5ive Studio is the online portfolio of Yao Liu, a Chinese painting artist, web & graphic designer located in Calgary, Canada. I'm currently enrolled in civil engineering with energy and environment specialization at the University of Calgary. Becoming an architect sounds like a neat career to me.

Background

I was born and raised in China, in a small town just outside of Beijing. I attended kindergarten and elementary school in the town, everyone sort of all knew each other, it was great. My family moved to Calgary when I was 12, it was a strange feeling to be away from everything I was so attached to all of a sudden; so I started junior high here, and that took me to where I am right now — university.

Chinese Paintings

I started taking Chinese painting lessons when I was 7, and still go back to Beijing for further trainings to this day. I've hosted my personal art exhibition at the Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre in Nov. 2006 and participated in numerous group exhibitions with the Multi-Vision Artists Society. I've also sold numerous pieces in exhibitions as well as for customized orders. I'm most familiar with landscapes and florals; currently I'm developing my own techniques of combining the Western style with traditional Chinese painting medium. Feel free to check out my paintings in my portfolio.

Web & Graphic Design

When I was in grade 8 registering for option classes, there was one called Website Construction — and I felt this obsession inside of myself. Didn't start using e-mails until I was 13, I didn't consider myself to be savvy with computers in any way. But I was dreaming about making huge websites like Yahoo! and Google. Well, the class turned out to be rather disappointing, but at least I got to know the basics. Then I decided to do some further explorations, and that has brought me to the present. Now I've designed a number of websites, advertisements used in YellowPages and magazines, as well as logos for various companies. I'm currently working with Sweet Little Websites as a freelancing designer to design affordable and high quality websites for small business owners. There are a lot of neat websites and graphics featured in my portfolio.

Profile

• Zhuozhou, China → Calgary, Canada in 2002
• Chinese culture & history, doodling/sketching, sushi, mushrooms
• Speaks Mandarin and English
• B.Sc. in Civil Engineering with Energy and Environment Specialization at the University of Calgary

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