Earlier in June, I was busy working on 20+ illustrations for this book called《觀城記－－做個有情有義的香港人》, written by 天航 and published by {格子盒作室 | gezi workstation}. The book is now published and is available at the HK Book Fair; it should be available at book stores such as The Commercial Press after the book fair too.

It was an interesting experience to work on this project. I spent quite a lot of time on research, especially when drawing the landmark places and the celebrities. The drawing style is quite different from my usual style, as I found myself drawing more carefully and I tried to attend to more details. Usually, I don’t even made pencil sketches for my ink drawings and my ink drawing by itself would look kind of incomplete without adding color. However, while working on this book, I found myself not only drawing pencil sketches, I kept making changes to some tiny details. As I was told that only a few drawings might be printed in color, and I didn’t know which one will get picked, I had to draw them all as if they will only be printed in black and white first. It was a good experience to challenge myself to try something different and I’m happy about how it turned out.

As I was rushing for the last few drawings, Singapore was affected by the most horrible haze in history. It was so bad that I can smell the smoke once I got out of the bedroom, which has air conditioning. I tried working on my work table but I just couldn’t stand the nasty smell and had to retreat back to my bedroom. The following is one of the drawings that I drew on my bed instead of proper drawing table. I think I had drawn more than 100 motorbikes including the drafts…

Taipei Motorbikes

Thanks to the editor of the book, Ah Ding, who is also a good friend of mine, for inviting me to join this project; and to the author of the book, 天航, who kindly agree to use my illustrations. It is a really amazing feeling to see a book with my illustrations published, it made me smile just to think about it. :)