Illustration / Hillary Clinton for President!

So excited to hear MAH GURL Hillary Clinton is running for president in 2016! So excited in fact I had to stay up past my bedtime to make this illustration to celebrate, I've been dreaming of a female president since I was a little girl. Maybe next year this little girl's dream will finally come true.

Painting / Botanist

The Unhappy Botanist, 2015.
Gouache, acrylic, pencil and paper collage.
39cm x 54cm

I always paint ladies but I'm really into the idea of painting some feminine fellas these days. I like how this portrait turned out a little bit androgynous. I was also inspired by this photo and from the anthurium flowers I took home after attending 'poon choi', a traditional Chinese New Year eating feast, at my friend's home village. Those flowers with their phallic baby corn stems always reminds me of Japanese minimalism in the 80's - my mom had all those flower arranging books in our basement.

And now let us zoom up and in enjoy his chic and high as a kite expression for a second (that fitting description thanks to DK!).

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Sketchbook / Is The Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive?

Maybe it's the eternal student instinct in me but I love attending lectures, they're usually super interesting, a good opportunity for me to pretend to be a very serious scholar/artist, and if nothing else they present some nice downtime to make some doodles and people watch.

And that's exactly what I did at the Para Site Conference for their "Is the Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive? The New Performance Turn, its Histories and its Institutions" series a few months ago.

Kitty N. Wong, 2014.
Is The Living Body the Last Thing Left Alive? Ballpoint pen on paper.
30 cm x 21 cm.

Painting / Inky Beauties on Cheap Paper

Beauty #1, #2, #3, 2014.
Gouache on paper.
30 cm x 21 cm.

Experimenting with a liner brush on cheap cheap paper the other night. Sometimes I go to events and I end up coming home with a huge stack of press releases, that stresses me out because I'm always trying to be as environmentally friendly as I can. The other night I was practicing brush lettering on my back side of the old press releases (reuse! reduce! recycle!) and saw this gorgeous photo of Natalia Vodianova in fur and felt an irresistible urge to paint her pretty face.

But then I was like no it wouldn't look good, not with just a paintbrush and some ink. It's not going to look good! But what's the harm? I've got all this paper. I did one, it was terrible so I made another one, and another and another. Here are three of my favourites from my stack that evening.

Beauty #1 is available as a print or iPhone, Samsung phone case on my Society6 Shop now! You buy one and look so chic while you chat on your phone with all your friends because you're so popular!

Sketchbook Girls / Vincent Van Girl

Kitty N. Wong, 2014.
Vincent Van Girl. Gouache and pencil on paper.
27 cm x 19 cm.

I've been working on this the last two nights, I had planned the background as simple polka dots and then it morphed into a sort of turtle shell pattern and then finally into a sort of homage to Starry Night.

Speaking of Van Gogh, I've been to this very cafe which he painted in Arles when I cycled through the little provincial town with an ex-boyfriend many years ago on bicycle trip through southern France.

Prints of this painting are now available on my Etsy shop.

Paintings / Lindsay Lohan

Kitty N. Wong, 2013.
Lindsay. Gouache, pencil, acrylic and gold leaf on paper.
39cm x 27cm.

Another one from the Women I've Wanted to Be series. Although I'm not sure I would actually want to be Lindsay Lohan, I do find her to be a beautiful and enigmatic figure of our current pop-scape, from child star to those tumultous months she spent with Samantha Ronson and now as the 27 year old we are all rooting for to make a comeback.

I had a lot of fun experimenting with gold leaf for this piece, it was the first time I ever used it. I'm always fascinated by videos of artisans applying the tissue thin sheets and this time I got to try it. My desk is still covered with little specks and it's kind of magical.

Lindsay was sent off for the Fixation exhibition at Town Hall Gallery which opens tomorrow!

Painting / Women I've Wanted to Be: Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn, 2014.

Kitty N. Wong
Gouache, pencil and ink on paper.

A new painting I just finished last night from my series "Women I've Wanted to Be".

When I was really little I thought Madonna was Marilyn Monroe but then in middle school when I grew up and discovered the joys of old movies, I wanted nothing more than to be Marilyn Monroe (not Madonna), I memorized all of her movies, took extensive notes of her outfits and tried in vain to cultivate a breathy trans-Atlantic accent.

I think Marilyn Monroe hasn't the hardest face to draw, it's like her features are all too porportional no one can make an accurate representation, or maybe we see too many images of her so we all of such a clear idea of what it should look like. Like hands, hands are so hard to draw because they are so familiar to us and our taste level for what hands should look like are set really high.

Painting / Women I've Wanted to Be: Cat Marnell

Cat Marnell, 2013.
Kitty N. Wong
Gouache, pencil and ink on paper.

WRITER/EDITOR/PREDATOR/DOWNTOWN DISASTER

New year; new series.
I've been working on a series of portraits about women and pop-culture
that I'm cheekily calling "Women I've Wanted to Be". Whenever I try to name something it always ends up sounding a little clunky. But whatever, you know what they say, your weakness will become your signature. Maybe clunky sounding titles are my signature, I'm like a clunky dadist poet, you never know.

I love working on series, it's such an incredible chance to improve and experiment. I can literally see myself improving with each piece, the latest one always feels the most precious because it feels like the best thing I've ever done and usually I'm tempted to stop there, admire it, to "quit while I'm ahead". But since it's a series I'm forced to keep going and keep creating and this year I've realized that is my greatest ally in my quest to make better work. The series of fashion week sketches from earlier this year is a really good example of this, make work daily and you will be rewarded. 

From working on these, I've also realized how much I enjoy painting hair and things that are an abstract pattern, like the hairs on the fur coat.

Here's to another artful year where we will push ourselves to become the person we want to be.
Happy 2014!

Inspiration from the Art Supply Store / Girls in Calligraphy Pen

Some new sketches I did last night. I've been thinking a lot lately (even more than always) about developing more of a personal style. I've been working on my new portfolio site with my amazing graphic designer friend Belinda Love Lee. Launching in 2 weeks (fingers crossed!)!

I feel like I draw things everyday but when I look at it all together I just feel like it's not as good as I want it to be and lately I've just been making things that are really pretty and cute and rather safe, things that just don't really excite me. That's okay too, but when I saw it all together I just realized that's not who I want to be.

Last night I went to the stationery store near my place and bought a few new pens and I always feel so inspired after I get new materials. I spent a few hours before bed making these in my sketchbook, I'm excited about, I feel like they're more me. Kind of back to basics as I used to be only like drawing with markers when I was in university. I made these using a new calligraphy pen I just bought and then added colour with gouache.

If you're interested, these prints are all available for sale on my Society 6 Shop.

Recent Work / Anya Hindmarch portrait process for Bagaholicboy

Last week I was really excited when Alvin aka BagaholicBoy, a super popular luxury handbag blog based in Singapore emailed me after seeing my Art | Basel streetstyle sketches on TheWanderlister+ asking to work together. He had done an interview with UK handbag designer extraordinaire Anya Hindmarch and wanted to commission a portrait to give the post an unique edge. I really admire  people like Alvin who puts such attention to detail to what they do, a blog post with a custom illustration, that's dedication, you can see why his site is so well read.

After researching reference images of Anya, I started by doing a round of sketches, I've been doing all my roughs lately with this water brush. It's so handy for quick sketches, since it's always filled with water I don't even have to go into the kitchen to get a water cup, I just grab it from my pen holder and go.

For this particular illustration I used gouache thinned down with water to a watercolour consistency. I find using gouache this way scans better than watercolour but has a similar look, so I've been using it more for works that will be seen digitally only.

Some other variations we tried with Anya, without a background and different styles of colouring in the shirts. I like to call this one 2 Anyas, like you know, Andy Warhol.

For the wording on the final image I used a Conte lever-action dip pen from a set that I picked up on a whim at an art supply store in Mong Kok. I've been obsessed with hand lettering lately, as you might have noticed from the ZigWisdom drawings I've been doing.

Hope you like it! And thank you so much to Alvin for contacting me for this fun job! We'll hopefully be doing a series of these so keep your fingers crossed for us. You can read the interview here on BagaholicBoy.com.

And as always if you dig this post, share it on Facebook, tweet it or +1 us on Google, I'm always so grateful when readers take the time to share my posts so more people can see them. Thanks! xx

Sketch / Oil Pastel Portraits

Playing with oil pastels for the first time in a long time.

I had been wanting to try oil pastels again ever since being inspired by these bright fashion week sketches from Damien Florebert Cuypers which I think think are so fun and full of life. I picked up a cheapie set while at my neighbourhood art supply store the other day, I was hesitant to try them again remembering them being so messy and maybe slightly unfashionable in this age of realistic airy pencil/watercolour illustrations.

But in the end I loved how they turned out, so vivid and expressive. Perfect for portraits.

This was the sketch I started with, made while watching Interiors the other night-- I love Woody Allen.

What do you think? Any favourite things that you thought you would hate but then ended up loving? I used to hate shitake mushrooms, now I love them/mushrooms in general.