Since 2017, the CGI artist has turned 18 of Pablo Picasso's most famous paintings into 3D illustrations, compiling them into a three-part series called "Mimic."
He has also created many of his own designs inspired by Picasso's signature Cubist style.
We recently got in touch with Aqil to find out more about his project. Take a closer look at his fascinating work below.
The first installment of Aqils Picasso-inspired series is called "Mimic."
He began releasing the three-part series nearly two years ago in April 2017.
Speaking to INSIDER, Aqil said that he was inspired to create the series after studying Picassos work for years.
"Picasso is my all-time favorite artist," Aqil said. "His work and style have always inspired me."
Instead of recreating his favorite Picasso paintings, Aqil chose to illustrate six random works by the artist.
Six months later in October 2017, Aqil released the second part of his series, titled "Atypical Portraits: Mimic II."
This time around, the CGI artist specifically chose to reimagine six of Picasso's paintings that depict faces.
The 3D artist took things one step further with this installment by altering the background of each illustration.
Whereas Picasso typically used gradient colors behind the faces in his paintings, Aqil incorporated "medieval architectural elements" and "modern flair" into his backgrounds.
Aqil said that keeping things "modern yet classic" was a crucial part of interpreting Picassos work.
Specifically, Aqil aimed to preserve Picasso'ssignature abstract style when illustrating faces.
"[Picasso] used the most unusual shapes with some odd perspective to enrich his desired expressions," Aqil said. "He just had an amazing sense of how to decode them."
For the third installment of his Picasso-inspired series, Aqil released "Construed: Mimic III" in January 2019.
To create this installment, Aqil followed the same process he used when working on the rest of the series.
"I normally look at other professionals' work for inspiration, and collect some of my favorites in my visual library," Aqil said. "After that, I start to research the [artist's] concept and find the [artwork's] detail points."
But he doesnt do all of his work on a computer.
"I start sketching on paper and try to draw the image in my mind," Aqil said. "Once I'm satisfied with the final figure, then I convert [it] into 3D."
While many of Aqils illustrations are direct transformations of Picassos work, others are simply inspired by the latters Cubist style.
Throughout his " Character Illustration " series, Aqil utilized his deep knowledge of Picasso's oeuvre to create entirely new pieces. While he drew inspiration from the Cubism movement, pioneered by Picasso and Georges Braque, he also focused more on exploring his own style of art.
The "Character Illustration" series has been viewed more than 32,000 times on Behance.
The illustrations in the third part of Aqil's "Mimic" series are a bit more colorful than his interpretations of Picasso's paintings.
Though Picasso might be Aqils favorite artist of all time, there is one other illustrator whose work he would like to reimagine.
"I really love [Salvador] Dal's artwork," Aqil said. "And I really want to reimagine his work in the future."
