I'm always inspired by different kinds of shapes and lines of every little thing, be it an object, animal, or nature. Sometimes a shadow or silhouette of something could spark an idea and my visual concept has been revolving around these elements. This thinking approach subsequently influenced my drawing style where I tend to draw with minimal details. I always admire minimalist artists as their work is able to convey so much with a minimum amount of lines or shapes. I like the concept of less is more and have been working towards this direction in both my illustrations and comics. My mother, being a self-taught tailor, is the biggest influence in my journey as a self-taught artist. My wife, who is an amazing photographer, inspires me to see the beauty in every little thing. And I learned to see things in a simple way from my 11-month-old daughter.

Usually, most of my time is spent on brainstorming. On some rare occasions, inspiration strikes and ideas spark, which feels like hitting a jackpot, but mostly it takes hours and days for an idea to evolve. After that, the drawing part takes about 3 to 4 hours and sometimes I will do a few more rounds of minor tweaks until satisfied.

Lots of random sketches and an endless brainstorming process. On a normal day, I would start with flipping through my sketchbook to review my old ideas and see if I can make them better while at the same time letting my pencil do the thinking by randomly sketching new things/elements. Sometimes I get inspired visually and other times I just have pictures forming in my mind. At the end, if I'm lucky, there will be one final magic moment when the dots are connected. To me, the process is very much like digging deeper and deeper in underground mining until that rare earth metal is found.

Brainstorming new ideas is always my favorite, but also the most challenging part. As of today, I have only completed around 10% of my comics from my sketchbook. Of course, one of the main reasons is that not all ideas will come to life as I will go back to my sketchbook, again and again, to filter out ideas that are not good enough even though I was so excited when I came up with them in the first place. Coming up with an idea I like will give me a sense of accomplishment, so I would say I'm quite addicted to brainstorming.

From time to time, I have this burned-out feeling and it can be discouraging. I think this is one of the reasons I started to create my own comics, because it is a personal project and I have the freedom to express my thoughts. It then became a way to destress. Drawing comics lets me take a break from doing commercial projects. I guess people mostly view my work as subtle humor and a little quirky. Sometimes I do get comments saying my comics are boomer humor.

I have been posting my illustrations on Instagram for many years. Ever since I started drawing comics, I just posted them on the same account, so it has now become the account where most of my recent posts are comics.