Outside of work, I like to continue praticing my hands-on studio skills with illustrating and crafting. For the past few years, I have been working on learning surface design and pattern-making for fabric. I'll first work on the individual illustrations. These are created either through pen and paper sketches or through a digital watercolor technique on the iPad. Then I create a seamless 10" x 10" pattern by combining the different illustrations together into one composition. I'm always excited to see how the pattern translates from the digital space onto the physical fabrics.
I have included a few of my favorite patterns below.
My ultimate creative passion lives at the intersection of technology and art. Interactivity and blurring the line between real and manufactured experience defines much of what invigorates me as an artist. If I wasn't a Graphic Designer and Creative Strategist, I would be an Experience Designer.
The following installation was a culmination of 3 years of writing, designing, experimenting, and playing. One of my ongoing personal projects is a story inspired by Plato's Allegory of the Cave called "Back Into the Light". I have been writing this story since 2015. As I learned how to combine different tools and softwares such as Arduino and Isadora into my art, interactive installations naturally emerged.
Through digital design programs such as Procreate and Adobe Photoshop, sound editing software such as Adobe Audition, video, sound, and light manipulation in Isadora, and traditional studio art and theatre, "Back Into the Light" came to life. It lived as a 15-minute interactive installation and performance, depicting the epilogue scene from the written story.
I'm always interested in playing with different techniques in my art. Every now and then, I try to step out of my comfort zone with a new style or artistic challenge. The following is a collection of characters I recreated (left) next to their inspiration (right). I had a lot of fun playing around with this style! For the most part, my focus was on trying out blending techniques in the digital space. I'm used to working with blending paints and I think it's interesting to see what kind of tricks can span physical and digital, and where the two mediums differ. I was also testing out creating custom paint brushes in Procreate to fit the style I was going for.
Bonus: To the left is a self-portait with my cat, Ophelia.
