Highschool “At first, I was just doodling on my homework and in my notebooks in my spare time,” she revealed in an item for the IDEO web site, “but by my senior year I thought it would be cool to set a deadline, and complete a sketchbook front to back in one year.
It was a good outlet for my stressed and angsty teenage self. The first one took a while – definitely more than a year – but after completing it, I was hooked.
“In a way, these notebooks act as a diary for me,” she continues. “I remember where I was mentally and emotionally for each drawing. Over time, my work has become a lot less about how angry I was that day, and more about colors, patterns, and shapes.”
Perspective Rooms
Felicia Chiao likes to use one point perspective she learned in high school, to create clean designed rooms filled with lots of interesting and trivial objects.
College
She is a recent graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. Felicia has a background in toy design and a degree in industrial design, she learned woodworking and concept design along with fine arts, giving her work a variety of looks and materials as well as approach.
Illustration remains a side project for Chiao, a counterpoint to her professional life that she began in earnest while in college for industrial design. “It’s great having both,” she told the This Is Colossal web site, “because I find that design work is about solving problems for others while illustration can be completely selfish and about me. It creates a good balance.”
She is currently on mission to "finish a sketchbook a year and to eat ice cream as often as possible".
'There Are Wonderful Things Everywhere' - 2018
“I like to draw simple lines and shapes, and for each composition, I typically just wing it. I’m sure there’s a meaning to whatever I’m drawing, but when I’m working on it, I’m actually not thinking too hard about it. It’s all stream of consciousness. I draw to de-stress and because it’s fun. I ended up creating this bald, baby-like thing to represent a person or a feeling I was having. A lot of people have told me they can relate to my work, and I think it’s because of that character. It has no real defining features other than looking vaguely human, so a lot of people can put themselves in its shoes. I often get asked if it’s a boy or a girl or this or that, but it really doesn’t matter what it is. As for the others,
Chiao’s fanciful worlds are populated with a repeating humanoid protagonist, as well as spirit-like black figures reminiscent of the symbolic creatures in Hayao Miyazaki films. “Illustration has always been a way for me to destress and work through whatever emotions I’m feeling,”
The little angry-looking black blob
"the only character that has a specific role is the little angry-looking black blob I draw from time to time. Originally, it showed up inside other character’s bodies as a stomach. I had a lot of stress-related stomach issues, and whenever I was feeling particularly bad, I’d draw it into a piece. I’m not great at telling people I don’t feel well, or that something is wrong, so my sketchbook is a good outlet. Recently I’ve just been hiding it around in parts of drawings for no particular reason.”
– Felicia Chiao
'Animals of the Lunar New Year' - 2021 - currently in progress
Beautifully Illustrated by Felicia Chiao
Felicia Chiao's current works of art, marking the Lunar New Year, relies heavily on red, a traditional sign of luck and prosperity for the upcoming year, along with layers of flowers, tassels, and a fantastic depiction of the animal.