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And the rest of the pictures! I’ll upload better quality photos once I’ve got time.

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Quick phone screenshots of my zine! I ran out of time on a lot of stuff so im calling this a first draft but its good enough for now!

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This is a more developed sketch of "Pet" which will be an illustration about the fetishization of Asian people by non-Asians. It is heavily referenced from an image I found in an article, I've posted the image below is an earlier post.

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This book was actually a birthday gift from my friend. I've been a huge fan of Nagabe for a year or two now, and so to get the first book of the deluxe edition of "The Girl From the Other Side" was such a delight. I love Nagabe's inkwork, their soft colors on their full illustrations, and their wonderful character designs. My project will be utilizing relief printing, so I hope to emulate Nagabe's beautiful linework with my relief printing.

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I've had this collection since I was a child, and even tried to give it away at one point. Luckily my mother stopped me from doing so, because I'm now using it as a reference for my Capstone.

I've always loved Beatrix Potter's paintings. I love how soft and whimsical they feel. Since I'm using watercolor washes for my project, I'm hoping to infuse my art with these same feelings.

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Here's two books I've been reading to help with my project!

"Time is a Mother" by Ocean Vuong is one of my new favorite poetry books. In this poetry collection, Vuong attempts to understand his grief over his mother's death, his life experiences as a gay man, and his existence as a Vietnamese American man living in America. My favorite poems are "Künstlerroman" and "Amazon History of a Former Nail Salon Worker".

"Graphic Design for Everyone: Understanding the Building Blocks So You Can Do It Yourself" has been very interesting for me personally. I'm a studio art major, so I have no experience with graphic design. However, for my zine I want to be able to use a digital medium, so I'm trying to learn as best I can.

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Undergraduate Symposium 2023 from Northern Arizona University on Vimeo.

Last spring, I had the opportunity to be interviewed to promote the Undergraduate Symposium for my university. The Undergraduate Symposium is a big conference for students at my uni, where we have to present our research. I’ve presented the past two years, and will be presenting again this Spring. I was one of four people who appear in the video, which was very exciting!

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Oh wow that's me!!

Back when I was in the Interns-to-Scholars program at my university, I got interviewed for my school's website! It was a super cool experience, and I was really excited to talk about my project. Also the photos came out really nice which was very exciting for me personally.

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I've also been reading a lot of graphic novels by Asian American artists/writers/popular figures. Two that I've really loved are "American Born Chinese" by Gene Luen Yang, and "They Called Us Enemy" cowritten by George Takei, Justin Eisinger, and Steven Scott. It was illustrated by Harmony Becker.

"American Born Chinese" follows three separate stories: a contemporary retelling of the story of Sun Wukong, the Monkey King; the life of 2nd generation Chinese immigrant Jim Wang; and the sitcom-esque story of "all-American" Danny and his cousin Chin-Kee, who's design is based on racist depictions of Chinese people in popular media. At the end of the story, all three stories come together in a hard-hitting examination of internalized racism.

"They Called Us Enemy" is an autobiography about actor and activist George Takei's childhood experience as a young boy in the WWII Japanese Internment Camps. Takei is most widely known for his role as Hikaru Sulu in Star Trek: The Original Series. The graphic novel gives personal insight into the injustice that the Japanese Americans faced as a result of the anti-Japanese sentiment that took hold of America in the wake of Pearl Harbor.

This story was particularly interesting to me, as my grandmother was also interned in these same camps, though in a different location that Takei was. I also had the fortune of visiting both the Manzanar National Historic Site, which was where Takei was interned, as well as the Japanese American National Museum, which Takei founded.

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I've been reading a lot of poetry by Asian American poets for my project. My two favorites right now are "Dear Diaspora" by Susan Nguyen, and "Magnolia" by Nina Mingya Powles.

"Dear Diaspora" contains poems drawn from Nguyen's upbringing as a 2nd generation Vietnamese American woman. She talks about her childhood, her coming of age, as well as the Vietnam War and its effects on her and her family. My favorite poem from this collection is "Unending".

"Magnolia" draws from Powles' life experiences as a half-Chinese, half-white, American woman. The scenery stretches from Aotearoa to London, from Shanghai to New York. The title is the English translation of Mulan, after the legendary folk heroine and her subsequent Disney adaptation. My favorite poem from this collection is "Girl Warrior, or: watching Mulan (1998) in Chinese with English subtitles".

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I was reading "How a Long History of Intertwined Racism and Misogyny Leaves Asian Women in America Vulnerable to Violence", a "Time" article by Cady Lang AND Paulina Cachero, which featured these amazing photos. I'm planning to use at least a couple of these images as reference, as well as the article.

If you'd like to read the article, you can find it here: https://time.com/5952819/history-anti-asian-racism-misogyny/

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Here are a few of the books I will be referencing for my project. I have loved Jon J. Muth's watercolor washes since I was a kid, and since the main protagonist of his most famous series, Stillwater, is a panda, I figured it would be a great reference for my project.

I took a class studying the comic Maus: A Survivor's Tale for a class at my university. Maus is the absolutely beautiful, as well as tragic, autobiographical story of Art Spiegelman's father's experience as a Jewish man living in Poland under the Nazi regime. This series is a major inspiration for my own project, and I will be drawing on both its art as well as it's storytelling while I create MaMoAAR.

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Sketches and color study for an illustration titled “r u ok?” This illustration is about how in the wake of the georgia spa shootings, my family and friends were all frantically calling each other to make sure we were safe, and to check in on each other. I’m going to do some more thumbnails for this illustration in the coming weeks.

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Planning for illustration titled “Suihanki Head (炊飯器頭)”. “Suihanki” is the Japanese word for rice cooker. This piece is taken from my friend’s story about how when he was a child he had a friend who was genuinely shocked to find out that Asian people don’t have rice in their head in place of brains.

The top image is the thumbnails, the bottom image is the color study.

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More thumbnails. I’ve been struggling lately to figure out a way to portray the fetishization of Asian people, but I think I found a rlly good photo that I’m gonna heavily reference lol. The third image is thumbnails for an illustration on representation of Asian people in popular media.

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More sketches! The first image is a character study of my best friend. She’s of Indian ancestry, and also very loud lmao, so I decided to make her a peahen. I’m still trying to figure out how to anthropomorphize these animal personas.

The second image is my sketches of commonly seen birds in the Western world. I did a little bit of character design with them as an exercise.