Nag Zoo Nkauj (Beautiful Rain) by Ka Lee

Beautiful Rain Thumbnail Image

MEDIUM: Digital Illustration

This illustration was originally produced out of creative boredom. My sketchbook consist of loose drawings, quick sketches or simple scribbles. So originally this was a sketch out of my sketchbook but lately I’ve been working more with vectors and creating images digitally that I decided to give it some life.

I am a graphic designer and my medium is on the computer. Being a graphic designer allows me to explore who I am as an artist. Design is about making choices that reflect you as an artist and is really about showing who you are and what you are capable of as a designer. As Bruce Lee once said, “To me, ultimately, martial arts means honestly expressing yourself. Now, it is very difficult to do. It has always been very easy for me to put on a show and be cocky, and be flooded with a cocky feeling and feel pretty cool and all that. I can make all kinds of phony things. Blinded by it. Or I can show some really fancy movement. But to experience oneself honestly, not lying to oneself, and to express myself honestly, now that, my friend, is very hard to do.” A quote in which I find applicable to everything in life, especially when I am creating art. Growing up I always knew I wanted to be an artist, selling drawings to my friends at the age of 8, I knew I had a knack for making illustrations. It was only a matter of what I wanted to do with the art I make (which most artists contemplate about). Art has always been a great part of my life. It allows me to express myself and my emotions through my illustrations or a piece of graphic design. It lets me connect with the viewer and allows me to make a statement, which I find to be the most beautiful and powerful thing about art. Designing is very relaxing but sometimes a little more stressful. When I am designing, it all starts by drawing out sketches and ideas for designs, and then I turn to the computer to allow myself to transform my sketches into a complete design. When designing, I like to keep my work very clean and simple. Using clean, crisp and dark lines. If I had a choice to use color, I would not. Reason for that is because growing up I consistently drowned myself in graphic novels, and most of the time they were depicted in black and white. Moreover, the one thing that I love most about graphic design is that you can combine different mediums together. All of these mediums combined a wide range of colors and shapes ties in everything that I focus on within my design work and who I am as a designer.