We were lucky to catch up with Alice Zhai recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alice, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I went to school for Illustration at the School of Visual Arts and I learned all I know from a mix of my amazing professors, looking at other illustrators that I admired, and practicing and being intentional about what I wanted out of my illustrations. Since illustration is a pretty broad field and encompasses a lot of different categories, I decided on what I wanted to do, which is editorial and advertising, by looking at what fields the illustrators I admired were working in, and after deciding on a field of focus, I figured out what I needed to have in my work to be able to work in the field.

I think if I could go back in time, I would tell myself to honor my intuition and be honest with myself. Everyone learns in different ways, and I think it’s really important to find out which way works the best for you. For me, I wish I had put more emphasis on developing a work process that was actually enjoyable, gave myself the freedom to draw what I actually liked instead of what I thought I should be drawing, and listened to my intuition when I wanted to try a new medium instead of holding myself back out of fear. For example, I had spent years working digitally even though I was feeling burnt out from the screen but I was too afraid to switch back to working traditionally because I was scared that I would make bad work. However, when I eventually switched back, not only did the process of drawing become a lot enjoyable for me, I think I saw myself improve a lot faster than if I had stuck with my ipad.

The most important skills to have as an illustrator would be a solid foundation in drawing, being able to communicate a message in a clear and interesting way, and staying true to yourself. I struggled a lot with style while in school, and I feel like it’s really important to create work that resonates with who you are as a person because that’s where your style and your identity as an artist comes from.

For me, my mental health was one of the biggest obstacles that stood in the way of me learning more. I have ADHD and I can be a pretty anxious person and for a long time, I would neglect my mental health in favor of productivity. However, I have since learned that it’s actually pretty counterintuitive. Creating art is a deeply personal experience for me, and I can’t create anything if my body is falling apart, and that was a hard lesson to learn and one that I’m still working to better.

Alice, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ve always drawn here and there growing up but I never seriously considered a career in Illustration until I came across the James Jean Prada collab in my junior year of high school. I think a lot of stars aligned for me that day. I’ve always enjoyed collecting little trinkets and when I was little, I remember I would cut out the tiny spot illustrations from newspapers to save to my collection. Then in high school, I discovered Salvador Dali and surrealism and I don’t think I ever grew out of that. I’ve always loved anything that is a little dreamy. My favorite genres to read are either straight up fantasy or magical realism, and I have really weird dreams as I’ve been told by friends, so I think that’s probably where my love for surrealism comes from. So when I discovered the Prada collab, which had purses and wallets decorated with these surreal green rabbits, I instantly decided that I really wanted a career in whatever he was doing, which turned out to be illustration at the time. In my own illustrations, I had found that I really like drawing people, and more specifically, I really enjoyed creating stories centered around the human condition as I draw my inspiration from just being out in the world and interacting with people and the environment. When it comes to my style, I love creating delicately inked linework on textured paper and then digitally coloring them after. I find that by inking traditionally, I have an easier time getting into the zone and I understand the scale of the lines in proportion to the page size better.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I think the most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the huge variety of things that you can do. Every drawing you make will be different in some ways whether it’s the subject matter of the piece or the way you approach coming up with the idea or even the way you draw out the piece and that’s very exciting to me because I love the fact that I can do something a little different every time. Also, as a freelancer, I love the freedom I get from not having a rigid schedule to follow day to day.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think a lesson I had to unlearn was to not overanalyze everything. As an illustrator, getting your message across in your art is really important and I think I tried to do that at first by brainstorming an idea to death and completely ignoring my intuition. Not only did this make my process incredibly painful all the time, I feel like it made my drawings feel really rigid and stiff as I just did not enjoy making them at all. I think sometimes, there are projects that you should carefully analyze first, but I don’t think it applies to every single thing so if your intuition is telling you something, I think it’s a good idea to at least take note of it instead of strongly arming your way through the process.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.alicezhai.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alicezhaiart/