Sketches made by Lee on her recent Phu Quoc trip. — Photos: RIYNN LEE
“My hands almost fell off,” Riynn Lee, 34, says as she recounts the hard work she did while on her working holiday abroad several years ago.
This statement may be a hyperbole, but it would’ve been a dire situation indeed if Lee were to lose her precious hands – she needs them to draw her adorable illustrations.
Lee, who goes by Mashpatooties online, as well as her artist pseudonym, has come a long way since then. Now she enjoys a life drawing and selling her artworks. Most recently, she’s lent her talents to an airline’s travel campaign.
Whimsical and colourful, Lee’s art style exudes a vibrant and youthful feel. Her bold illustrations often include cats, nature, food and cultural references.
Finding a style that echoes her whimsy and creativity took years, especially since she was not fully tapping into her talents prior to committing to life as a digital illustrator. Losing her previous graphic designer job during the Covid-19 pandemic was the catalyst for her career change.
Her passion for drawing has always been a part of her since childhood, however. She shares in an interview recently that “the idea of becoming an illustrator crept up every once in a while” when she was younger.
While spending several months working in Seoul, South Korea she revisited the idea, and it continued to grow over the years.
Lee often sells her artworks at art markets and book fairs.
Lee’s illustration for the food-themed Scoot campaign. — Handout
Circa 2016, she was employed as a housekeeper at a hanok (Korean traditional house), which had been turned into a home- sharing space. When she was not busy scrubbing toilets, making the beds or vacuuming – doing all this and more during a cold, harsh winter was what made her hands felt like falling off – she was sketching the hanok for her boss.
Lee, who grew up in Bentong, Pahang but has lived in Kuala Lumpur for about a decade now, says the extended stay in another country helped her figure out her interests.
“There’s something freeing about living in a completely foreign environment for a few months where I don’t know the language, don’t know anyone at all, and could do whatever I wanted with my time there,” she says.
And what the self-taught artist did with her time was write down thoughts in her sketchbook and, of course, draw. “I would spend hours sitting in the sun, just drawing random buildings. I miss that a lot.”
Her accommodation at the time was located in Bukchon Hanok Village. The area is popular for its scenic hanok-lined streets, on which Lee liked to stroll. She also enjoyed eating her boss’s homemade bibimbap (Korean mixed rice) and “... sipping beer in front of the Changdeokgung Palace with my co-worker”, she shares.
She appreciated these small moments, which locals might deem as mundane. But the big step of travelling and living abroad opened her eyes to the beauty of the little things in life.
Lee sketches wherever inspiration strikes, such as at this temple in Kyoto.
It has encouraged her to find inspiration in mundane moments.
“A grocery trip, that drive home from work, that view outside my room window ...”, she lists some of the things that inspire her now.
“Most of my current drawings are inspired by everyday life, conversations with my husband and photos I’ve taken along the highways,” she continues, adding that she also hopes to make more artworks inspired by her travels.
She currently has “a bunch of photos” taken last year during her more recent trip to Korea, as well as Japan, which she plans on using as references for her future projects.
Of the many ways she has documented the places she’s visited – which include Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia – creating a travel zine was one she has attempted.
It was based on her trip to Switzerland in 2022.
Sketches Lee made while visiting Scotland in 2022.
That same year, she had just begun selling her artworks at art markets, so the travel zine was part of her sales inventory then.
She recalls how at one of the markets, she was approached by someone whose curiosity was piqued when he noticed the zine. He asked if doing a collaboration was possible. As it turned out, the guy was from Singapore Airlines.
While nothing concrete materialised from that interesting albeit brief interaction, Lee says “it sparked this dream in me to one day work with an airline”.
Little did she know, her dream was going to come true three years later. Not only that, it did end up being with Singapore Airlines – sort of.
Technically, it was with the company’s low-cost subsidiary, Scoot. The airline was drawn to Lee thanks to her bright, fun and whimsical illustrations.
When contacted by Scoot, Lee was sceptical at first. She was convinced it was a scam. “Flying me out to a country just to try the food, and then come back and draw for them? It sounded too good to be true,” she says.
“But it was real. We were destined to work together,” she adds with a laugh.
The next thing Lee knew, she was on a plane to Phu Quoc, Vietnam. On social media, she has shared her journey, as well as her cute illustrations that showcase her exciting trip.
Most of her drawings this time revolve around food. Very apropos, since the campaign – “Scoot Beyond Borders, Turning Flavours into Journeys” – aims to highlight how food can be the inspiration for travelling.
Aside from the drawings, Lee will also be sharing more of her Phu Quoc trip in vlog form.
Regrettably, she did not spend enough time in the Vietnamese island to be able to come up with a proper travel zine. However, she does already have a vague idea of what her next travel zine would be about.
“I would love to spend a month in Japan or somewhere in Europe and work on something,” she says.
“I’ll make time for it next year!”
