Before cosplay, I spent most of my waking hours drawing and painting! Being born and raised in China, I grew up with manga and anime and am to this a day an active fan of the phenomenon. Artistically, I am completely self-taught and started drawing in manga-style when I was only 11 years old. I got interested in "Japanimation" by reading shoujo style comics and therefore have been mainly influenced by manga instead of anime.
Before I got into cosplay, I sold fan art, originals and prints, at anime conventions and took commissions, as well as developed my own style and original art work. In the last few years life and costuming took precedence over art sadly, and I haven't picked up the pencil in a while. It is my hope that one day I will find time and inspiration to draw again, and not just costume sketches.

My Art History:
In 1996, while I still lived in Germany, I completedmy first shoujo-manga named “Cherry Blossom”, a short story involving a foreign girl’s struggle to be accepted after moving to a different country. It’s around 90 pages long, written entirely in German and was published as the Feature in the German Magazine “AnimaniA” in a Special edition in April of 1998. That edition had 25,000 printed copies.
I have also drawn a few of Doushinjis and my original art pieces have been in art shows and auctions at US conventions such as Anime Expo, Otakon and A-kon.

Onto the galleries! I apologize in advance for the shoddy quality of the image files, these were scanned and saved for a website with much less bandwidth and space. The images also have my old art website watermark on them because people kept stealing the art for some reason. I also do not have all of my artwork files anymore due to a hard drive crash, and the originals were all sold. But at least here is a small selection of my art!

Fan Art

I loved drawing in inks, and used ink pens as well as artist quills and dipping ink. Many of the fan art pieces were of either my favorite characters or requested characters by interested buyers. I also loved drawing characters with long flowing hair and whimsical looks. Deedlit and Pirotess of Lodoss Wars were probably my favorites to draw.

For coloring I used watercolor, colored pencils, acrylics and Copic markers. Most watercolor pieces were oversized 30 x 20 paintings which I sold at convention art shows.

Originals

You'll understand my style of costume design once you see my original art lol. My love for intricate details on costumes comes from years of drawing my original fantasy characters. Ink was my favorite medium because it was so suitable for details.

I started out using water colors, progressed to colored pencils and then discovered Copic markers. I never ventured into digital art for some reason. Something about having a piece of paper in front of you and getting paint all over your hands made me happy.

Commissions

A small selection of some the art commissions I did. I used to forget to scan in art before sending them out eeep! Amongst these you'll find the mascot for Fansview.com, some fun Sailor Moon inspired art that I forgot I did, Gackt!, and a painting of Harry Dresden, commissioned by friends of Author Jim Butcher as a surprise for him! I remember being given the first 3 novels to read for character research and completely falling in love with the series.