"The best concepts always come to me when least expected. It usually goes like this – digest the assignment, rack my brain, a brief give up moment, moved on doing totally random stuff, the bulb lights up." - Victo Ngai
Born in China, based in NY. She's an award-winning illustrator creating art for big brands like NY Times, McDonalds or IMAX amongst many others. No wonder. Her highly detailed illustrations merge Far East elements like Sume-I painting or woodblock printing with eastern model of thinking in truly amazing way. We had this kind of mixes before (check out Afro Samurai series :)) but Victo brings us something more. I very like this element of movement in her works. I have this feeling that there's an action and what we are looking at is just a snapshot of ongoing story. Moreover, there's some visible western classic influences like Egon Shiele or Gustav Klimt. In one of the interviews with the artist I read, she mentions also Norman Rockway, John Singer Sergent or William Turner amongst artists who inspired her the most. One more thing that the artist is probably not aware: Her illustrations sometimes reminds polish children's book illustrations from 70-80's ;)
And an interesting anecdote for nice ending: Victo asked about her weirdest thing that she were asked to illustrate:
I was once hired by a nurse magazine to illustrate an article about the difficulty/embarrassing incidents happen in hospital. So of course there was a story of a feces-obsessed patient, he liked to steal his own poop and hide it when the nurses weren’t looking.
One time the nurse thought the brown matter she found under the patient’s pillow was a left-over brownie, it wasn’t. Unfortunately the magazine wanted a more tasteful approach which wouldn’t gross out the audiences, so I didn’t get to draw too many poops.
- Victo Ngai for Strange Kids Club
