Beijin Cao

Project I: Illusory Plants

This project is an illustration book project centered around the forms of plant vitality.

Whether I am in a natural environment or watching a nature documentary, I can feel the vitality of plants. From my perspective, I want to depict the form of plant vitality in my eyes. These strange forms show me thinking about how the life force hidden in plants manifests itself under harsh or favorable environmental conditions.

Project II: An Illustrated Poetry Anthology

The content of the illustrated poetry anthology is my personal creation, and I draw illustrations that seem incompatible with the poems' contents to create a more exciting conflict and contrast with sharp words and mild images. The beige, orange, pink, green, and blue color scheme is to make the picture and the text better balanced and integrated. Both warm and cold tones blend with gentle illustrations and the sharp content of the poems.



In creating poetic texts, I have studied a number of theories and methods of poetic composition, including imagism, the use of language and sound, symbolism, and confessional poetry, a genre popularized by poets such as Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton that explores personal and emotional experiences, often exploring themes of intimacy and sometimes pain. This type of poetry has a more profound influence on my choice of poetic themes, so everything in this collection is based on my personal experiences and the social phenomena that I have observed.

Project III: Fleeting Dream

This project is a series of illustration projects around the theme of parallel, meeting, intersecting, and parting of two particles in the universe.

In my opinion, life is made up of countless gatherings and separations, so I want to combine the elements of the universe and the theme of fleeting dreams to depict the feeling of separation in my heart, and I also want to use this series of works to commemorate the year that I met my friend and will soon be separated. One of the important reasons for choosing the universe as an interspersing element is that the vast expanse of space is as mysterious as the unknown encounter, and mystery is the element that we cannot predict before each encounter.

Collaborator: Taichun Zheng

Printing Technique: Lithograph Printing

Project IV: Body Emotion

This is a zine about my limbs feeling in four situations (respectively, when I am embarrassed, when I am walking, when I am running, when I wake up from sleep and my back hurts).

The inspiration comes from my feeling of waist pain every time I wake up because I have been sitting for a long time, thinking that various parts of my body will have emotions due to various conditions, so I use this small zine to record the feelings of my limbs and joints under different circumstances.

Project V: Shell

 This is a story about a little girl in the station at night to shelter from the rain but is swallowed by a dark ghost.

Inspired by Japanese urban legends, I came up with the idea of writing short comics about ghosts taking people away. In addition, when I was thinking about how to design comic storyboards, I read the Acting Class created by Nick Drnaso, which gave me a lot of inspiration for my picture presentation.