High-school student Huang Pei-yi (黃姵諭) received a volunteer service prize for her proposal to cheer end-of-care patients with chibi-style portraits, officials at Chiayi County’s Sieh Chich Vocational High School said on Wednesday.
Chibi refers to a style of Japanese manga caricature in which features such as the head and the eyes are exaggerated for comedic effect and cuteness.
Officials at Sieh Chich said Huang, a third-year student in its senior high school, took first prize from Jiuhuangshan Dizan Temple’s (九環山地藏庵) Award for Service of Others in the senior-high school division of the award.
She is to receive NT$80,000, half of which will provide the operating budget for her project to draw chibi-style portraits to cheer end-of-care patients in hospices and other disadvantaged groups, school officials said.
Huang said that she loves drawing and has been a Hayao Miyazaki fan since her childhood. She dropped out of school at 16 to receive formal training in art and was licensed as a chibi-portrait street artist in Kaohsiung the next year, she said.
She took a deferment from school and returned to Chiayi to recuperate from a spinal injury at Dalin Tzu Chi Hospital, where she became a volunteer portrait artist for elderly long-term care patients hospitalized alone, Huang said.
Huang said that her portraits took patients’ minds off their illness and that she found their smiles rewarding.
Huang said that particularly memorable for her was a patient who greatly enjoyed her chibi portrait and encouraged her to pursue her interest in art, adding that she had a reservation for another portrait in 20 years.
Huang said she will provide chibi-style portraits in hospitals for free, which she found to be therapeutic for patients and loved ones.
Her project will bring her to hospitals, hospices and other institutions that provide care for the disadvantaged, she said.
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