21 Year Old Phenom Is Painting Insane Sci-Fi Vehicle Masterpieces

Being an automotive designer has got to be one of the greatest jobs on earth. It’s a job that allows for creativity, engineering, and working with some of today’s most fascinating pieces of machinery. But wait a minute; how in the hell does a person get a job like that? Well, it all starts with being a great artist, a great visionary.

“I don’t know what it is about them,” says 21 year old Khyzyl Saleem– an aspiring artist and auto designer, “but I think it’s the personal aspect of them: the ability to make it your own and make it something that reflects you as a person.”

Saleem, of course, is talking in particular about his growing collection of portraits of futuristic vehicles. Currently, these vehicle portraits can be found on his website and are growing by the day. Each of them have been created through his visionary usage of Photoshop, as he blends together elements of modern vehicles with space age technology and strikingly colorful paint jobs.

Amazingly, Saleem only began using Photoshop software 4 years ago. But as soon as he began working with it, he became obsessed, developing landscapes and characters through it. But that wasn’t fulfilling enough. “I became so determined to learn how to paint; it was beginning to feel like a chore, so I took a step back and decided to work on something more personal that I wouldn’t get bored of,” Saleem says.

That led him to cars. For the past few years, Saleem has been refining his craft as he works on a project that he calls “Evade,” which is what he describes a s a merging together of cars and technology, old and new. So far, the project has gotten his website over 100,000 views and featured articles on major websites Jalopnik and The Verge.

But this is just the beginning of a long journey that Saleem hopes could lead him to even bigger places. He says that he wants to begin deigning and manufacturing real cars. “Either that or have a car manufacturer ask me to design a GT3 spec racer for them,” he says.