Kayla ONg

In my series, I designed the fantastical world of Atreea, a forested land of mystical tree beings. I have always been fascinated with nature and fantasy and as a child, watching movies about nymphs and little creatures from the forest made me curious. I would venture out into my backyard to look for insects under the rocks and set up miniature houses in the woods hoping a fairy would find their way there. In an attempt to recreate my childhood fantasies into physical art, I researched different kinds of foliage, such as mushrooms, textures of bark, and different insects (moths and praying mantises) to make the world of Atreea more believable and accurately capture the characters' nature inspired features.

The main characters of my world are the King and Queen of the Forest, and the Swamp King. I centered my series on how the characters interacted with one another respectively in their separate realms. I chose to use charcoal as my main medium in order to focus on texture and line quality. Detail is important to this series because it brings a tactile experience to the work, which helps draw viewers into the illusion of this forested world I’ve created.