Zhang Hui, a sand painting artist from Harbin, recently caught people’s attention on both web portals and the social function of Tencent's multimillion-user app WeChat for his work featuring the biggest box office film, Wolf Totem, during Spring Festival.

 
Zhang Hui's sand painting work for Wolf Totem [Photo/my399.com]

The film drew more than 1.4 million clicks since the 322 second sand painting program’s debut on Tencent Video on Feb 23. A large number of strangers tried to add him as a friend on WeChat.

In fact, it was not the first time Zhang had to deal with so many friend requests.

When he got to know the firefighters that lost their lives trying to put out a warehouse blaze on Jan 2, Zhang Hui made a sand painting work to pay tribute to their brave deeds. He later received calls from firefighters across China.

Besides these two artworks, Zhang Hui has also made sand paintings for some popular TV programs and films, such as Hunan TV’s Dad! Where Are We Going? and Chinese filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s The Flowers of War.

Some of his sand painting videos gained more than 10 millions hits on the Internet.

He got to know about sand painting in 2007 and chose it as his career in 2009. Now he is producing sand painting videos and providing training programs on the art.

Zhang Hui in his studio for sand painting video production in Harbin [Photo/my399.com]

About one year ago, Zhang Hui became a signed artist of sand painting with Tudou.com, one of China’s online video portals. People can find his latest creation once a week or month.

More than 300 sand painting works of the artist are available on those video portals in China.