The Straits Times: ‘A simple thank you…that’s all I need,’ says artist who surprises strangers with portraits

Three years ago, on a Japan Airlines flight to Tokyo, Mr Jeff Lai Pin Nean noticed a weary stewardess as she approached to take lunch orders.

Inspired to brighten her day, he grabbed his pencil and sketching pad. With swift strokes, the then undergraduate sketched the stewardess, complete with face mask and apron. He made his way to the galley, where he found her crouched down, organising trays in a trolley.

Surprised, she looked up as he presented his artwork. Her eyes then crinkled with joy.

“May I take this?” she asked excitedly.

“Yes, yes, yes. That’s for you,” he replied.

The flight stewardess later reciprocated the kind gesture with a card and her own sketch of Mr Lai.

When he shared this touching encounter online, the response was phenomenal. His post amassed four million views on Instagram and another 2.5 million on TikTok.

Now 27 years old and working as a software engineer, Mr Lai still cherishes the memory. It reminds him of how small, thoughtful gestures can make a big difference.

That’s why he continues doing what he does – sketching strangers in public and surprising them with portraits that capture their essence.

Mr Lai – whose handles are playingwithpencil on Instagram, and jeffandpencil on TikTok – has been quietly spreading joy for the past three years, and changing his own life along the way.

With his blend of earnestness, shyness and quiet confidence, he never imagined his sketches would earn viral fame.

A journey of self-discovery and reinvention
Born and raised in Permas Jaya, a bustling suburb of Johor Bahru, Malaysia, he is the youngest of three children – and the only son – of an operations manager and a teacher who taught chemistry and mathematics.

As an infant, his curiosity knew no bounds.

“My mother said I’d grab everything within reach on the dining table, so they had to tie me to the chair,” he says with a laugh.

He spent much of his early childhood being sickly and thin.

“When my health finally got better, I started eating a lot. I was very fat, especially from Primary 4 to Primary 6,” he recalls. “My waist size is 32 now, it was 34 or 36 then.”

Schoolmates taunted him verbally and physically because of his size, so he spent most of his early life trying to be invisible.

“Sometimes they’d push me. I never fought back, I just took it. I was very quiet.”

At 12, he made a radical decision that hinted at his future determination: he shed nearly 10kg in just 30 days by eating only porridge and canned food.

But his transformation was not just physical. The once-average student also decided it was time to shape up academically.

“I don’t know exactly what triggered it. Maybe there wasn’t a trigger,” he reflects. “I just told myself I had to work on myself first before I try to change other people’s opinion of me.”

The changes boosted his confidence, but it was only after starting secondary school in Singapore that his world truly began to expand. For four years, he woke up at 5am daily to commute from Johor Bahru to attend FuChun Secondary School in Woodlands.

There were challenges, especially in communicating in English, as he was far more comfortable using Mandarin. But he did not just adapt – he thrived.

He found a passion for lion dance, becoming president of the club, representing his school in competitions, and learning discipline, teamwork and leadership. He was also one of the school’s top students in the GCE O levels, bagging six distinctions.

“I guess the environment was right for me. It wasn’t so competitive that I didn’t feel comfortable and confident trying new things,” he says.

The big draw
It was a casual art assignment at FuChun that planted the seeds for Mr Lai’s current journey.

Although he never showed any particular interest or talent in art, he spent 20 hours on a painstaking pencil sketch of his idol, K-pop star G-Dragon. Not only did his classmates rave about it, but his teacher was also impressed enough to have it prominently displayed in school.

“People asked me, ‘Who are you going to draw next?’ and it felt like a challenge I couldn’t refuse,” he says.

Encouraged by friends and the thrill of creating something beautiful, he honed his skills through YouTube tutorials and occasional art lessons. Impressed by his sketches, friends and relatives started to commission portraits, allowing him to earn some decent pocket money of around RM100 per artwork.

Mr Lai kept up this side hustle even after enrolling in Singapore Polytechnic (SP) in 2015 to study optometry. By then, his family had emigrated here.

“Why optometry? I wanted a field that was hands-on and allowed me to interact with a lot of people,” he explains.

At the polytechnic, he continued to excel. Besides serving as president of the SP Lion and Dragon Dance Club, he earned several awards, including those for outstanding student, model student and the prestigious optometry gold medal.

The Covid-19 pandemic upended his plans to further his studies at the University of Queensland. Instead, in 2020 – the year he became a Singaporean – he joined the pioneer batch of students in the design and artificial intelligence programme at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), the first university in the world to offer this course.

The unique curriculum was a big draw, he says.

“What struck me the most is the fact that you work with industrial partners from your first year. It’s like having a mini capstone every term and semester,” he says. A capstone is typically a final-year project that allows students to showcase their knowledge and skills by solving real-world problems.

Throughout this journey, he never stopped sketching. But it was not until Singapore’s circuit breaker that he decided to start sketching strangers, spurred by friends who had seen similar viral content online.

He was also inspired by American artist Devon Rodriguez, TikTok’s most-followed artist with more than 34 million fans. Rodriguez, 28, paints strangers from all walks of life, capturing their dreams, hopes and aspirations as they open up during the portrait session.

Mr Lai vividly remembers the first time he sketched a stranger in public. It was a girl in a cafe behind Khoo Teck Puat Hospital in Yishun.

“It took me longer to figure out what to say to the girl than it did to draw her portrait. In the end, all I managed was, ‘here’s a sketch for you,’ and then I just ran away,” he recalls, estimating that he took 15 minutes to complete the drawing.

Going viral, he says, was never his plan.

“It’s about stepping out of your comfort zone,” he says. “People always talk about it, but to really do it, you have to push yourself.”

Describing himself as shy, he says that sketching and talking to strangers help him build confidence. He also started filming these encounters with his phone and a selfie stick, sharing them on social media.

“I have no crew. I do everything myself. I will draw a bit, take up my camera, start filming and then draw again. And when I’m done, I take the piece of paper and approach the person.”

From cafes, he soon ventured onto the MRT.

“Doing it on the MRT is much scarier,” he admits. “There’s a bigger audience, and everyone is watching. The trick is not to think about all that. Just take out the pencil and paper, and start drawing.”

What began as a personal challenge quickly gained traction.

Videos of him quietly sketching commuters and capturing their delight began to go viral.

A touching video of an elderly couple on the MRT, pleasantly surprised by his portrait, attracted 1.1 million views on Instagram and comments praising Mr Lai’s warmth and talent.

However, not all reactions are heartwarming. Detractors and keyboard warriors have criticised his actions, saying they are creepy.

“There were comments about privacy,” he says. “And yes, those bothered me at first. My parents were worried too. But a friend reminded me to keep going, as long as my intentions are good.”

‘People are inherently good’
His journey has taught him much about people.

“Teenagers react shyly but happily. Working adults, especially men, are more defensive, wary about what you want from them. Elderly folks are either extremely friendly or very guarded.

Everyone reacts differently, depending on their stage in life.”

He says thoughtfully: “But I think people are inherently good. I’ve realised that something as simple as this – sketching – can really uplift them and bring smiles to their faces.

“It makes me very happy when I pass them a drawing and they say something like, ‘I appreciate your drawing and this is very nice’. A simple thank you… that’s all I need.”

Since last year, Mr Lai has been working as a software engineer at Thoth.ai, a start-up that can turn complex text documents, such as company annual reports, into clear, easy-to-understand infographics.

There are no plans to stop what he is doing anytime soon. In fact, he dreams of expanding his sketching project, hoping to one day create a series that captures not only the faces of strangers but their stories too.

“A sketch is just a small gesture, and if I can make some people happy by sketching them, I’ll do it. I believe in life, if you give, good things will come back to you.”