We recently connected with Qian Ling and have shared our conversation below.

Qian, appreciate you joining us today. Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

For the most part, I’m glad I am a freelance illustrator. I have great freedom to organize my time, which is a very important condition for me to create works. When I’m in good shape, I can draw all day long. On the other hand, when I’m not that good, I can also get a proper rest or deal with other things in life. It is very flexible. Also, I am a self-partnered person, not having to spend much energy to social with others and just enjoying the joy of creating make me feel so comfortable.

At certain times, such as when there is no commission or during the bottleneck period, I would think about whether I need to find a regular job. Because I usually feel particularly anxious during these two periods. Also, stopping working will increase my stress over money. At these times I would imagine if I had a stable job, would I be able to solve the money problem？ After I don’t need to worried about money, could I just concentrate more on my creations? But when these stressful times pass, those thoughts of mine would change again.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

After graduating from university, I started my career in illustration. I have been very interested in design and art since I was a child. My dreams changed several times during my growing up, from initially wanting to be an interior designer to a fashion designer and now an illustrator. These dreams are different but inseparable from design and art, guiding me to learn art-related knowledge step by step. It was also during this process that I slowly began to realize that I wanted to be a professional illustrator.

From the above description, I think it is a bit clear that what is illustration. From my opinion, this is a combination of art and design. I usually work with clients. My job is mainly to create illustrations for companies in different industries (like advertising, cultural and creative company, package, publishing houses, etc). I think there is no industry limit for illustrations, which means illustrations can be used in any scene you can think of. For many difficult articles or boring products, adding illustrations can make them more interesting and make readers more engaged. I like to add some of my own creative ideas on the basis of completing the client’s request. This allows illustrations to perfectly combine with articles or text or products, and at the same time catch the eyes of readers or consumers more, and sometimes even make them have some emotional connections. This is a very difficult part but I think I’m good at it and really into deal with it.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

As far as I know, the emergence of AI has had a greater impact on the creative industry recently. Many practitioners in the creative field have been affected a lot, such as being laid off by the company, or artists’ works being used by others to train AI models without consent, or advocating that AI will replace most jobs has caused creative people’s anxiety and panic. I am not opposed to the emergence and progress of technology, but the current laws and definitions about AI are still very imperfect. And many artworks produced by AI are also usually involve copyright issues. I think the unrestrained proliferation of AI works may greatly damage the confidence of creators in this industry. And I think that AI creation and traditional creation are not the same thing. I hope that in the future, the disordered phenomenon of AI creation can be managed in a rational manner. I believe this would be a great support to creatives.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

I was greatly influenced by Lisk Feng’s book named A Whimsical Trip. It can be said that after reading this book, I more determined to become an illustrator. Before Lisk Feng, the definition of illustration in China was very vague. The first time I had a deep understanding of illustration was because of reading A Whimsical Trip. This book has changed my views on illustration to a great extent, and changed a lot of my thinking and even my drawing style. This book made me realize for the first time that illustrations can be drawn in this way, and it can become so interesting. When we come into contact with different projects, we can actually have completely different experiences. It literally opened up a whole new world of my life. It is also because of this book that I wanted to go out of China and came to the United States to study illustration, and get in touch with that country that I don’t know at all.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.hello-lynn.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_hellolynn_/