With rough, painterly marks, Teddy Kang builds up his impressive digitally painted illustrations until he has created images with a rich depth of texture. Narrative elements occupy every corner of his bustling, scenic compositions.
While the figures in his work are in themselves more stripped back, made with no more than a few figurative flurries of colour, the large quantities in which they occupy the spaces he constructs adds masses of details to uncover.
And this sense of scope extends to his unpopulated images too, where he opts for subjects he can really fill to the brim with interesting objects and colourful marks and dashes.
The overall effect, although they are observational illustrations, is of dense and vibrant patterns.
“I am a Toronto-based freelance illustrator who originally comes from China, and I graduated from York University in Media Studies.”
“Whenever I hold up a pen to draw, I feel alive. When I create my illustrations, I always have a feeling that this is a thing that I could fall in love with.”
“I am currently doing editorial work, commercial projects and fine art with different clients from all over the world. I work with a laptop, a graphic tablet and Adobe Photoshop, that is all I need, maybe also a sketchbook or a bunch of paper to draw rough works and inspirations, because sometimes an inspiration disappears so fast, so you have to have paper with you all the time!
Therefore, my artistic process is just as simple as what many artists do.”
“I often draw a rough draft on paper as it is the fastest way to translate what I have in my mind from brain to paper, and then start to draw on computer by following the rough draft and add details and colours, and the process might take 1 day to few weeks depending on the content of the work!
Besides illustrating for magazines and companies, I am currently in collaboration with few studios to turn my illustrations into real products, such as cups, notebooks, T-shirts, fabrics etc. It is an amazing experience to see my digital works turned into products and to see people use them.”
© Teddy Kang, 2015
