He covers Beijing in dragons

A dozen of Qi's trademark shaggy dragons are swooping across the huge canvases covering Beijing's concrete walls.[Photo provided to China Daily]

But despite his success, Qi began to feel increasingly frustrated by the limitations of 3-D art's technical and rather formalistic style.

"The 3-D works gave full play to my ability, but they didn't allow me to express my feelings. This year, I realized I needed a change," he says.

His encounter with the graffiti writer at an exhibition in Dubai provided him with the inspiration he had been looking for.

If Qi was initially worried about potential brushes with the law at the start of his street art career, he had little need to be.

Compared with most Western countries, where graffiti writers often run the risk of prison time if they are caught, China is remarkably lenient.

As shown in Lance Crayon's excellent documentary Spray Paint Beijing, detained street artists in China are rarely given more than a night in jail and a fine of a few hundred yuan, the equivalent of less than a hundred dollars.

Qi has donned a hoodie and hit the streets late at night to complete a work a few times, but often he paints for hours in the middle of the day and has never got into trouble.

He has been spotted by urban patrol officials, chengguan, while spraying a few times, he says. "But usually they are just very interested in my painting and ask me questions about it."