Ziyue Zhang

Acrylic marker pen & marker pen & colored pencil
While my friends and I were blowing out the candles on our birthday cake

Marker & Acrylic Marker
Collection of Group Photos of Me and My Friends-Various Emotional Versions. I linked our heads together with chains and drew a lock and a key. This symbolizes that our emotional connection is very strong and also shows my possessiveness towards my friends.

Marker pen & acrylic marker pen & oil pastel
This painting uses exchanging tears to symbolize that my friend and I always support each other when we are at our most vulnerable moments.

Pastel
The architectural complex of Center London

Pastels & Watercolors
I depicted my friend using the method of blind painting. The randomly splashed colors were expressing the raindrops that fell on the painting that day.

Watercolor & Markers
My friend and I took pictures of the maple leaves. The various-sized spherical objects were raindrops.

Watercolor
The scene in my dream: I was walking along a long road that seemed to go on forever with my grandma holding my hand.

Watercolor
One day, while I was half-awake and half-asleep, I saw something mysterious. It was an illusion of mine.

Watercolor & Marker Pen
My friend is cooking

Reflection

I am a person with rich emotions. In my previous works, I always like to incorporate all my emotions into my paintings – the beautiful, the innocent, the evil, the complex, and the unknown – I want to express them all. These paintings also showcase my emotions.
Six out of these ten paintings depict the friendship between me and my friends. I used a slightly exaggerated style to express our openness and closeness.
My friends and I can talk about art and fashion, and also discuss the most private and ultimate topics in life, such as sex and death. They have brought me a lot of joy and meaning to life. I can also learn new knowledge and life lessons from them. I alays share my innermost feelings with them, pouring out my heart. We laugh and cry together. We have no secrets from each other. I cherish the bond I have with them as if it were a precious treasure.
Therefore, I recorded our daily life in these paintings. I think this is a testimony to our friendship. Whenever I see these paintings now, I always smile. Many years later, perhaps when I am middle-aged, I will still laugh out loud when I see them.
My grandma is the dearest elder relative to me. Unfortunately, I lost her in 2020. In the years since her passing, I have missed her almost every day. I often meet her in my dreams. She takes me to the world where she is, which is the world of the dead. I have drawn the scenes I saw in my dreams. I think it’s very warm. It’s a kind of warmth that transcends life and death. Although there is a huge gap between us, we can still talk so much and embrace each other. Although these might just be my imagination and dreams, I still think they are very meaningful and have given me a lot of strength and spiritual support.

Acrylic marker & watercolor
Marbling on raw beef

Acrylic marker & watercolor
Fat lines of salmon meat

Oil pastels & watercolor
Details of meat pie

Acrylic marker & watercolor
Details of matcha cake

Watercolor
Details of Octopus Tentacles

Colored pencil
The vascular network on the rabbit’s ears

Colored pencil
Texture on the lizard’s eyeball

Reflection

These ten paintings focus on the details of some foods and animals, such as the marbling on raw beef, the fat lines in salmon, the texture of a lizard’s eyeball, and the blood vessels on a rabbit’s ears.
How to transform an image into a pattern is the main issue I explored in these ten paintings. During the painting process, I constantly experimented with how to extract elements from the image and make them more vivid, or more artistic, and more like mature printed patterns. The skin of a rabbit’s ear is very thin and almost translucent, which allows the network of blood vessels beneath to be clearly visible. I really like the deep and shallow, intricate combination of the blood vessels and the blend of deep red and light purple. I also enjoy the feeling of the layers of fur covering the blood vessels.
When painting, I was hesitant whether to repeat and arrange many outlines of rabbit ears and add blood vessels to each of them, or to separate the concepts of rabbit ears and blood vessels and develop the blood vessel network. The first approach could display all the elements I like and enhance the visual effect through repetition and superposition. The second approach could thoroughly showcase the core element of the blood vessel network, making it more concise and clear. Eventually, I chose the second approach because although the first one could incorporate everything, it would lack a focus. Moreover, I found that I preferred the blood vessel network more and wanted to emphasize them. However, if I followed the first approach, the blood vessel network wouldn’t be as clear, giving a sense of “inadequate expression”. By the way, I chose pink as the background color, attempting to add a touch of the cute and warm atmosphere of the little rabbit. I think this process is about clarifying what I truly like and also about eliminating the unnecessary and extracting the essence to make the pattern more concise and clear, with a more direct and straightforward theme. It’s quite interesting.
Similarly, when painting a piece inspired by a matcha cake, I tried to present its soft and dense texture and the granular feel of the matcha powder on the canvas. So, I painted many layers that looked soft and wobbly, and randomly sprinkled watercolor on the paper to create some speckles, giving a “powdery” effect. I find it interesting to make the pattern look visually appealing to a certain extent, so that when people see it, they might feel the aroma, thus breaking the two-dimensional boundaries of the pattern and giving it more dimensions and layers. 
I believe that after completing these ten paintings, I have enhanced my sensitivity and creativity in pattern design, and explored areas I had never attempted or understood before, expanding my thinking ability.