tinyletter #5 | still busy, still working, still surviving
I hope that those of you who are living in other parts of the world are having a good warm summer, though — what with those European blue skies and cool breezes that keep you company while you nap under a tree. Or something along those lines.
I've recently come to terms with the hard truth that I'm exhausted, burning out, and that I'm getting older much quicker than I would like to -- I'm pretty sure I accidentally freaked out some of my colleagues when I broke down during a few especially stressful mornings. But I'm okay now, am re-learning to take each day on its own, and to reprioritise my work and obligations in my personal and professional life.
tinyletter #4 | murals, ireland, and just feeling a bit out of my elements
I've had a rather pleasant, though hectic (and stressful at many moments) two months experiencing a lot of new things, and wrapping up the projects I've mentioned in the last newsletter, handling small day to day stresses while I was gearing up for the trip, as well as physically packing up the library I currently work in for renovations. I've also been taking my time regaining momentum for work and just getting my bearings again after a very lovely trip to Ireland, and saying goodbyes.
tinyletter #3 | lenormand, mural painting & love letters
Hello friends, hope you've been keeping well in March. I've personally had a rather rough one, having caught the fifth wave covid in late February (am planning to do a little log of the experience at some point), but I did still manage to have a wonderful birthday spent with family and friends –– that became a little highlight in March for me <3
tinyletter #2 | stylistic consistency, a story about the fates, and more predictions
Happy Lunar New Year! For those who celebrate it, today is the first day of the Lunar calendar and it’s a festival full of stuffing our faces with different types of traditional cakes and sweets, pestering grandparents and married relatives for red pockets filled with money, and mostly is just an excuse for the family to come together.
Shifting Styles: I’ve given up on consistency
Hello friends, I hope you’re all having a wonderful start to the new year, and a peaceful January.
This month, we had a new moon in Capricorn, among many other planetary movements, and it should encourage the pursuit of new projects, given the workaholic natures of the astrological sign. And while energetically the month was a little chaotic, I still tried to take advantage of this new moon by giving myself a deadline to complete illustrating a full deck of Lenormand cards (36-card cartomancy system). It was my way to kickstart my creativity for the new year.
As someone who can’t really sit still, I’m always looking for a new project during my off-time from work. In December, I needed one that had enough boundaries and limitations that I didn’t need too much brain space, yet gave me the excuse to creatively explore. Since Lenormand cards are illustrations of a single object, it became the perfect exercise for experimenting with digital illustration.
While painting and other analogue artmaking methods were an intuitive process that was tactile and grounding for me (even watercolour, with all of its flowy and spontaneous glory, was grounding), I’ve always struggled with finding the same tactility and intuition in digital painting.
And though I’m definitely far from being done with the project (it’s only the 12th of January at the time of writing this), the few friends who’ve seen the works came back with the same comment:
“You changed your style.”
Yet I was immediately thinking “I’ve never had one.”
tinyletter #1 | a year in summary, moonwater, and predictions
Thank you for being here on my first Bananarolls delivery, my first newsletter (tiny letter) ever. It means a lot to know that you like my work enough to receive monthly emails about what I've been up to and the little thoughts I've had.
In Summary: 2021 & Hopes for 2022
Happy holidays, friends, I hope you’re doing well (and if you choose to continue reading, please brace yourself to the incredibly self-indulgent rant below).
Each year, whenever December comes around, time seems to pause, as though to give me the space to look back on everything that’s happened in the past twelve months. However, because of the state of the world, there’s this strangely quiet eeriness that has hovered over us since 2019, as though the year never ended since, and that everything was frozen in time.
Because in a sense, it did. No matter how relatively normal life is in Hong Kong (because “normal” is contributing and sustaining our bustling, non-stop Tetris game of capitalism), Covid halted rapidly-growing movements and triggered endless ever-changing “safety measures” and travel restrictions that no one had the space to breathe and process what had happened. How can one heal from this collective trauma when we are still in the middle of it?
Yet despite this feeling of being held hostage by Covid, 2021 was an extremely eventful year for me both personally and career-wise. And it’s a year that I hope to be a huge turning point when I look back on this year in the future.