Recently I’ve been given an opportunity to draw a portrait as a commission for an event that is happening this weekend. There were a list of 12 successful women in Malaysia, each will be drawn by different artists. Some name including Allahyarham Saloma, Datin Sri Tiara Jaquelina, and Allahyarham Yasmin Hamid. We were asked to pick one to draw.
I was going through the names and pictures until I came across this lady whom before this I only know her name, but no face to match the name. It is the one and only Madam Kwan Swee Lian, a Malaysian chef and businesswoman.
My drawing of Madam Kwan.
She has a Malaysian restaurant that was named after her, Madam Kwan’s which is now led by her son.
I have never seen the restaurant empty, most of the time, people have to queue outside of the restaurant to get a seat inside. Her most famous dishes would be her signature nasi lemak and also nasi bojari.
”Several fans would swear by the Nasi Bojari, a Madam Kwan created dish of tri-coloured red-yellow-white rice with assam prawns, beef rendang and deep fried chicken drumstick. This is modified from an original Indonesia dish meant for royalty.” - Source
I chose to draw her because I have never drawn any aged person before, so this might be a challenge for myself and yes, it was quite a challenge to draw wrinkles on her face to get it as accurate as possible. And also, wearing the hat is kind of her trademark so I won’t have to go to the trouble to draw strands of her hair 😛 (which would be time-consuming, I kinda did it last minute).
With 
Scanned and coloured version.
