[ ♪♪♪ ] My favorite part of my process is beginning a drawing.

At that point, there's all of this potential.

I've done all my sketching, I have all of these ideas, and then as soon as I start making those marks, it just feels very alive then.

I'm really focused on the texture of the marks, creating sort of an even surface.

And I use this lead pencil along with a kneaded eraser.

I just get kind of lost in this.

I'll probably build up to something that is probably four or five shades darker than some of these middle tones that are here now.

But that's maybe 50 or 60 hours away.

But I'm not thinking about that while I'm working.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Drawing helps me see my emotions more clearly.

Deciding to use black and white is about distilling an idea, it's about distilling those emotions.

It's not just marks on paper, you know, it's about my experience.

I was born in Seoul, Korea.

I lived there until I was about 4 years old.

I think I didn't want to feel different.

I didn't want to believe that it mattered, the way that I look, that it shapes my identity as much as it does.

And it absolutely does.

[ ♪♪♪ ] My last body of work, I focused on women who have a multiracial or multicultural background.

That perspective, obviously it's one that I know, and it's one that I think is underrepresented.

And it's unique.

When I start a project, I usually have a vague idea of what I want to do, and that's usually when I bring in a model.

I'll set aside maybe a couple hours, we'll have a conversation.

I'm taking photographs while we're talking.

I'll take anywhere from a couple hundred photos to like 700 photos.

My work is so much about like what I feel, especially in relationship to that model, like what was our experience like and what was the impression that she left.

What emotions...

I don't know, like what that residue, like I'm trying to -- I'm sort of remembering that.

And after the photo shoot, I'll almost immediately look through those photographs, just because I'm really excited about this project, and I want that sort of experience of that time to sort of help me -- to guide me when I'm choosing images.

I really use my laptop as a sketchbook.

I'm looking through those images, and rather than drawing all of those figures, they are my sketches.

They are where those ideas start to like kind of knit together.

[ ♪♪♪ ] This is a woman who modeled for me last year.

Her name is Sigourney.

She's Japanese and Scandinavian.

There was something about her personality, this kind of like wildness.

She was really captivating to me, and this is the second portrait I've done of her.

In the first, I used a very simple line to describe her hair.

Like I really wanted to focus on her face: her eyes, her nose, her lips.

But in this one, there's something, like her hair, I think, captures some of that wildness.

So I think in this piece, that's going to be the focus.

The drawings just feel like a person in and of themselves, the marriage between the person that modeled for me and myself, and it's like I've created an entirely new human being.

[ ♪♪♪ ] The way that I want to work with ink is I want to let the material do what it does naturally.

I want it to kind of bleed, I want it to travel.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Like in here, there's the suggestion of a brow, a suggestion of nostrils, this kind of lower lip.

I don't want it to be so meticulously rendered.

I want there to be a connection that's forged between the viewer and my work, because that happens for me.

This is an example of what I experience when I meet strangers.

There's some communication, you know, through the eyes, but it's something that I can't exactly pinpoint, and it makes me curious.

In my mind, I guess these small shadow figures are small versions of myself operating without my knowledge.

[ ♪♪♪ ] Kind of like pushing me and pulling me in different directions.

Sometimes I'm aware of them, and other times I can't really see them for what they are.

[ ♪♪♪ ] I'm finally feeling comfortable investing my entire self in this.

The work that I'm making now, it's about a shared experience.

It just seems like art, and drawing is really the -- for me, the best way to communicate that and record it so that it can be shared in the future.