A Little History of My Art Journey

Art is always an important part of my life. I started drawing since I was in Third Grade. At that time, I was so in love with Japanese Manga and I wanted to learn sketching in order to explore the fantasy of Manga. As other art students, I started with drawing apples, hundreds of apples; then I learned how to draw spheres, cubes, and cylinders; later I drew mostly plaster figures and real human faces. Now, I'm exploring various kinds of art materials from clay to turtle shells, and different styles from watercolor to paint.

I was going through my picture album online and I found some interesting pieces of art that I did during the past several years. I hope you enjoy the pictures and the little pieces of my art history that I'm going to tell you.                                                                                                                                                       

This is a huge painting I did about 4 years ago. It's about 30 inches wide and 47 inches long. At that time, I haven't learned any painting skills and I just copied the colors exactly as what I saw. Why is this painting so huge? Because I made it for the window on the roof of my dad's car! The funny thing about that car is that it's name is Citroen Picasso. The car gets so hot in the summer when the sunlight comes in from the window and my dad asked me if I can draw a painting to block the sunlight. We are still using it every summer.        

 This is my first drawing of architecture and is also my first time using pen as a drawing material. I copied this one from a book, but I later drew a pen sketching of my host family's house by myself and gave them as a Thanksgiving gift.

 This is an illustration in my own novel that I wrote 5 years ago. I have written 4 novels so far and one of them is published. This one is about a story of ancient Chinese monster (a fox with nine tails) turns into human and becomes a famous artist in an non-existent Bermuda island. In the end the monster destroys himself; the Bermuda island is cursed and numerous ships sink there for no reason every year. This drawing shows the influence of Japanese manga on me art style. The left is the ancient monster and the right is the princess on the island.                                                                                                                            

  I tried to draw on a T-shirt with acrylics 2 years ago. I gave this T-shirt to my best friend as a birthday gift.

This painting is on a Turtle Shell!!! Chinese people sometimes eat a certain kind of turtle with soft shell and they keep the dry shells. I got this from my grandma 3 years ago and I decided to turn it into an art piece!

 This is a painting I did 4 years ago. After graduating from elementary school, I spent one month on a summer camp with a bunch of highschool seniors who were preparing to go to art school. I drew 10 hours a day and it sounds kind of crazy! On the summer camp, I mainly did sketching but also started to learn a little about painting. Those highschool seniors gave me a nick name "Little Girl". I cherish the memory with them because those seniors were working so hard to chase their dreams and looking forward to their future. Although I did not quite understand at that time, I shared the excitement with them.