To Provide A More Accurate Perspective Of Interracial Gay Couples, I Started Illustrating The Relationship Between Me And My Boyfriend (30 Pics)

Drawing is also a way to commemorate happy moments, like the joy of the holidays. One of my favourite drawings is the Christmas card I drew and printed last year (#24 When You Are Shopping For Christmas Gifts). As we were reaching the end of the pandemic, I started to terribly miss friends and family that I haven't seen for almost two years. Sending these homemade holiday cards directly to their mailboxes was extra special to me. It was a way to wish my loved ones Happy Holidays and tell them that I'll soon come to visit them.

My art and creativity was highly influenced from growing up in France and being raised by Chinese parents. My parents encountered several obstacles as Chinese immigrants living in Paris in the '80s. Due to the language barrier, they wanted their kids to speak French fluently without any accent to better integrate into French society. That’s why I'm a native French speaker and my Mandarin is so poor.

Being immersed in French culture, I was highly influenced by French and Belgian comic books such as Tintin, Asterix & Obelix; as well as the pen and ink illustrations found in novels such as Le Petit Prince and Le Petit Nicolas. My dad also wanted for us to be close to our Chinese heritage. He introduced me to fantastic Chinese legends such as Journey to the West with the Monkey King and Nezha. As an avid calligrapher, my dad's paintings made me appreciate the power of a confident paint stroke on a piece of white rice paper. Although I never embraced the unforgiving art of pen and ink, I would say that my style has components of Chinese and French illustrations. This is thanks to my unique upbringing embracing French and Chinese cultures.

To celebrate my dad's craft, I'd like to try traditional pen and ink in the future.

I started my Instagram account on March 1st, 2020. The main purpose of publishing my drawings was to show gratitude through a 100 Days of Happiness journey. With the spread of COVID around the world and all the uncertainties, I wanted to focus on the positive in my life.

Later on, my boyfriend Patric became such an integral part of my days that we shared the spotlight in most illustrations. People really responded well to these illustrations. That made me really happy to see how the world has evolved regarding its perception of LGBTQ people.

My best advice to start drawing is to just do it, one day at a time. Before committing to drawing for 100 days, I had no idea that people would be interested in hearing about my story. I drew for myself first and foremost. I needed to set myself a goal to stay consistent. It started as a gratitude journal and evolved into providing visibility to LGBTQ people, normalizing same-sex relationships and showing some Asian representation.

I really want to spread love and positivity through my illustrations. A lot of my Instagram following started growing from people living in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and the Philippines. I would have loved to see this type of representation growing up and with the rise of social media, I have the possibility to do so for someone else.

Representation has such a great impact on the life of people. When I was a child, I can’t recall seeing any Asian Americans on television in a leading role, yet alone a queer Asian American that wasn’t the butt of the joke. The lack of role models in the media really affected my self-image while growing up. I was very conflicted as I thought I was supposed to be good at martial arts, when I clearly wasn't good at sports and was cursed with terrible hand-eye coordination. As an Asian man, the media also told us that we were not worthy of a romantic storyline, which made me feel confused about even trying to seek love, especially as a queer kid.

As an adult, I wanted to give visibility to people like me, a gay Asian man. I started drawing happy moments shared with my partner and posting them on Instagram. I wanted to showcase that being gay didn't mean that we always needed to depict over-sexualised men nor promote the fetishisation of East Asians. I simply wanted to celebrate the joy in the mundane. As a child, it would have been so empowering to see these snippets from another gay Asian artist. A simple illustration of us eating ice cream or cooking together. Representation doesn’t have to be groundbreaking nor extravagant. On the contrary, it needs to be honest and sometimes boring.

Overall, my experience online has been overwhelmingly positive and this brings me so much hope for providing proper representation to the LGBTQI+ community. I received a lot of comments online about same-sex interracial couples saying that they were happy to see my illustrations as they felt seen.