A devotee of the Chinese shrine of Kathu Shrine, pierces his cheeks with umbrellas during a procession of Vegetarian Festival on October 4, 2011 in Phuket, Thailand. Ritual Vegetarianism in Phuket Island traces it roots back to the early 1800's. The festival begins on the first evening of the ninth lunar month and lasts for nine days. Participants in the festival perform acts of body piercing as a means of shifting evil spirits from individuals onto themselves and bring the community good luck. (Photo by Athit Perawongmetha/Getty Images)

An artwork entitled “Are you still mad at me?” by John Isaacs is displayed at the Death: A Self-portrait exhibition at the Wellcome Collection on November 14, 2012 in London, England. The exhibition showcases 300 works from a unique collection by Richard Harris, a former antique print dealer from Chicago, devoted to the iconography of death. The display highlights art works, historical artifacts, anatomical illustrations and ephemera from around the world and opens on November 15, 2012 until February 24, 2013. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid)

Japan's electronics equipment maker MuRata Manufacturing Co., Ltd's showcased their bicycle-riding robot “MuRata Boy” during the CEATEC Japan 2006 exhibition on October 3, 2006 in Chiba, Japan. The “MuRata Boy” robot can ride up a 25-degree slope, stop without losing its balance and make an S-curve without falling. (Photo by Koichi Kamoshida/Getty Images)

Catwalks hang over a section of the newly constructed eastern span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge during a media tour of the self-anchored suspension span tower on August 29, 2011 in Oakland, California. Contruction crews have erected twelve foot wide catwalks that connect to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge self-anchored suspension span's tower and crews will begin to lay the nearly one mile of main cable beginning in early 2012. The bridge has been under constrution since 2002 with an estimated price tag of $6.3 billion and will have the world's tallest Self-Anchored Suspension (SAS) tower once completed. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Karl Bang's paintings are unique because he combines totally different styles of painting within the same format. It is very difficult to design a balanced composition with realistic elements that are juxtaposed with flat colors and patterns. The faces of his subjects are painted realistically in the Western tradition with subtle gradations of color; while, his figures and costumes vignette into abstracted shapes, lines, flat colors and patterns that reflect Karl's background in China. It is as though there are different visual languages being spoken within his paintings.

A quirky cartoonist challenged his own creation to a fight – but he could only draw. US artist Alex Solis, 31, from Chicago, Illinois, drew his skull t-shirt-wearing alter ego, who he calls Chuck, smashing his phone and stabbing his finger in his Inkteraction pictures. But Alex got his own back with a punch to Chucks jaw before squashing him against the bottom of the page. The ink man tried to get under Chucks skin to win the fight by stretching and pulling the cartoons face as the drawings became more bloody. (Photo by Alex Solis/Caters News)

Once upon a time a girl named Laura lived in Columbus, Ohio. She had a nice family, and got good grades, but it was always rainy and cold in Columbus, which was neither nice nor good, so she wore lots of sweaters and turned the heat up when her dad wasn’t looking.

I’m an illustrator based in South Wales, UK. I work in pen and ink, creating original illustrations for record cover artwork, shirt design and poster art.