What if the creators of the "secret Kungfu manuals" featured in Chinese Kungfu tales of antiquity had modern illustration tools to record their Kungfu moves? After being thoroughly thrilled by a live Kungfu performance in Singapore by the Shaolin martial monks, the author tries to address this whimsical question through his own re-imaginings of how the illustrations in traditional Chinese Kungfu manuals might look like in the modern era. What began as graphite drawings on paper of the Shaolin monks performing various Kungfu moves morphed into mixed media artworks as the author blended graphite drawing with digital effects, in an ambitious attempt to inject more pizzazz while retaining a semblance of traditional illustration styles for the Instagram generation.
Shaolin Musings is a collection of some of these mixed media artworks by the author, along with his personal musings and research notes on the facts and legends surrounding Shaolin Kungfu. With the growing popularity of Chinese martial arts and globalisation of Shaolin Kungfu in the modern era, the author hopes that this little "Kungfu manual" could provide a succinctly clear overview of the more well-known and key aspects of Shaolin Kungfu for those interested in it for the first time. Hopefully, Shaolin Musings could also inspire the reader to plunge deeper into the larger epic world of Chinese martial arts.