Impressionist Values and Multicultural Identity in 3D Art
Artist Statement
This project reimagines the ethos of Impressionism, its attunement to atmosphere, its fleeting touch, its emotional immediacy through a digital lens shaped by a multicultural subjectivity. It seeks to explore how the visual-emotional sensibilities of late 19th-century painting can be translated into the 21st-century digital production pipeline, and how leisure can emerge as a powerful cross-cultural language of care, memory, and embodied presence.
Impressionism emerged not merely as a stylistic innovation, but as a visual response to the upheavals of industrialization, urbanization, and the acceleration of modern life. As Nancy Forgione writes, it was an art of “everyday life in motion,” an attempt to capture the ephemeral gestures and rhythms of modernity through perceptual immediacy (Forgione, 2005). Artists such as Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir placed light at the center of their compositions, not as a passive backdrop, but as a dynamic force that shaped emotional tone. Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party exemplifies this ethos: a sunlit communion in which flesh, fabric, and foliage dissolve into one radiant, painterly breath.
Interestingly, Impressionism was never a purely French phenomenon. As John House and Robert Herbert have documented, its visual vocabulary was profoundly shaped by Japonisme, specifically the compositional daring, negative space, and atmospheric flattening of ukiyo-e prints (House, 2004; Herbert, 1988). These Japanese forms themselves echoed earlier Chinese painting traditions, establishing a complex genealogy of East–West aesthetic exchange. This legacy continued into the 20th century through the work of modern Chinese painters such as Wu Guanzhong and Lin Fengmian. Wu described painting as the “poetry of form,” merging the gestural spirit of Chinese ink with the structural logic of Western composition (Seed, 2024). Lin Fengmian, as Yanan Li and Sandy Ng observe, embraced both theatrical figuration and abstracted space, creating what Ng calls “a hybrid modernism grounded in Chinese aesthetics” (Li, 2021; Ng, 2008).
Following their path, I began this project outdoors, sketchbook in hand, seeking to capture that same breath-in-motion, that same perceptual immediacy. My first instinct drew me to Vancouver’s Chinatown, once imagined as a rich site of Chinese cultural life, but the space felt hollow, emptied of the vitality I hoped to find. So I turned instead to memory, returning to Lonsdale Quay, the place I had lived when I first moved to Vancouver 18 years ago, at the age of two. There, by the water, I found what I had been searching for: families gathered around distinctively yellow lawn chairs and café tables, admiring the downtown Vancouver skyline across the inlet. Children played beneath the towering steel canopy of the old shipyard, and the low hum of live music filled the space. There was joy. And there was leisure—effortless and alive.
The project embraces this hybridity not only conceptually, but materially. Beginning with plein air sketches, I developed 3D models, which were UV unwrapped and printed onto paper. These layouts became physical canvases for on-site painting. Once digitized, the painted textures were re-mapped onto the digital forms, creating a surface that merged handmade brushwork with procedural lighting. In the words of Wu Guanzhong, “A painting should possess poetic charm, music-like rhythm and architectural structure.” This triad mirrors my own workflow: the poetic impression of outdoor painting, the rhythmic movement of brushstrokes across UV shells, and the structural clarity of digital form. In this process, the surface is constructed twice, first by hand, through pigment and gesture, then again in software, through projection and code.
By translating the atmospheric, gestural spirit of Impressionism into a contemporary digital idiom, this project reframes what it means to render identity, memory, and belonging in visual form. It is both an homage and an intervention, a contribution to an ongoing conversation about hybridity, heritage, and the evolving aesthetic language of leisure.
Plein Air Sketching
One of the most meaningful parts of this project was the plein air sketching stage. I went out into the city-parks, neighborhoods, and family spaces, sketching everyday moments of leisure and interaction. This wasn’t just about practicing observation; it was about capturing a specific energy and presence. Each line drawn was deliberate. Every pen stroke was a decision: What am I choosing to include? What essence of the scene have I just frozen in time? This stage felt incredibly free and alive, yet also very intentional. I had to observe quickly, simplify forms, and commit to them with confidence. It’s a process that required me to be present, to engage directly with the moment, and to filter visual noise into a meaningful impression. As John House describes in Impressionism: Paint and Politics, “The Impressionists’ images were not random fragments of vision, but carefully judged constructions, decisions made in the moment about what to include, what to omit, and how to shape the painting’s structure around an observed world” (House 144). That quote resonated with my experience, though the sketches may look spontaneous, they are built on conscious choices about what matters in the scene. Through this process, I felt connected not only to the world around me but also to the historical impulse of the Impressionists, to capture life as it is lived, with immediacy, honesty, and intention.
Painting on UV Maps
After completing the 3D models and UV unwrapping, I exported the UV layouts and printed them onto 8.5 x 11 inch hard stock paper. This step marked a key moment in the workflow where the process moved from digital to physical. By placing the UVs onto sturdy paper, I created a surface durable enough for traditional painting techniques. This physical transfer allowed me to treat the UVs like a canvas. I could now paint directly onto the mapped-out surfaces using real brushes and pigments, giving me the freedom to introduce texture, color variation, and a hand-painted aesthetic that would be difficult to achieve digitally. Once finished, the painted paper was scanned and re-applied onto the 3D model through the original UV map, bringing back the physical texture into the digital space. This hybrid approach blurred the boundaries between the digital and analog, echoing the Impressionist interest in capturing ephemeral moments through visible brushwork. It also allowed me to work more intuitively, engaging with the material in a tactile way that added spontaneity and personality to the final piece.
After constructing and unwrapping the UVs, I returned to the same locations where I had originally sketched. This time, I wasn’t focused on form in the traditional sense. I let go of structure and paid attention entirely to light and color, much like the Impressionists did. I painted directly onto the flattened UVs, responding to how the sunlight touched a surface, how shadows moved across clothing, or how skin reflected the warmth of the afternoon. I didn’t always know exactly what part of the body I was painting. I just trusted that these abstract shapes and shifting hues would eventually come together. Once the textures were applied back onto the model, everything made sense. The marks I had made started to reveal faces, fabrics, and gestures. It felt intuitive, emotional, and rooted in the present and very much in the spirit of Impressionism.
3D Render
This project has taken me on a deeply personal and transformative journey, one that bridged traditional artistic practices with digital innovation. It began in the open air, sitting quietly with my sketchbook, observing families during leisurely moments. That process of plein air sketching didn’t just inform the shape and mood of my characters; it anchored me in the present, much like the Impressionists who sought to capture fleeting experiences of everyday life. Transitioning from sketch to 3D, I found a new creative rhythm. By unwrapping UVs and printing them onto textured paper, I was able to bring the painterly language of Impressionism into a digital space, physically painting textures that would live on virtual forms. This hybrid process became more than a technique; it became a statement about how cultural memory and artistic expression can evolve while staying rooted in the real world. One quote from Impressionism: Paint and Politics by John House stands out to me: “The Impressionists’ emphasis on surface, light, and immediacy was not merely technical, it was political, an insistence on seeing modern life for what it was, in its own time, not dressed in historical grandeur.” This resonated with me as I captured a modern, multicultural family in Canada, sharing a moment of leisure under an umbrella. These scenes may seem quiet, but they speak volumes: of identity, of presence, of belonging. Ultimately, I feel this project is about finding harmony between time, technique, and truth. Through sketching, sculpting, painting, and rendering, I was reminded that art is not just about representation, but about recognition, of both the world around us and the stories we choose to highlight.