Some artists produce numerous preparatory drawings over a period of time, while others proceed to produce works directly. Some use photographic images to test out the composition, develop ideas and embody creative inspirations. Leonardo da Vinci could be the earliest artist who used a camera obscura for his art practice. As is well known, more than a century later, Johannes Vermeer and Giovanni Antonio Canal, known as Canaletto, used this device proactively. Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol were both well-known for using photographic images for their art practice in the modern era. Nowadays, I often develop the idea through digital manipulation of my original drawings and pictures. The definition of "drawing" blurs, so do these works. Some of them are complete and ideal in their own right, while some works are regarded as completed, but I've never been satisfied. It can be said that the artist's life is the very nature of drawings towards a more complete form. In any case, it is drawing that plays a key role in human creativity. In the prehistoric age, drawing was far preceded by the invention of writing. Drawing is a unique fundamental tool, which is the source of paintings, symbols, signs and letters.

 

As for me, pencil drawing is always my favourite practice in all art forms since my childhood. It is so simple that even an infant can do it, yet it’s often so demanding…, certainly it’s nothing less than drawing that requires of all artists a great skill to observe, understand and depict things as they are. It is not easy. Needless to say, it is the most fundamental skill in all art practices. I always recall myself enjoying drawing with twigs and pebbles on the ground in my early childhood before I was given pencils and notebooks. Looking back, it was always autumn for me to launch a new thing or turn to a new direction. Then, in the course of time, my conceptual drawing series "Autumn Leaves" was born. Since then, I‘ve been exploring how to enhance this concept in drawing. Talking about autumn leaves, for instance, they are nothing but the object fallen into decay, yet that is why they are totally "open" to viewers as if Vincent Van Gogh firstly introduced this concept when he painted "a pair of boots"; which provided the platform for Martin Heidegger's philosophical debates. 

 

Here I assembled my drawings in monochrome, mostly those with graphite pencil and some with watercolour.