Truong The Cuong aged 25, a former student of the Faculty of Architecture at the Da Nang-based Duy Tan University, has created thousands of vivid realistic portraits, and his realistic paintings have earned love of many viewers. After 8 years of pursuing the photorealism art, Cuong has till date created close to 1,000 realistic paintings.

Young painter Truong The Cuong is passionately painting on his realistic artwork.

As a child, Cuong loved to draw and drew very well, he actively paticipated in art competitions for school pupils. At that time, his blank pages were always filled with pencil anime drawings. Cuong was determined to pass university admissions test to study an architecture degree after realizing that he had a talent for painting. While studying at the university, he had the opportunity to meet friends who share the same interests as him, thereby sitting and drawing with them from morning until night without getting tired.

However, after graduating from the university, Cuong did not choose to become an architecture but began training himself in photorealism. Innitially, Cuong found it very hard to create realistic paintings. Failures in creating his first paintings caused him to become discouraged and raised his intention of giving up learning photorealism painting. Realism is an art style that focuses on making pieces look as realistic and true-to-life as possible. Therefore, Cuong had to train himself in realism painting for long periods of time to enable him to accurately reproduce every detail in his paintings.

Eyes are the windows to the soul. Hence, it is not easy to draw a realistic eye and every portrait must be painted with feeling as this requires an immense focus on the subject in order to present every detail in paintings, Cuong remarked. The way eyes are depicted in the Da Nang young painter’s portraits reveal his level of intimacy with the subject, and his own deep emotional intelligence.

After 8 years of pursuing the photorealism art, Cuong has the ability to convey his characters' personality and emotion through their eyes in his paintings.

Contemporary realism is an art movement that celebrates representational, well-executed paintings created with high technical skill. The longer the time and the more carefully the painter takes and do, the painter will sucessully create photograph-like paintings.

Currently, Cuong is using social media sites like Zalo and Facebook to show his passion for realism art and connect with others who share the same passion. He said that realistic drawing helps satisfy his passion for realism art, and earn money, as well as save the beautiful moments of himself and his characters on his paintings.

Realistic paintings can be stored at home for longer periods of time as they are painted on thick Roki white drawing paper and are sprayed with fixatives to provide lasting protection, keep them from yellowing and fading over time. Cuong currently charges between VND 500,000 and VND 5 million on average for each his realistic painting, depending on the size of required painting and the number of required characters.

Cuong saw many people pursuing the photorealism art while he joined a number of local art associations and groups when he entered the 12^th grade. At that time, their realistic paintings featuring portraits of children to older people left a deep impression on Cuong, thereby inspiring him to learn how to paint realistically. However, he had to teach himeself in photorealism as social media platforms were yet to be developed for use at that time, and social media channels for teaching realistic drawing were very rare.

Cuong highlighted the importance of persistence and hard work to the success of photorealist painting as photorealism is an art movement whose goal is to produce artwork so realistic that it resembles a photograph as well as successful photorealism requires an impressive grasp of technique.

In the near future, Cuong plans to open his own art shop to offer his painting service in the realism genre. He is willing to teach and inspire young people who want to pursue the photorealism art.

Reporting by HUYNH TUONG VY – Translating by H.L