Bottling up their talent
With surgical precision artist produces fantastic images inside a tiny vial, Yang Feiyue reports.
Seen from afar, Li Shaoyue wields a thin bamboo stick up and down inside a tiny glass vessel secured steadily in her left hand, as if trying to fish something out of it.
It is not until one gets close and sees the delicate patterns emerging from within the translucent glass, that the mystery reveals itself. It turns out there's method in all her seemingly random moves.
The air is still in her workshop in Zibo, East China's Shandong province, as the artist, who just turned 30, sits still behind a desk and concentrates on the glass bottle before her, from which vivid landscape scenery, animal and human images emerge from the inside.
Her stunning delivery of neihua (interior painting) with local characteristics that was named a national intangible cultural heritage in 2014 recently roused a wave of public attention, with more than 8 million views online.
"It's a bit beyond my expectation, but I'm glad so many people appreciate the beauty of the art," Li says.
