I created these Chinese spices illustrations for an article I wrote to introduce people to spices that are commonly used in Chinese cooking for both my food blog and about.com who I have been writing for. These Chinese spice illustrations are also used for chapter pages in my upcoming cookbook “Home-Style Chinese Cooking“.

Some of the most common questions I’m asked by people are about how to make five-spices powder. How do Chinese people use spices in Chinese cooking? That’s where I got the idea to write this article about different spices and to show what they look like. Instead of taking photographs of these spices I decided it would be more fun to make illustrations of each spice.

At first I was only planning to illustrate just dried spices but after sketching them out I found there were kind of boring to look at. So I looked for references for the dried spices in plant form and illustrated both the plant and dried forms together. So you can see the raw form and the version you see in your kitchen.

I really liked working on this project as I like drawing subjects like this. Flowers, trees, plants, anything food related, I like drawing it. If you’re curious about how to use these Chinese spices, you can have a look at my article “14 Essential Chinese Spices” on my food blog “Egg Wan’s Food Odyssey” . I didn’t included my About.com site as from January 2017, I will no longer to work for about.com as their Chinese food expert. This is a great relief for me as I’m so busy with my illustration business I have had no time to focus on any personal projects and I’ve had even less time to update my food blog.

I will put this “14 Essential Chinese Spices” poster on my shop soon so if you have any interest in purchasing this really fascinating poster you can purchase it from my etsy shop.