Artworks
Without The Artist
Acrylic on wood canvas
With the rise of AI, it's essential that people don't stop creating in favor of convenience. Chinese opera singing is a colorful demonstration of culture and art, where the face is a basic element of the performance. The lack of a face in this piece signifies the lack of a human behind the art, and therefore how the performance is therefore incomplete without it.
Doudou, a piece of me
traditional and digital illustration
The biggest influences in my life were and still are my mom and my grandma. In this piece, they're the ones dressing up my cat Doudou in a traditional Chinese outfit, known as hanfu. The dressing, the poem, and the hands are all symbolic of them raising me with Chinese stories and culture. They've always pushed me to appreciate the culture because I couldn't experience it through living in China. I used my cat Doudou as a metaphor for myself because as much of a cat that he is, he's actually really similar to me in terms of temperament and personality.
Doudou dreaming memories
pastel pencils on paper
My cat is often startled awake when he sleeps, so I drew what I thought he could be dreaming of based on old memories. The big cat in the middle is Doudou, dreaming of birds. On his body are pointing hands from the time I tried directing him to a treat by pointing at it, to which he promptly looked the exact other way in confusion. Below the hands are chicken feathers because Doudou loves to eat chicken. Right of them are fireworks from a fourth a July celebration, which scared Doudou out into the street where we found him after he ran away for a week. To the left of Doudou is a fake moon, which is actually his airtag tracker, shin ing light on the time Dodo climbed on my roof. The only reason we were able to find him was because I used his airtag to track him down. On the bottom are four cats, the two on the right are his enemies who frequent my backyard. The two on the left are originally funny pictures I took when Doudou looked especially silly.
Arrogance and disturbance
digital illustratio
I enjoy doodling faces, but I've never drawn full expressions, only deadpans. I wanted to experiment how I could communicate someone's mood only through the eyebrows.
Peace
Chinese ink on rice paper
This piece depicts two of four traditional subjects in Chinese paintings: birds and flowers (工笔花鸟画). I used a method of thick thin line work to give a sense of delicacy or roughness wherever needed. For example, the feathers use thin lines, while the branches use some thicker lines. I then used paint to softly give light to the piece.
DoUdOu?
Digital illustration
My dad often joked that if Doudou was a big cat instead of a small one, he wouldn't hesitate to eat us. But I think that if Doudou ever become a big cat, he would look at me when I called him with the same affection.
A Landscape
Chinese ink
This piece depicts the two other subjects traditional subjects of Chinese painting: water and mountains (写意山水画). I enjoy Chinese painting because the brush is used in every way possible to deliver the textures of the subject, and because using deliberate but sparse strokes can let your eye naturally fill in any gaps. Using the side of a slightly drier brush, I painted in the cliff-sides to look rough and earthy, while I used the tip of the brush with more water than ink to paint the houses.
Artists Shop
By cultivating a collaborative network and creating sustainable economic pathways, Entong successfully built a community where artists achieve financial independence and creative empowerment. Visit his work at Initially Shop.