This month's featured artist, Ching Cia Ee, is a student from Malaysia's The One Academy. We were very impressed by the artwork she began posting onto the Community Gallery recently and decided almost immediately to feature her. Her portraits don't simply depict faces, they breathe life into the sketching. We are heartened to see such blossoming talent in the Community. Keep up the good work Cia Ee!

Message from the Artist

I started drawing at the age of 11 along with my sister, who was 10 at the time. We would both draw cartoon characters that we saw on TV. Fast-forward a few years -- I'm 20 now and have abandoned the idea of doing fanart and am currently working on my major in illustration at a local art college, The One Academy. Here, I got the chance to experiment with both traditional and digital media, and my traditional artwork is done in pencils, charcoal, watercolours, acrylics, etc., and my digital artwork is painted in Corel Painter IX using my Wacom Graphire4.

I enjoy drawing using pencils and painting digitally most, and I particularly adore studying and drawing faces. I seek to tell people something, or send out a certain message or feeling, whenever I work on any piece of artwork. To me, art is a form of expression, and it doesn't always have to be beautiful to work. Of course, I sometimes fail to deliver what I wanted to do initially, and I'm still working my way to achieving my dreams.

As an aspiring artist, who hopes to do both commercial and personal work in the future, I have been inspired by artists from various genres. Almost all genres of art interests me, from abstract to macabre to comics and even sculpture (sometimes I feel like wanting to do everything!), but several notable influences are Linda Bergkvist, Kazuhiko Sano, Stephanie Pui-Mun Law, Loh Kin Sun, and David Grove.