Cutting-edge miniatures

An environmental engineering major, Lee Chien-chu didn’t start pencil sculpting until he was 37 years old. “Before pencil art, my life could be summed up in three sentences.” Lee grew up on a farm. After university, he returned home and found work at a petro­chemicals plant. Then at 28 he married and became a father.

Lee once carved mini-versions of tradi­­tional Chinese long-handled weapons from bamboo chopsticks for his children. “After a friend saw them, he suggested that I try carving pencil leads. He showed me a work by Dalton M. Ghetti, an American artist who’s been carving pencils since 1986.” That opened the door to a new world for Lee.

Commercially available pencils with graphite leads are pencil carvers’ raw material. For Lee, the difficult part was finding tools suited to working with pencil leads of only a few millimeters in diameter. He came up with a solution: he purchased a set of instruments like those used by watchmakers and opticians and ground the tips into different shapes, creating his own pencil carving tools.

“Time is fair,” says Lee. “Everyone has the same amount. When I’m not at work or with my family, I spend most of my time carving.” Lee’s Instagram postings of his work have elicited avid responses from pencil carvers the world over. Veterans and novices alike seek his advice on tools and carving techniques. Despite his limited English, he patiently responds to all inquiries with the help of translation software, generously sharing his knowledge. “It’s great to interact with fellow enthusiasts,” he says.

Lee has made friends with artists internationally and inspired many others. The beauty of his designs and his meticulous craftsmanship transcend national and lin­guistic boundaries, sparking greater interest in the art of pencil carving.

Xiluo Bridge is carved from an 18-centimeter-long colored pencil with a 5-mm-thick red core.

Steady hand, steady heart

An 11-year veteran sculptor, Lee Chien-chu insists on using only one pencil per work. Being quite nearsighted, he doesn’t use a magnifying glass or microscope; instead, he removes his eyeglasses while carving, relying solely on his naked eyes.

Japanese pencil sculptor Toshi­yuki Yamazaki carved the Roman alphabet on a 2-mm pencil lead with the aid of a magnifying glass, setting a Guinness World Record. His interest piqued, Lee took up the challenge, etching the 26 letters on 0.9-mm and 0.5-mm mechanical pencil leads without the aid of magnifying lenses.

A steady hand and heart are a must for pencil ­carvers. Moreover, mistakes shouldn’t affect one’s mood. “Sculpting is a subtractive process; once something is gone, it’s gone. You’re constantly readjusting,” Lee says. “You have to accur­ately render an object’s proportions, its dimension­ality and linearity. It’s time-consuming and eye-straining.”

To date, Lee has produced over 200 works, most of which are inspired by his personal experiences and background. Each creation has its own story and spirit. He’s carved models of Taiwan’s bridges—Xiluo Bridge, Huwei Steel Bridge, and Guandu Bridge—from memory and is also fond of sculpting Buddhist iconography.

Lee’s most memorable piece is the work he carved as a gift for his wife, his first mobile sculpture. With a slight tilt of the pencil, the romantic words “Always On My Mind” drop out individually from one side of it. Lee achieved this by carving a sphere at the beginning of each word, securing them in the body of the pencil while allowing them to move.

Lee Chien-chu uses a set of optician’s tools he refashioned to better work with fragile pencil leads.

International acclaim

In 2016, the Sharjah International Book Fair—one of the world’s leading book fairs, attracting 2.31 million ­visitors that year—invited Lee to carve an emblem for it. Sharjah later asked contributing artists to attend the 11-day exhibition. “I mulled it over before finally deciding not to go,” Lee says, “but I kept the carving I made for the fair as a souvenir.” That year he was also featured in the Kuwaiti maga­zine CityPages’ sixth-­anniversary issue. His carvings of the magazine’s logo and the landmark Kuwait Towers also appeared on a poster commemorating the anniversary.

Lee’s fame spread. In 2018, Japan’s Mitsubishi Pencil Corporation commissioned him to create sculptures to celeb­rate completion of the company’s new head­quarters. The works are now on permanent display on the building’s first floor. In 2020, Lee successfully challenged the Guinness World Record for the greatest number of chain links carved in a pencil lead. Media at home and abroad praise him for performing miracles within minute dimensions, bringing Taiwanese mini­ature art to the world’s attention.

Lee Chieh-chu’s Tulip Garden is composed of 200 colored pencils. The blossoms are carved from the 4-mm leads; the leaves are sculpted from the pencils’ wood and painted green.

A hit in Japan

In 2016, Hank Cheng collected a double crown at ­Japan’s Hamamatsu Diorama Grand Prix with his Thank You for Taking Care of Me. Japanese diorama master Takuji Yamada, who was one of the judges, spent no less than 15 minutes studying Cheng’s work.

Cheng became an overnight star in the diorama world, winning praise from both competition judges and the public. Exhibition-goers were impressed by the detail and realism of the Taiwanese artist’s ­dioramas, particu­larly his 1:24-scale eel restaurant, an actual business ­located in Nagoya, Japan.

Forty-seven years old at the time, Cheng headed a graphic design and interior design business and was known in his field as a “work­­aholic.”

Hank Cheng’s Seongwoo Barbershop (2021, scale 1:35) is a detailed miniature of a century-old business in Seoul, South Korea.

The devil is in the details

Although he is extremely nearsighted and suffers from amblyopia, Hank Cheng has enjoyed models, design, and painting since childhood, “and I’m super detail-oriented,” he says. At every turn of life, he’s experienced more difficulties than others but has also achieved surprising successes.

“2021 exhibitions have been postponed due to the pandemic,” says the hardworking Cheng, “but I ­haven’t been idle. I’ve finished five new works in my spare time.”

After creating nearly 30 classic dioramas, Cheng has published a book sharing his working techniques and continues to turn out new models. His mater­ials mainly consist of bits and pieces of discarded or dismantled objects, which he shapes, paints, and de­liber­ately ages. Those viewing the finished products are often unable to identify the materials’ original forms.

He included his mother’s old wristwatch in a new work, Time Passes Like Flowing Water (scale 1:35), a mini­ature watch repair shop set in an old-fashioned Western clock. A Japanese friend had purchased the clock in an antique shop and sent it to Taiwan as a wedding gift to Cheng.

When asked if he ever sees anything without thinking “What can I do with this?” Cheng laughs and nods vigorously: “That’s me, all right!” A diorama ­modelist’s ­greatest pleasure is turning ordinary objects into ­detailed, realistic miniature artworks.

To complete Seongwoo Barbershop (scale 1:35), Cheng searched the Internet for old photos of the century-­old business taken from various angles, and perfectly copied the Korean flyers and notices on the telephone poles and the wooden walls. He also replicated details such as peeling paint on the shop’s window frames and rust spots on its weathered tin roof.

Like Lee Chien-chu, Hank Cheng foregoes magni­fying glasses when he works. In addition to visual real­ism, Cheng also strives for proportional accuracy. He carries a tape measure and vernier calipers nearly every­where he goes.

“The simplest way to express Taiwan’s uniqueness is to create dioramas that can impress or touch viewers.” That’s Hank Cheng’s philosophy.

Trompe l’oeil

After getting into dioramas, Chen slowed the pace of his design career, focusing his workaholism and passion for detail on his artworks. “The first half of my life, I worked hard at my job. Now that I’m putting that energy into my art, I’m having more fun and I’m happier.”

Cheng is always looking for inspiration. If he happened to be passing by a place and was drawn to it, would he stop and observe the scene at length? ­Smiling, he replies, “If I didn’t take snapshots then and there, it would be harder to calculate the correct ratios. I’d have to try my luck with Google Street View.”

During our interviews, we find out that Lee Chien-chu and Hank Cheng have been following each other on Instagram but have never met. Although their creative directions, materials, and techniques differ, they share an endless passion for miniature art.

When each is asked how long he plans to pursue his art, they both answer in the same words: “I’ll continue until my eyes can no longer see.”

Corona Virus’s 2pm (2021, scale 1:20).

Time Passes Like Flowing Water (2021; scale 1:35). Inside a larger clock is an old shop specializing in miniature clock repair. The space below houses the watch Hank Cheng’s mother wore.