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Mix Dostoevsky, 2/3 Cup Street Fighter, and 4 Parts Confucius, Stirring Occasionally
Up-and-coming artist Blankas welcomes Guu to his head and reveals just how many lines, emotions, and schools of thought are behind a good drawing.---------------
By Blair Cooper
(Translation: Haemy Chung)
Jul 4, 2005 | Self-taught Kyung Jin Lee is self-named Blankas. And it’s no surprise that he agrees with Confucius’ belief that anyone can become their own teacher.
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When
he was eight years old, Blankas had a drawing epiphany. He was teaching
himself the art of mecha design one afternoon when he came to the painful
realization that the robots he drew were different from the ones he admired
in magazines. He initially thought his renditions of RX-78 from Mobile
Suit Gundam were pretty slick. But after looking at them for a while,
they weren't so slick anymore. He loathed the flat circles and squares.
He despised the front views and side profiles. He needed dimension.
Pissed off and frustrated, the young artist tore through his sketchpads
until he triumphantly transcended the world of two dimensions with the
eightieth sketch. He slapped it on the fridge and promptly lay down for
a nap. The knee-high pile of eraser shavings could wait. When today's
Blankas encounters an artistic obstacle, he thinks back to his childhood
breakthrough and attacks the drawing board with renewed vigor.
Art has not been the focus of all of Kyung Jin Lee's intellectual pursuits. He also eats up computer engineering, religion, and philosophy. Upon graduating from ChungAng University in 1998, he worked as a computer programmer for four years. But his art education continued in his free time and eventually snowballed into a dramatic career change. He currently lives and works in Seoul, where he is putting his computer engineering degree to good use as a character designer and concept artist for the game company Softmax.
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Why did you
choose the name Blankas?
It's a nickname from my high school years with a little twist at the end. Street Fighter II was really popular at the time. I have somewhat long arms and big hands and feet compared to my height, so my friends started teasing, "Wow, you're like Blanka!" It was a joke at first, but I added the "s" and have been using it for over ten years now.
Tell us about your website. Its barebones nature stands apart
from other sites and the majority of the images are drawings. Are they
personal works?
All of the illustrations on my website are my personal works. I'm not
displaying any commercial illustrations because I want to use this website
for letting people see and write comments comfortably. I'm preparing a
separate website, www.blankas.com, for displaying my commercial artwork.
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