Dadu Shin
Dadu is a graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design. He has just started his freelance career and his published work so far includes illustrations for Plansponsor Magazine, Planadvisor Magazine, etc. He is open for more commissions.
Old Book Illustrations: There is a light, aery, and somewhat poetical quality about your drawings, which is probably due, to some degree, to how clean they are and how easy it is for the eyes to find their way through them. On second look though, one suspects that behind their seeming simplicity might lie very careful and thought out composition. Is that the case, or would you say that the various elements of an image fall into place rather spontaneously?
Dadu Shin: This is actually a hard question for me to answer, as I’m still working on finding a process that I can really stick to and work with. However as of right now, I would say that my images include a little bit of both. I always do small thumbnails for idea generation and then once an idea is chosen, I do a larger and tighter sketch.
However, even in my tighter sketches I don’t really put any details in; the composition is all based around simple shapes. For example when I have a group of trees in an image, the sketch will just have a silhouette in the shape of the trees. Then when I move on to the final I’ll move around each individual tree within that silhouette till I feel like it fits. Like in “Upgrades” I drew every horse individually and then moved them around until it felt “right”.
It has been quite a while since I have done a full finished drawing before going into Photoshop. It might not be the best way to do things, but for now I find it suits me. It might also be because I just recently made the switch to working digitally and I’m enjoying having a lot more freedom about being able to move and change things whenever I want.
To sum up, I plan out my compositions as best I can in the beginning stages but I still try to leave some openings for spontaneity when working on a final. Otherwise it just feels like I’m working in a coloring book.
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OBI: in a blog post from a little while ago you say that drawing comes to you more naturally than painting, a statement which is reflected in your recent finished work. Yet your sketchbook still seems to contain a lot of painting and painterly effects. Your personal site also shows pieces, like Smokers, Out of the Grass, that involve painting. Is this something you’re moving away from, or do you feel painting can still be interesting for you to practice, for experimenting purpose or more?
D. S.: For me, drawing is just more relaxing, I’m
not really sure why. I think it has to do with the
fact that for me, working with line, working monochromatically, and working with a pencil is just more simple and doesn’t stress me out as much. I was actually always a little bit afraid of painting and was convinced that I was going to be terrible at it. I actually had not really picked up a brush and seriously painted until maybe my sophomore year at RISD and that’s only because I was required to in class.
I did eventually get the hang of it and felt like I was improving. Although painting was going well and I was getting a positive response, I wanted to include a little bit more drawing into my work. This was part of my “oh man, what is my style?” phase during college. When I switched to working a bit more digitally, the drawing came through much more and remained the foundation of the piece from start to finish. However, then I felt I had become too far removed from my painting.
Pieces like Smokers and Out of the Grass are my attempts at combining painterly effects with the more graphic qualities of my digital work. But now that I feel a little bit more comfortable with my more graphic and drawing heavy work, they most likely will be edited out of my portfolio. However I don’t want to completely move away from painting. I still want to incorporate it into my work in some way. Right now all the textures I use in my digital work are hand-painted.
I will always love to paint and still do often in my sketchbook. I still get people telling me that they miss me painting. Sometimes I do too, so I’m still searching for the perfect balance.
OBI: Your sketchbook is worth mentioning for itself: not only is it very colorful, but your sketches have a particular format, as you use the two facing pages of the book as one long stretch of paper, which you then resize according to your needs: this often leads to drawings much wider than standard. Are you more comfortable with this wider format than with the ones you have to deal with when doing magazine or book illustration? And is it the sort of sketchbook you carry around with you, to practice, take notes and use for later reference, or is it mainly a sort of experimenting playground, interesting only as long as the drawing process lasts?
D. S.: Thank you! I don’t really have a particular reason for using the wide format. The best answer I have for that is because it’s the only Moleskine that has paper that can handle thick paint and a lot of water without tearing. I don’t really have a preference for either vertical or horizontal formats. I find both of them offer different things and both are fun to work in.
I used to take my sketchbook around everywhere and draw from life, and take notes during lectures and presentations. I also used to use it as a to-do list and write down reminders since I knew that the sketchbook was the one thing I was going to open everyday. Lately however, and I have no reason why, I haven’t really been doing that. I did start to paint a little bit more than draw in the book and I found it hard to travel with all my paints. So now you could say it’s more of a playground for me to just move my paints around.
It’s quite therapeutic to take a brush and just throw some paint down, unafraid of mistakes, deadlines, and all other stressful things. These last few months I haven’t painted or drawn in the book as often as I would like to, mostly because I am busy doing finished pieces.
I think everyone should try to have a sketchbook. However, be warned, sketchbooks can get very addictive. For a while, I was kind of stuck just doing sketchbook stuff, and I think that definitely took a toll on my finished work. There was a time when I wasn’t able to complete any “finished work” since I was way too into my sketchbooks. I simply didn’t know how to go about doing a full finished piece. People would say “I wish I could have sketchbooks like you”, and I would think “I wish I could have finished work like you”. It took a while to find a balance between the two.
OBI: You’ve been using random editorial articles and books as starting points for some of your recent pieces; do you have projects involving more of that sort of illustration work in the near future, and is it the sort of job opportunity you’d be more specifically looking for?
D. S.: I was doing that so I could build a portfolio that didn’t just consist of class assignments. I remember reading somewhere: “how will someone know that you can do editorial if you don’t have any of it your portfolio?” Well that made a lot of sense so I went on and did as many self art directed projects as I could before I graduated. All I can say is that it definitely paid off.
I love editorial work, but I am equally interested in many other things such as posters, book covers, CD covers etc. I also love graphic design and am trying to learn and do as much of that as I can. I’m also currently trying to learn motion graphics as I recently developed an interest in animation.
There are a lot of things to learn and who knows, you might need to know it later on in life, so now is as good a time as any to get into it.
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