As an autistic person, there are times when I struggle to advocate for myself, especially during moments of sensory shut down or other high emotional times.

I created this card to help me explain to people what is going on with me and what I need. I know that when I go into sensory shut down one of the things that happens is that I lose the ability to speak and explain. I tend to only give short answers or say I don’t know.

This card explains what’s happening to me, and why as well as what I need people to do to help me through it.

I created both of these pieces to explore the theme of cultural synthesis, illustrating how traditional and contemporary elements coexist and enrich each other. These pieces were created to be not only visually striking but also deeply symbolic, representing a harmonious blend of past and present, deeply rooted in my Chinese mixed raced heritage.

The first painting is titled Creating Prosperity.

In this painting, I depict myself dressed in traditional Chinese attire with contemporary hair colours, highlighting the fusion of old and new. The figure is engaged in painting large, golden coins symbolizing prosperity. The background features stylized traditional clouds and rich floral motifs, creating a sense of abundance and cultural heritage. The border is adorned with beaded patterns taken from traditional Chinese and Malaysian beadwork, adding texture and depth to the artwork.

The second painting is called Two Halves Make Me and is an updated version that I produced for the mini-exhibit for baqc.esea.

In this split self-portrait, I contrast traditional and modern identities, reflecting my Chinese heritage. The left half of the face and attire reflects classical Chinese aesthetics with traditional hair styling and accessories. In contrast, the right half presents a modern look with vibrant, multicoloured hair and glittery, rainbow-themed makeup, symbolizing self-expression and sexuality. The clothing also mirrors this duality, with traditional garments on one side and a contemporary, colourful jacket on the other. The background transitions from a traditional red wash to a modern, blue and purple splatter, further emphasizing the blend of two eras.

Creating Fortune mediums: Watercolor and beadwork on paper, with a vibrant and intricate style.

Two sides of me mediums: Mixed media on paper, featuring watercolour, beads, and fabric.

2023 is the 4th Yeah I’ve completed Peachtober.
I’ve always enjoyed joining in with Peachtober and consistently making and finishing pieces each day for a month.
I think it’s a great way to get practice of creating and finishing pieces to deadlines in quick succession.
It’s also a great boost to creativity, it makes you think about things and how you can present them.
This year I made sketched and thumbnail drawings for each day, which I think helped the final outcome for the pieces. I even went back through and redid some of the pieces afterward to better meet my personal standards for the ones that I was stuck on or didn’t turn out the way I had intended.
The ones displayed here are:
Day 1 Bee
Day 2 Cosmos
Day 4 Grub
Day 5 Sprig
Day 6 Eye
Day 7 Crater
Day 9 Blue
Day 10 Citrus
Day 11 Pencil
Day 13 Ship
Day 14 Garden
Day 15 Weather
Day 16 Sidekick
Day 17 Blush
Day 18 Snooze
Day 19 Candle
Day 20 Bulb
Day 23 Message
Day 25 Coral
Day 27 Pond
Day 29 Float
Day 30 Moss
Day 31 Spooky

Created using: Pencils, Pens, Inks, watercolour, Acrylic, and Paint Markers.

In July 2023 I was thrilled to be a part of a mini exhibit organised by baqc esea focusing on queer Asian artists.

The theme was to celebrate the past and present LGBTQ+ East and Southeast Asian organisations and individuals. Generally LGBTQ+ exhibitions forgot to include East and Southeast Asian representation, and rarely, if ever, do we see people like us in these sorts of exhibitions.
When Kaycee Gu, the founder of baqc esea, started delving into archives, she found that there were limited materials available so the exhibition seeks to fill in that gap. She presented what she was able to find from the past and also celebrate the present.

When I heard about this exhibition I knew I wanted to make some new pieces especially for it. I created two brand new pieces in mediums I was not familiar with and although the learning curve was steep, I am satisfied with the outcome and I surprised myself with how easy it was to learn. This is definitely something I would be interested in learning more about for the future.

The first image I chose to do for the exhibition I wanted to show the two halves of my personality, the expected traditional Chinese side, what is wanted for me in life by others, and on the other side, the me I display on the outside. I’ve always had trouble merging the two sides together as I am far away from the typical expected Asian person. My sexuality is considered a taboo subject, as is the fact that I’m autistic and struggle with mental health issues. All of these things and more are subjects that I’m not allowed to let my Asian family know about. But they are things I’m comfortable to talk about with my friends.

The second painting I created was something I recalled from my childhood which is eating Ice Kachang with my family when we would go and visit them in Malaysia. We didn’t get to visit them very often when we were children so when we would go out we would go for the whole summer holidays the full 6 weeks, and try to visit everyone we could during that time. The way they showed us love was to take us out to restaurants and other places to eat. It was their love language. My brother and I would be treated to all sorts of delicious foods, but Ice Kachang was the one I liked the most. I wanted to paint it as a glimpse into my childhood memories but to also bring it into the now by including the Pride flag colours within it.

Two sides of me Portrait - Mixed Media, Watercolour, acrylic Inks, Glitter, Gems. 2023
Ice Kachang - Mixed Media, Watercolour, Gauche, Acrylic Paint, 2023

I created this piece for Chinese New Year. I am half Chinese so each year we have a big family meal, with lots of good food.
Year of the Rabbit is my birth year so I knew I had to make something for it.
This piece merges many different mediums, and techniques. I start sketching my idea in photoshop and when I was happy with how it looked I printed it out and used my lightbox to trace it onto watercolour paper.

For the background I used wet on wet watercolour to make the wash, then filled in the pattern, The clouds are in gauche. The flowers are a combination of watercolour and ink fine lines. The fan is acrylic paint, and so is the rabbit. The moon is all in pencil.

I took many elements from traditional Chinese artwork and New Year decorations.

Created 2023 in Watercolour, Gauche, Pencil, Ink, and Acrylic.

Being death positive and talking about death is something I think everyone should be. I discuss openly about managing death, planning their Death Directive and how people want their remains treated often Especially in environmentally friendly ways.

I created this infographic to explain how different methods of Final Dispositions and their effects on the Environment around us.

There was a lot of information that needed to be put across and I had to edit it carefully to include what I perceived were the most important parts without overcrowding the infographic.

Created 2022 on Photoshop

I wanted to make a poster and shirt design to raise awareness for this Organisation. I felt that simplicity was key to getting the message across quickly, using feathers to represent the children. Using a simple colour theme of white and orange to keep the message to the point.

Created 2021 on Photoshop.

Every Child Matters aka Orange Shirt Day is a Canadian Holiday to recognise the legacy of the Canadian Indian Residential School System. It was first established in 2013, in an effort to promote awareness and education of the residential school system and the impact it has had on Indigenous communities for over a century.

The impact of the residential school system has been recognized as a cultural genocide and continues to this day.

More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children who attended Indian residential schools in Canada between the late 1800s and 1996. These schools aimed to eliminate Indigenous Peoples’ languages and cultures and, through assimilation, cause them to cease to exist as distinct peoples.
It is estimated that between four to six thousand children died at residential schools. This does not include the number of children who disappeared without a trace. Survivors recall memories of dear friends and siblings running away during cold winters, possibly freezing to death, drowning by the river, being run over by trains, or dying in the woods for lack of water or food. The children that did not make it back home are marked as missing.

A book of poetry by Misha Collins came out in 2021 called Some Things I Still Can’t Tell You.
I decided to illustrate one of his poems, and I picked this one called Black Cat.

Created 2021, pen on paper.

I made the Find the… project during the first lockdown due to Covid as a way of entertaining my Roller Derby League.

All the pieces are roller derby themed.

Find the button amongst the Wheels was the first one I created. I used more of a drawn style for this one and a mix of bright colours like the wheels we use.
The second one I made was Find the Pivot Helmet. This was harder according to the League. I used patterns and stickers on the helmets to hide the Pivot helmet (A helmet with a single black stripe down the centre).

Next was Find the Party blower in the Whistles. This time I used a selection of similarly toned colours to hide the party blower as well as a repeating design of whistles.

Finally, I made a find the time stopwatch one. I made an error in one of the times on this one, a time that is impossible so I added it as a bonus find as well as the main goal of finding the 8.

They were all Handdrawn and inked first, before being scanned in and digitally coloured in.

Created 2020 Line work hand drawn on paper, colour added in photoshop.

To celebrate Chinese New Year in 2021 I wanted to make something that I could share with my friends and family.
I have been exploring my Chinese heritage more over the last few years and I want to share that with others.
2021 was the year of the Tiger, so I created this piece with a tiger looking straight at the viewer. I wanted it to look like a tiger in a jungle looking out so I referenced Jungle plants to place around the tiger too.
Finally, I wanted to give this image a frame of various good luck and new year symbolism. Red is considered lucky so I knew I wanted the background to be red and then used gold for the accent pieces.

Created 2021 on paper with acrylic paint.

Commissioned by a friend who is a teacher, I was asked to design a logo that could be placed on all work around equality.

We discussed a few ideas at first, and she expressed what she wanted this logo to portray along with colours that she wanted used.

I gave her a page of draft ideas with colours, and we decided on a take of Da Vinci's Vitruvian man, but with a few changes.

We man the figure genderless and made one of the two figures a larger more full-figured body. We also added visible disabilities and a birthmark.

Created 2021 Sketch in Pencil and Pens, Final on Phtoshop.

I was commissioned by my Roller Derby League to create a logo for the Health and Wellbeing Department. I came to them with a range of ideas and we discussed them and decided that this was the one they liked the most.

It combines the elements of Roller Derby, featuring a Roller Derby helmet and a skater along with various aspects of what makes up a healthy life. We also wanted to include a brain, rainbow colours, and the Ying-Yang symbol.

Created 2018 Final logo in Photoshop

For Christmas 2022 I painted this piece experimenting with various watercolour techniques. I wanted to play with the use of negative space as well as depth.

Painted 2022 in Watercolour

For my sticker shop on Etsy I have made a few different character stickers, both taking characters from popular culture as well as creating my own.

I have found that I really enjoy creating logos for Fictional companies. The process of coming up with fonts, colours, and the overall style.

I worked on making some of my own original character creations. The red panda was designed to look similar to the beckoning cat that you find in Asian culture. The booterus was created as part of an in-joke I shared with friends that has been received well by others too.

Created 2022 in Photoshop

Sea Friends are the first two sticker sheets I’ve made to sell on my Etsy shop.

I took some of my favourite sea creatures and played with their proportions to make them squat and cute-looking. I had intended to only make one sheet but while I was researching these creatures I found so many that I ended up making two sheets.

I wanted the colours to look bright and stand out but stay mostly true to life.

Created in Nov 2021 on Photoshop.

Later I added Adorable Ailments as another sticker sheet to my shop. Based on Microscopic viruses, and bacteria.
I also created two tracker sticker sheets, one for water, to help you keep track of how much water you have consumed each day if you bullet journal and one for periods, helping you keep track on a calendar or diary.

These are some other examples of stickers that I sell on my Etsy shop.

Created 2022 in Photoshop.

I’ve made a range of stickers that are intended to be for both members of the LGBTQ+ community and allies of the community.

I wanted to make a way for people to let others know that they are in a safe space and that they are relax and outwardly express themselves.

Created 2022 on Photoshop

As a Neurodiverse person myself I wanted to make stickers that help express the experience of a neurodiverse person to those who might not understand but also to other neurodiverse people who might agree with what it’s like.

Created 2022 in Photoshop

In 2021 I worked on my own style of drawing more than I had in previous years. I feel in this year I developed my style a lot more and have a firmer grasp of what I liked to do and how I wanted things to look.

I especially like the beetle, the heart, palm, smoke, frog, and water out of all of them. I feel they really express the style I prefer to draw in.

I also used it as a change to experiment with backgrounds and how to fill what would be empty space.

Created 2021 in Inks

These are a few of my favourite drawings from Furry Little Peaches Inktober prompt list from 2020.

In this year I tried to add more detail in my drawings than I had in the previous year.

I really enjoyed exploring drawing a woollen hat. I also liked the experience of trying to draw rain. I wasn’t sure how to approach it, but I like the way I went around and managed to do it in the end.

Inktober was something I came to later than others I had attempted it a couple times but never finished it due to the suggestions being quite abstract.
In 2019 I found Furry Little Peaches list and for the first time I managed to complete the whole month.
These are some of my favourite drawings from 2019. I used a set of coloured inks, as well as calligraphy ink.

Created 2019 in Inks.

A glimpse into my sketchbook and other pieces I’ve worked on in my free time.

As a fan of Adventure Time, when the show originally ended, I made a piece that features some of my favourite characters waving goodbye to the viewers. I decided to film myself drawing it while I sketched it out and added the ink lines. Eventually I’d like to colour it in, but for now I like the way it’s ended up.

I enjoy going to museums and in 2019 I got the courage to sketch in a museum. I had previously been anxious over the idea of drawing in a museum because I feared people would look over my shoulder and what I was drawing wouldn’t be good enough. However, I found that I really enjoyed myself and got the chance to draw some things that I never would have been able to otherwise. I had planned to do more of this but sadly the pandemic stopped this idea, I do hope and look forwards to continuing this again in the future though.

While watching a nature show on tv I was inspired to try and draw some foxes. I was enamoured with the way they would jump up to pounce of prey and I thought it would look dynamic. I really liked the way it turned out, so I’ve gone to draw other animals in motion as well.

I have always admired the various art styles that are on Tarot Cards. I decided to make my own card featuring my friends. I let them pick what card they would like to be on then drew up some designs. I blended the traditional with aspects of their personalities to create the cards.

Created 2020 Ink and paper

Commissioned by a friend who works for a Teenage Charity based in London.

The brief that I was given said that they wanted to express to teenagers that they can speak openly about issues that previously have been considered embarrassing.

We spoke and came up with this design of a can of worms being opened and spilling out. We put the words Sex, Love, and Disability on the can to show the topics that can be spoken about.

Created 2018 First drawn, then photoshop.

My Roller Derby league were putting on a tournament and the theme was Thor Ragnarok. I drew these hybrid Thor and Loki helmets merged with Roller Derby helmets for the logos.
These were the logos used for the teams, You can see I also included the weapons too, but we decided not to keep them for the game. The logos were used in the advertising, in the Program for the game, and on the team shirts.

Created 2018 on paper with ink.

When it came to designing my own logo, I wanted to make something that got the message of what I did across quickly but was also bright and colourful.
While I was trying to create a font I liked I decided that I liked the way it looked with the lines extending out that I was using to measure with, as well as the quick shading I did inside the letters.
I felt that this was a great way of showing the work that goes into my art.
I wanted to have the word colour be in contrast to how the word drawn was so I went with bright colours and bold font. I felt that this really explained my art well.
My art is planned, bold, and bright.

In 2019 and 2020 I took part in GISH (Greatest International Scavenger Hunt). For those years I designed the logo for our team based on the mythical animal that was the mascot for the year.
In 2019 the Mascot was the Assbutt, and in 2020 the Sqroose. Our team found each other on a Murderino fan site which is where the name came from. I took elements of the prison photo background and ransom note fonts that I thought would look good when combined.

Created 2019 and 2020 in photoshop.

In 2017 Croydon Roller Derby was given the opportunity to take part in the London Pride March.
In preparation, we wanted to make a flyer that could attract more skaters to join us.
This was the design we came up with, we wanted the Pride flag colours to be a big part of the advert and then we selected two photos featuring how much of a family we were as a league.
On the front, we featured our logo and name in a clear easy-to-read font. I added a different font saying ‘needs you’ to add an element of playfulness.
On the back, I made sure the date was eye-catching and easy to see straight away without having to read through all the information and look for it. I also made each paragraph easy to read and concisely put the information across to those who wanted to know more.
We managed to have them all out during the parade and received many new members in the league.

During my time at Croydon Roller Derby, I worked in the Graphics Department and eventually was made head of Graphics.

I made many social media banners, and posts for the league and these are a few of them.

I made adverts for games, posters, logos, and banners. I tried to keep a common theme going on between them all with a background photo of the league and a simple easy-to-read font.

I wanted to play with the way people see maps away from the traditional use of helping people find locations. I wanted to be able to make them into more than that, more like a display of memories.
Winchester is a place I used to live and I wanted to memorialise it and what it’s famous for. I spent a lot of time researching Winchesters locations and what else there is there as well as satellite photos so I could map in woods, forests, and rivers. I had a lot of fun making this.
I plan to continue playing with maps in the future to see what else I can make.