We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Shan Zhou a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Shan, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

Illustration is a weird thing to define. There is no right or wrong in how we make images, no certain procedure in how to provide clues to convey ideas. I have had quite a lot of chances where I felt confused and not sure where to head towards, struggling with the content and how I present them. When I don’t know what to do I start scribbling, drawing things straight out of my head with no exact prompt nor meanings, and I feel that this is what leads me to become like this today. If I were to go back in time and meet my younger self I would tell myself not to worry about others’ opinions. Drawing is about telling what you love through the lens of your images. Everyone has their own way and unique things that they feel passionate about. Everything you love and put into your image is like spice on a dish, with your way of combining them.

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?

I’m Shan, Shan Zhou, an illustrator from China, currently based in New York. Occasionally I do a little design-ish project, a little here and there. I love my cat, I love small things in life. I work through all different media, traditional, printmaking included, and mostly digital. I like making images as the way to record my day and to leave memories. It’s a special medium to reformulate the real life contents with my daydreaming ideas into one unity. Line works are good for capturing ideas and images are for holding on to reality, and colors are for saturating emotions. Combined media with my interpretation of things and gradually forming my pattern to tell stories. Capturing feelings and recreating fleeting moments are what I usually consider in my work creation. I believe there’s always a whole another universe in each being when you start noticing.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I was very lucky to attend a major that serves my interest and was able to make a living out of what I’m interested in. So I feel like for a long term goal for me is to continue on drawing and creating, and I can gain more interest in the process, share more stories along the way. As for now or even today, my goal is to keep things going well, like they are now.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I think it is stressful to start on a brand new nice sketch book. I think many feel the same. There was one time I kept all the trimmed excess paper and started drawing on them and I think it’s a good tip to share. Keep all scrap papers for recording ideas, and some ideas may become the best materials for future use.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://shan-zhou.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/no.93hill/

Image Credits
Shan (Yushan) Zhou