Eminent artist opens online courses

In the first class at 7:30 pm, on Feb 20, Han, sitting in his studio in Beijing, showed viewers how to utilize combinations of circles and rectangular shapes to draw animals. It lasted about 40 minutes.

Han is best known as the chief designer of Fuwa, the mascot for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. He is also renowned for creating lively and adorable images of animals in his body of work. He designed the Chinese New Year stamps for 2019 and 2020 which were specially launched by China Post, respectively featuring corresponding zodiac animals, the pig and the rat.

While demonstrating how to paint, Han also discussed how deeply touched he was by the tenacity of different kinds of animals and plants.

"When I visited the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region years ago, I was moved," he said, "by the diversity of nature such as populus diversifolia trees and how the white camels cope with harsh conditions. I wanted to bow to them, as a gesture of sincerity.

"Their ways of survival deserve people's respect. They are gifts to us from nature, but look at how people have repaid nature for its generosity. We clear forests, slaughter animals and damage their surroundings to meet our greed," he said.

He told his young audience that a true artist knows how to treat all lives on Earth equally.