U Ba Lone Lay was proficient both as a painter and as a commercial illustrator. In several illustrations for magazines and books, he displayed his talent. U Ba Lone Lay worked as a commercial artist and a lecturer of commercial painting at the State School of Fine Arts in 1963. He traveled to the USSR in 1970 as part of a cultural exchange program between the USSR and Myanmar for a month to study art and painting.

In 1980, he retired from the post as lecturer at the Yangon School of Fine Arts and continued drawing posters and oil paintings after he retired. He was diagnosed with heart disease in 1997 and died one year later, in March 1998, at the age of 73, in his home in Yangon.