"Keep your calm. It makes your face looks slimmer." (Photo//Official Weibo account of Baicha)
And that was when he met Wuhuang, a stray cat in reality. The artist adopted the cat, provided a home for the little creature who had always an expression of noble indignation, an encounter he himself described as "meeting the right cat in the right moment".
The cat has shown a strong character and completely charmed the artist who had been seeking inspiration in an imaginary world. "Since our co-existence, I have found myself changed: I used to resort to my imagination for creative notions and now I have begun to love observing the day-to-day reality", he added.
The cat lover enjoys contemplating his feline friend and finds sparks of inspiration in every detail of their mutual companionship. Using those truthful and realistic details, Baicha was able to re-create them with his imaginative ability and his understanding of a human life.
And that was how the cartoon cat Wuhuang came into being: He is neither a 2-dimensional cartoon nor a real feline predator, but a witty mixture of both.
In front of his huge success, he seemed almost out of the place and humble. He believed that in His Majesty he has begun to realize what could be his own artistic signature:
"Chinese artists have been growing to a certain maturity in terms of techniques, but many of us are still struggling to find a style that could be of ours own, and many are still stranded in the stage of imitation", he said.
He believes that China's traditional art forms, such as the watercolor brush painting he adopted in creating Wuhuang, could be a rich source of inspiration. To inherit and make evolve the cultural relics could be a way to establish Chinese cartoon's own signature.
On the other hand, the keen observation of the real, day-to-day life and an honest expression of the details of one's own existence would naturally be "truly yours own" and "of your own flavor", he suggested.
There is a popular saying around Chinese social network these days as people love to quote: "Life ought not be about the pots and pans at the moment present, but should also aspire for the poetry and those lands afar."
And Baicha said: "if you look with a joyous heart, poetry could be found in every piece of our daily survival."
