Zodiac Re-Imaginings of Family
Illustrated using Procreate on the iPad Pro
A few years ago, I started drawing a family portrait with a twist using our representative Zodiac animals - my father as the monkey, my mother as the goat, and myself and my brother as the two pigs, each representing the years we were born. This has evolved into a tradition where I create a new stylized “family portrait” each year, then create a canvas print of this illustration to share with my parents. As an artist, this has been a delightful playful creative outlet; and as a daughter and sister, this has been a way to tell my family thank you, many times over.
2022
This was the year I was re-reading translations of Sun Wukong, so I re-imagined ourselves as a band of adventurers.
2023
The next year, I tried out a more playful style trying to capture some of the chaos and delight of our times together.
2024
I wanted to try out a more unified color palette this year, while also integrating that this was Year of the Dragon. For future family illustrations, I am planning to find ways to incorporate the year itself into the piece too.
2025
This was a hectic year life-wise, so this year’s portrait was more straightforward theme-wise but was still a lot of fun. As I put the portraits from the last four years up together, I also realized that I have somehow been alternating every other year between having humans versus no humans - maybe that’s a pattern I will keep up for future years too!
At home!
A snapshot of my dad’s office where the canvases are hanging up! (bonus feature is the first family portrait I painted with watercolor many years ago that first started this idea)