• Howick and Botany Times
Earlier in the year, 12-year-old Felix Wang had his art design selected for one of NZ Post’s Christmas stamp collection.
The stamps have now gone on sale and the idea that his design will reach many parts of the world makes his face beam.
“Awesome,” says Felix.
He’s chuffed his former year five teacher at Willowbank Primary School in Dannemora is going to buy the stamps for postage to overseas family and friends.
Felix, who was 11 at the time, was among 14,500 students who submitted a design to NZ Post.
He competed in the year seven-eight category and the theme was “what you love about Christmas”.
He visited Europe with his family last Christmas, where he experienced a traditional northern hemisphere atmosphere including snow in Germany and France.
“It was too cold,” he says. “I still prefer a summer Christmas and that’s what I decided on for my design.
“My first idea of Christmas was to get out a chair, sit on the deck and look at the sea.”
The stamp features a white recliner chair on the edge of a wooden deck looking out to blue water, New Zealand’s Christmas tree the pohutukawa in full bloom and the brown hills of a distant island.
It took Felix about two weeks of school holidays to complete the design, during which time his pencils, acrylic pens and watercolours took over his mother Anne Yang’s kitchen.
Felix has been drawing since he was a toddler and two of his efforts as a three-year-old, showing ability beyond his years, grace the hallway of the family home. The family garage is also being gradually commandeered for “work in progress”.
The youngster is studying art as one of his subjects in year seven at ACG Parnell College, and he takes weekly private art lessons locally.
However, his ambition is to be an architect, following in the footsteps of his grandfather and aunt.
He also inherits design skills from his mum, who is a qualified landscape architect.
