became a winning artwork of the Old Holland Painting of the Year 2020.

Yashin works in two mediums – colored pencils and oil paints. He uses colored pencils for creating unique backgrounds that connect to the painting. For instance, the chessboard matches the background of his artwork ‘Queen of Gambit’. To create a piece of art, he usually takes a month or two to finish.

Yashin’s favorite artists are Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. He favors the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA) to display his works. He is making waves on Instagram with over 484,000 followers. The good news is he sells his works on his website, yashinss.com and they can be ordered from anywhere in the world. It takes three to seven days for shipping to Europe and a few weeks for farther destinations.

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Vlad Yashin

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