One of the sayings they use is translated word for word as "Ride cow to find horse." They explained to me that it means you take what comes along, even if it's not the ideal that you had in mind (the cow) because it's better than nothing and you ride the cow until something what you wanted becomes available the horse).
I drew this Chinese saying in my notebook and had planned to clean it up and add color, but after stepping away from the project for a few months, I decided I liked having it as a simple, unfinished pencil drawing.
One of the challenges of doing art is knowing when something is finished. (I'll probably write more about this topic in a future blog entry.) For these sketches, I thought that there were a certain simplicity to the pencil drawing that made it interesting. You never want a piece that looks overworked, and I felt that I wanted the message to be the focus. Also, I think it's kind of fun to see a work in progress versus a finished end product.