Self-taught artist and graphic designer Joseph Catimbang (aka @pentasticarts) creates visually complex doodles using only black pens and a sketchbook. The surreal, sprawling compositions seamlessly combine subject matters and artistic styles, ranging from realistic depictions of animals to small, cartoon figures inspired by comics and video games. At times, his busy spreads seem to take over the page.
Catimbang’s fantastical images use a minimal amount of shading and instead focus on exquisite mark making. With the help of tiny ticks and sweeping lines, he conveys the subtle textures found on a bird’s wings, flower petals, and a cheetah’s fur. This technique adds to the believability of Catimbang’s images–their life-like renderings look as though these strange hybrids could have always existed.
Catimbang also creates incredible optical slices and multilayered visuals of two different animals within a single frame.
