RESIDENCY DIARY Part 3: Into the Night

Over the last few years, I’ve become more and more intrigued by two themes in particular: solitude and the night-time. Ideas of shadow selves, of stepping into the unknown, of the quiet confidence that comes from going out there alone. So much of the illustration work I’m lucky enough to do back home in Wales centres around community, togetherness, and our relationships with each other. These personal prints give me space to explore something else entirely—our relationships with ourselves, and with our surroundings.

One thing that became clear pretty early on was that Dragonfly Diaries had entered a kind of twilight period. Past prints had explored vivid daytime scenes gradually descending into night.

High Above The Hakka Houses showed a girl running gleefully, a kite soaring across an early evening sky. Moonlight Skater, which was commissioned for the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, captured a solitary figure gliding across a frozen lake beneath the moon.

High Above the Hakka Houses, Screen Print, 2019

The Moonlight Skater, Screen Print, 2022

The night-time has become my muse… the intrigue, the mystery, the unknown. It allows us to imagine other worlds, other versions of ourselves, and what might lie beyond the vast dark sky. There’s something in the quiet of the night that stirs my imagination—that sense of solitude and stillness that lets starlight energies emerge and flow through my mind. I love the way the strong shapes of leaves and foliage become more pronounced in the dark, casting moonlit shadows across the path.

Dragonfly Dreamer initial sketch.

The Dragonfly Dreamer came quickly. In my first days at Guanlan I journaled and journaled, and from those pages a scene emerged: a peaceful dreamer curled up on the forest floor. At one with the solemn trees around her, conjuring colourful futures in her mind. For unknown reasons, she holds a key—to where or what, we don’t know. A moonlit path winds behind her, meandering into the unknown and leading toward The Cave. “The cave we fear to enter holds the treasure that we seek.” I’ve always adored that quote from Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero’s Journey.

I began scribbling out the composition, as clearly as I could see it in my mind’s eye… then tried out collage, ink drawings, charcoal sketches—until I found an arrangement that made sense. But there was an issue: my dreamer on her back looked… well… dead. This was the trickiest part of the composition—finding a pose that showed she was sleeping peacefully, comfortably at one with the forest, rather than a slightly morbid illustration of a body in the grass.

The Dragonfly Dreamer (Work in Progress), 2025

The second night-time scene came half-formed in my mind: another character, but this time she’s striding confidently into the depths of the night. I had this image of her holding a light source that dramatically lit up half the frame, casting definition on the leaves, flowers, trees, and foliage that awaited her. But my initial drawings—first with a torch, then a candle—felt too mundane. They didn’t allow for the magical realism I wanted for the print.

Then, on one of my many evening walks through the forest and woodland, the answer came to me: the lantern fly. An unusual little critter that clings to the trunks of Tree of Heaven fruit trees, native to South China and Hong Kong. Its most defining feature is the strange, lantern-like snout that gives it its name. Perfect. And so my lantern fly girl was born. Don’t ask me what it is about these girls and these insects… what can I say? The ideas move through me!

But I loved that image—her striding through the forest with this huge insect perched happily on her hand, casting light into the dark.

Sketch for “Enchanted Night” or as it was known in my head, The Lantern Fly Girl

This composition came together in the opposite way to the first. I began with the shape of the girl and the fly, and the pool of light emerging from this unlikely duo… and from there, built up a symphony of shapes in the forest through paper cut and collage.

GOING ANALOGUE: Lots of playing with collage, colour, shapes in the studio.

These night-time prints feel like a bit of a turning point—a shift in tone and atmosphere that’s drawing me towards something deeper. The more I leaned into shadow—both in the landscape and in myself—the more space I found for emotion, metaphor, and different kinds of visual narratives to take shape. They’ve come from a thread I’ve been tugging at for a while now… stories we tell ourselves when the lights go down, and the parts of our surroundings (and ourselves) that only sharpen into view after dark. There’s something about letting the darkness lead for a bit—something soft and luminous seems to be waiting there, just out of sight.

In my next blog, I’ll delve into the story of the Guanlan Printmaking Base, and the Hakka village itself—its layered past, how it became a home for artists from around the world, and the impressive printmaking museum that now stands just beyond its stone walls.

Thanks for reading! Rhi x