Victo Ngai

Wingchun

I was happily invited by Ryan Gattis, the author of KungFu High School, to participate in the ”The Art of Kung Fu, Myths and Legends” show presented by ISM to celebrate the Year of Dragon.

The show pairs 16 artists with 16 newly reworked Kungfu myths by Ryan. My myth is about Yim Wingchun, founder of the Wingchun fist. Wingchun is known for her beauty and sold tofu for a living. A notorious bandit forced her to marry him and the only way to get out of the marriage is to beat the bandit with her art.

The opening reception is 7:30- 9:00 pm on Jan 20, 2012 at Meltdown Comics Gallery in Hollywood, LA. My original drawing of Wingchun will be for sale! (16”x20” pen, brush and ink)

These illos are for this month’s Utne Reader magazine. The title of the story is “ The Master and Mike DiMeglio”. It’s a true story about the Chinese White-Crane kung fu legacy and the master-apprentice relationship between Dr. Yang and his favorite pupil Mike DiMeglio, who betrayed the master and got kicked out of the training.

It was a very fun project as I could fully unleash my Chinese-ness and incorporate Sumie in the pieces. The project also got me a little nostalgic that I went so far to dug out a sumie painting I did back in high school. I remember being pretty proud of it but now it’s almost embarrassing…still cool to see how my work has evolved though!

Big thanks to AD Stephanie Glaros.