Story By: John Feng, Sub-Editor:  Joseph Golder, Agency: Asia Wire Report

AsiaWire / Xiong Qingzhen

This is the multi-talented painter who uses cotton buds to create masterpieces on dusty car windows including the most iconic scene from the film Titanic and a portrait of sex symbol Marilyn Monroe.

Xiong Qingzhen, from the city of Wuhan in China’s central province of Hubei, calls himself an “amateur bathroom artist”.

He shot to fame in 2019 when he began painting on his bathroom mirror using toothpaste, creating portraits of celebrities such as Lionel Messi and Audrey Hepburn in the negative, which would come to life like film photos when he turned off the light.

It is also how he earned his nickname ‘Toothpaste Bro’.

He has recently impressed his 1.4 million followers on Chinese short-video sharing platform Douyin – known in English-spealing markets as Tik Tok – by sharing videos of him painting on dirty car windows using nothing but cotton buds and a small brush.

On 8th January, Mr Xiong recreated Titanic’s most memorable scene when Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater – played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet – stand on the deck of the Atlantic passenger liner.

Last month, he also dusted out a lifelike portrait of US model and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe.

His most memorable works, however, came in 2019 when he began painting on his bathroom mirror with toothpaste.

Each artwork took two to three hours to complete, and he would showcase the paintings at the end of the process by turning off the light and revealing the inverted image.

Mr Xiong said of his unique work at the time: “I started using film cameras a long time ago. Pictures then were all negatives which had to be inverted in a dark room.

“The same theory applies to my paintings.”

Mr Xiong said his drawings were “just a hobby”, and that he had no plans to make a career out of his multimedia talents.

He noted: “That would take away all the fun. I like my freedom. Freedom is important in art.”

Mr Xiong’s other interests include experimenting with drones.

One of his videos shows him programming two DJI drones to play a keyboard, bashing out a piece by Chinese pianist Lang Lang.

Despite having over a million followers on Tik Tok, Mr Xiong remains relatively low-key on China’s Twitter-like platform Weibo, where he has just over 23,000 followers.

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