Meet the Phaidon Kids Illustrator - Ping Zhu

These are some of the things the Seattle-born, LA-based, illustrator Ping Zhu likes: little treats, cute stuff, and going to bed at 10pm. She dislikes misplacing things and being chased - not necessarily in that order. For the record she is OK with repetitiveness, checking luggage, and talking to strangers. Which is great, because we did want you to get to know her a little better. You could start perhaps by checking out her fabulous work for the likes of Google, Warby Parker and Netflix alongside her numerous illustrations for magazines and newspapers.

Most recently though she is the illustrator responsible for our latest children’s book Animals of the Chinese Zodiac, putting her beautifully imaginative illustrations to Teresa Robeson’s award winning words.

The book is a lively, interactive guide to the Chinese Zodiac for readers aged 6–9 and introduces them to the twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac, from the powerful Dragon, featured on the cover, to the patient Ox, the bold Tiger and energetic Horse - each connected to their own personality traits and traditions. 

It's packed with fascinating facts, vibrant storytelling, and plenty of humor. A fold-out retelling of The Great Race legend reveals how the twelve animals earned their place in the Zodiac, while lively profiles introduce each animal’s strengths, lucky numbers, best friendships, possible future careers, and more. 

Zhu’s lavish hand-painted illustrations are bold, colorful, and expressive—each one worthy of being framed. We asked her a few questions about the book and how she grew to love art and illustration as a kid growing up in Los Angeles and attending the Art Centre, College of Design in nearby Pasadena. The main image above is a self-portrait she drew for Phaidon.com.

 
What did you draw as a kid? Like probably many kids, I was really into drawing horses. I had a few How to Draw books as a kid, where they’d take you through the steps. I remember being frustrated that I wasn’t very good at drawing and couldn’t follow the steps, so I’d just trace the final product.

I remember one drawing in particular that I traced from a How to Draw Horses book. It showed a horse rearing up, with one of its legs coming towards the viewer. I somehow didn’t draw that leg because I don’t think I understood perspective, so it ended up looking like this really strange three-legged horse. I gave it to my mum for Mother’s Day.

I also drew little characters. I’d clump my friends together as if we were doing things, and I drew a lot of characters from Pokémon and things like that. I think it was just an instinctive desire to be good at drawing things you could see and identify.

So, yeah, it was a bit of a smattering of things, but ultimately I was just drawing the things I loved, which were all around me. I feel lucky that I got to do that.

 
Was there a moment you remember somebody saying, ‘That’s really good’? I think I was going to a Saturday art class from when I was about 10, and that was probably the first environment where someone said that. We were learning to draw by copying other drawings but also learning about color and composition.

I remember our first exercise was to draw a castle and then decorate it however we wanted. I drew my little characters and created this whole little world around it. I remember the teacher saying it was really imaginative and fun.

I don’t think I came away thinking, ‘Oh, I’m good at something,’ but it was the first time I realised that something I’d made could be recognised by someone else as good—or even as something worth responding to. That felt different from school, where you have grades in maths or history and there’s a right or wrong answer.

Art always felt more like something I did because I enjoyed it, rather than something I was being assessed on. I hadn’t realised that other people’s affirmation could turn it into something more or that what I was doing could actually be understood and appreciated by an audience. So, yeah, I think that was probably the earliest time.

What were the books you loved as a kid that turned you on to art? I remember the feeling of a lot of these books more than I remember their exact titles. I spent a lot of time at the library with my dad. He’d take us there on weekends because he wanted to check out books, and he’d drop my brother and me in the children’s section and say, ‘Okay, I’ll find you later.’ So I spent a lot of time picking through the shelves.

There was one book I was given as a kid. It looked like a suitcase, with a little plastic handle and a spiral binding. To me, it felt enormous, though it was probably no bigger than an A2 or A3 page. It was filled with fairy tales and drawings of trolls, dragons and fairies living in trees, along with things like diagrams showing how different types of trolls looked next to each other.

I remember poring over that book and paying attention to all the little details. I’d think, ‘Why does this dragon’s wing have so many holes in it?’ or ‘Why is this rock such a specific size?’ The illustrations were captivating enough that I could really enter that world in my own way.

The Harriet Spies book also really mesmerised me. I remember her very droopy Basset Hound so vividly. I’d think, ‘Why is it so exaggerated? Animals don’t really look like that.’ But there was a texture and a strange kind of confidence to the illustrations that made it completely believable.

I think I was lucky to be exposed to so many different kinds of artwork in children’s books growing up. My mum also had a lot of Chinese nursery rhyme books for us, which introduced me to a completely different style of drawing. The curvature of the lines was treated differently from what I’d seen in Western books, and even the way clouds were drawn was different. Here, they might be made up of round, overlapping semicircles, whereas in Chinese stories they’re often long, wispy lines that look more like ribbons than cotton candy. So, when I worked on this book I think I was also drawing on those memories.
 

Were you aware of the animals of the Chinese zodiac when you were young? Yeah, for sure. My parents were from China and immigrated to the US, and I grew up in LA, where there was a big Chinese diaspora. I went to Chinese school and had a lot of friends who were Chinese and Taiwanese. Every year, the school would throw a Chinese New Year party, essentially recreating the Lunar New Year celebrations you’d have in China. It was held at a local community centre, with kids from the Chinese school performing dances or taekwondo. There were raffles, food and all that stuff.

Having never actually been to China for Lunar New Year, it was the closest thing I had to that experience. My mom was also really involved in making sure we knew what year it was. She loved buying little stuffed animals and decorative objects for whatever animal the year represented.

My mom ended up volunteering at some of these Chinese New Year parties. One year—I don’t know if it was because it was her year—she’s a rooster. She learned how to make these folded paper sculptures for the table decorations. She made maybe 40 chickens, using this process where you fold triangles and stack them on top of each other until they build into a shape. I remember coming home from school one day and the living room was filled with these sculptures. I think she was pretty proud of herself, but it was also very much, ‘It’s my year, so I’m going to make a big deal about it.’

So the zodiac was really prominent in my life. Whenever my parents travelled to China without me, they’d come back with a little dragon because I’m a dragon. It was a way for them to connect with our family and who we are collectively. I think that was another really fun part of this project for me. It feels nice to give people a way to learn something about themselves, if they’re interested.

Outside of that, I think it was really after I talked to Megan, the designer of the book. The way she talked about the book made it feel like it was my take on this version of the story and how I wanted to depict these animals. There wasn’t a rigid construct for how the book needed to be made. It was more like, ‘You know this better than we do, so why don’t you take it and make it something interesting for yourself?’

In my conversations with Phaidon, it also felt like there wasn’t an intention to simply mine the culture, but to create something genuinely interesting. I thought, I can share this part of my culture with other people while also learning a little more about it myself. It felt very natural.

I was already familiar with the story of the race and knew a lot about the small details—the relationships between the animals and the qualities associated with each of them. That was really sweet, too. At first, I wasn’t sure how the book would be structured. We went back and forth about whether it would be split into two parts, whether the animals and their characteristics would be introduced as the race unfolded, or whether it would simply tell the story of the race without the personalities, lucky numbers, and other details.

Once we figured out the structure, it became a real joint effort. I was able to see where those illustrations could live within the story.  I imagined the animals starting on the left and running toward the right as you flipped through the book. So when you reached those spreads, the animals felt like close-up versions of the ones running through the race. I had them all moving in the same direction, with a sense of motion, so the pages wouldn’t feel static. Then, as you moved through the book, you gradually learned more about each of them along the way.

 
What was it like incorporating your style into a kids book? Was it a challenge or did it feel natural? I think it felt natural in the sense that I wasn’t trying to do something I hadn’t done before. I didn’t want to create a completely new style. It felt more important to lean into what really resonated with me. I’d grown up around depictions of these 12 animals for so long, and they come in so many different shapes and sizes. At the same time, I didn’t want to simply copy what already existed. There’s a sense that they all belong together as a set, but obviously they vary hugely in scale, and, of course, a dragon isn’t even a real animal!

So it was really about figuring out a visual language for what this particular set of animals could look like. I was also trying to really respond to the text and bring out what’s joyful about these characters—the cheekiness and playfulness that you find in children’s books.
The challenge was figuring out how to make the animals feel familiar without becoming clichéd, while still making them feel interesting and contemporary in a way that was true to how I would depict them, rather than simply mimicking something that already exists.

The color choices were very intuitive. I wanted to play with high-contrast colors and moments of surprise. Red is obviously a very significant color, but I didn’t want everything to be red! That could have been overwhelming. I wanted to find a way to use the entire palette.

So I incorporated these vibrant highlights into the paintings and leaned into colors that might not be instinctively associated with a particular animal. The rabbit, for example, was yellow, while the monkey was a mix of bronze and greens. I almost wanted the animals to feel more mythological than realistic.

I think that approach also helped with the dragon, because there’s so much freedom in how you depict one. There are Chinese dragons and Western dragons, but for the most part, I was thinking about its anatomical structure rather than assigning it a specific set of colors. I wouldn’t say it was difficult as a stylistic challenge, but it was really fun to expand on the work I already make within the framework of the Zodiac.

 
Did you find kids react differently to illustrations than adults do? Are there certain things that they dive on? Yeah, definitely. As an adult, when I look at children’s books, I often find myself paying attention to how the illustrations were made or why certain things were depicted in a particular way. I’m looking at them through a more technical lens - thinking about the choices behind the image - rather than simply thinking, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. Why did you draw it this way?’

Kids, on the other hand, notice things that might not register on the first or second read. They’ll ask, ‘Why is the claw like this?’ or ‘Why is the tail shaped that way?’ Maybe it’s because they haven’t necessarily been exposed to all the conventions and stylisations we take for granted. They’re not as concerned with whether something is accurate or whether it makes sense according to reality.

I think that’s one of the nice things about showing kids art that isn’t necessarily accurate: they can form their own ideas about what things might look like, rather than trying to capture a reality they already know.

It’s really fun to hear what kids see because they have a way of looking at things that hasn’t yet been colored by everything that comes with adulthood. There’s a real purity to it. For the most part, what they notice is a reflection of where they are in their lives, what they’re open to, what they’re unsure about, and what they’re curious about. It’s fascinating.

Get a copy of Animals of the Chinese Zodiac, here.