Paint A Chinese Fantasy Figure

Yangtian Li explains her research and design process as she illustrates a fantasy character with armour based on authentic Chinese costume.

- Yangtian Li

This personal piece is inspired by the amazing art from Magic: the Gathering. I love the Magic style, but wanted to design a character that’s true to my Chinese heritage. Authentic armour designs for Chinese characters are quite hard to do. This is because, unlike other cultures where examples of armour are preserved, a change in Chinese dynasty resulted in armour from the previous dynasty being destroyed. So instead of locating references of traditional Chinese armour, the appearance of many of the armoured elements is based on guesswork and on other relevant sources, such as Japanese armour and antique ceramic/wood sculptures.