Here’s a new video of Kim Jung Gi, this time drawing a Zombie attack… entirely freehand.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg1j9xwcij8]
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Here’s a new video of Kim Jung Gi, this time drawing a Zombie attack… entirely freehand.
These videos creep me out. They seem to contradict everything I ever heard about drawing the fantastic. You know…reference, composition, maquettebuilding. I mean, he's pulling the perspective out of the hat like a white bunny. Scary.
This guy is just unbelievably talented. I knew a guy in high school who worked like that. just a random eyeball or battleaxe floating there then a hand a head whatever before you know it, a whole scene would coalesce before your eyes. Weird how some artist's processes are. Thanx for sharing!
I haven't seen him work before. Is it possible he's reproducing something he's already blocked out or completely drawn before? Because the style is obviously highly influenced by photography and it stretches credulity that the perspective and composition is off the cuff.
It looks like the Internet and technology have now assembled to become the ideal vector of lies. You can make people believe whatever you want. A 18 year-old with photoshop and a wacom can pretend that he's doing better stuff than a 60 year-old Rembrandt. Some random guy does better large sized cartoons than Michelangelo and Tiepolo – all that in no more than 30 minutes! With youtube, you can make people take for true that you're doing miracles everyday by just showing them some tricks, like magicians with rabbits, birds and hats. Why can't we see the video in higher resolution than 360? I want to see the preparation. During the XIXth century, at the Académie des Beaux Arts, there used to be jurors, named by the Academie and the Ministère de l'Intérieur (the police indeed) to validate such methods (you can check Lecoq de Boisbaudran's writings about that).
Degas used to say that painting is easy when you don't know much about it ; but very hard when you know much. This guy shows no hesitation whatsoever.
Honestly, if people believe some guy is just making life-size doodles, with a strong perspective point of of view, and even more that he's doing them out of the blue, one hand in the pocket, without any difficulty, without any hesitation, and without ever stepping back to see how it actually looks like – man, these people are naive. This is a trick. As they say in the movie “The Prestige”, ” You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled.”
Mr Kim is amazing. And it is a somewhat different way of drawing. He works very hard at memorizing objects and forming an image in his mind before drawing. He studies references of all sorts, but loves to do these drawing demos from memory and imagination. He also does really interesting fish eye perspectives from observation, and says he thinks about fish eye perspective all the time. He is also known in Korea as a great teacher, even though he is largely self taught. Among his heroes are Rockwell, Fawcett, and Moebius.
I'd recommend these two interviews where he talks about his process and his thinking.
http://optima-video.com/KJG/bio/comic-king-magazine-malaysia-octobre-2012/
http://optima-video.com/KJG/bio/interview-2/
Where is the best place to buy his sketchbooks?
my mouth was hanging open the whole time I watched that
awesome thanks James!
I thought that when I first saw his work too. But no… he really is just THAT good.
I bought them directly from him. But after shipping fees and whatnot, it comes out to pretty much the same price you'll find on http://www.stuartngbooks.com
Sorry Armel, but you're wrong on this one. This isn't some stupid “America's Got Talent' stunt. Kim Jung Ji is a very well respected, and well known, artist who simply draws a LOT. There are videos of him doing larger drawings than this (in high resolution), for entire audiences. And you -can- see him step back, it just happens so fast it's hard to notice.
If you don't believe someone can draw that well, just check out his sketchbooks. The sheer volume of work alone should be enough to change your mind.
Armel, do you know that this is a trick? Some insider info? If not why denigrate something where you are guessing. There are extraordinary people in this world who work very hard at what they do and they do extraordinary things. Making art is not magic but why take the magical out of what some people can do.
There are also a couple of working in sketchbook videos out there. Pretty impressive
Dan, I don't want to seem like I dismiss this guy's talent. My English might not reflect exactly what I mean, but I'm not that fluent in English.
He draws, and he draws very well. That is a fact. I don't have any doubt about it.
I had seen his sketchbooks, and I much prefer what I see in his sketchbooks (I remember sketches of mechanics working on cars and car interiors) than what I see in this video, which is obviously just the tip a an iceberg made of much more meticulous preparation than what it wants us to believe. That is what I call partly a lie. His sketches show more thought, deduction, observation than this drawing, which is – to me – mostly a “spectacle” done on automatic pilot. The sketches feel a lot more filled with life than this. But it's just my opinion and I don't want to convince you to agree with me if you don't want to.
What I meant about the internet and the lies, is that to be noticed, more and more people seem to rely only on bravura, on technique galore in spite of personality, artistic vision and purpose – intellectual and sensitive aspects which tend to please only a few number of people, instead of technique, which is able to convince everyone (like magic). It's like people lifting weight in a club – with the idea of showing others that you can lift more than them. Montesquieu used to say the problem is not that people want to be happy, but that they desperately want to be happier than the others – and, in a way, I feel the same here. People don't want to be capable artists, they want to show the they are more capable than the others. If the purpose of this video is not to show that there is a huge amount of technical ability here, but to show a strong personality, it obviously fails. It wants to be judged on technical criteria, and I guess on a positive note. And to achieve this purpose, I think it eludes the exact preparation of the demonstration. It is a demonstration, it must demonstrate something, with the whole process. Imagine a mathematician who would omit the first part of the demonstration to look more smart.
I always worry about language when having discussions on the internet. What this is, in encapsulated form, is brilliant marketing. And it's hard to fault anyone in the illustration business for brilliant marketing especially if it relies on skill rather than gimmick. The thing that worried me about your comment was the idea that this is somehow a lie. Whether he looked at something in preparation or even practiced, it does not diminish the ability to translate to a two dimensional surface. And I would still like to know if you know that we are missing a large part of the demonstration in the beginning.
I really must agree with you on the proliferation of shallow bravura on the internet. It is easy to appear more skilled, through bells and whistles, than one truly is. But in the case of Mr. Kim he really does seem to be a level above the fray.
My wife and I were fortunate to see Akira Toriyama draw a while back (2002 I think)in New York. He was there to promote the release of Dragonball and Jump comics in the US. He did a drawing of Goku (the main character of Dragonball) flying past the Empire State building. Rather than sketch it out lightly we noticed he just sat there in front of the paper and was making drawing motions in the palm of his hand. He did this for a while and then just start drawing with a marker.
While the drawing wasn't nearly as complicated as Kim Jung Gi's piece it was still impressive. I know he's literally drawn Goku 100's if not 1000's of times before but to still plot out the composition and the Empire state building by just working it out in his head (and the palm of his hand) was amazing to see!
I think with the amount of drawing Kim Jung Gi has done it's not that farfetched that he could just plot something like this on the fly.
Dang son!
What you all can't see in the video is the sketchbook he keeps attached to his thigh. Every time he sits down its on and poppin.
That is just crazy!
Kim Jung-Gi's 2007 Sketchbook collection is now available as an affordable iPad app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kim-jung-gi-sketch-collection2007/id591324150?mt=8
I'm hoping he'll put out his 2011 book in this format soon. While I would love to have the physical editions, the cost plus overseas shipping is just too high for my budget right now.
Nice! I know I said I would never buy a digital art book, but this totally looks worth it! There is so much material in those books, that it'd actually be a lot easier to flip through it all on an iPad. Plus, it comes with a 60 minute video. Thanks for the heads up on this, John!
Having spent a ton of time staring at his sketchbooks, they are amazing!, I can say that he rarely draws entirely new things in these videos. They are mostly of subjects he has done many times.
That said, his visual memory is amazing, his ability to invent crazy perspective and lighting is unreal, and he is carrying around a ton of cool stuff in his head. I have no idea how he handles the shift from large to small scale drawings seamlessly with such unity or how he can invent all of those pockets, road trash, and other amazing details that spice up his drawings. His sketchbooks are some of the most interesting drawings I have seen published anywhere. I would love to learn from him or at least see him draw live.
This reminds me of the videos of a young Neal Adams, Moebius and Joe Kubert adding to each others' sketches on wall-sized paper. Very cool! Check it out (this is one in a series).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tY3Rf0i9hgU&feature=endscreen&NR=1
That's some cool and inspirational stuff. I can tell that he's got a lot of experience in sketching, and of course the more you draw the better you get when practicing smartly.
i knew professional comic artists in the 60s and 70s..who would read a
script and draw 6 pages of script with a ball point ..without pencils..
if you have drawn 6 pages of black and white comic strip for ten to fifteen
years you are able to work fast and accurate..as all your figures and
landscapes refs are etched into your brain..
the same with Kim Jung Gi..comic strip drawn large..
comic strip artists draw 30 -60 frames a week ..few people nowadays
draw in ink on an industrial scale any more..digital has destroyed
hands-on ink and board drawing..and less traditional black and white art..
Kim Jung Gi brings back an ink tradition ..excellent..