Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Simon Kun. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Simon, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. 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.

My story is a bit all over. I’ve always had a love for art since I was a kid, but I never really had a path or focus on what I wanted to do with my art until my senior year of college. At the time I was a cook at my local hospital and had found a love for food. One day I had drawn some food in my sketchbook and slowly fell in love with the idea of drawing food. Food illustrations aren’t something you really see around, so I loved the idea of bringing it to life in a way people don’t really see it. I had a lot of professors tell me that there wasn’t a market for food illustrations, but I also had a lot of professors tell me I should make it more known. It was definitely a lot of back and forth, but at the end of the day all I could think about was the potential my illustrations could have in any market.

Although there isn’t a market for food illustrations, I’m really hoping to keep sharing my work with the public in hopes they can see there is a bigger use for food illustrations and the many ways it can be used. Which is way I’m currently working on my fully illustrated cook book called The Bakery.

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?

Hello, I’m Simon also known as Kun. I’m a food illustrator showing the unique ways of food from the presentation to the delicious taste.

I just graduated from SCAD (Savannah’s College of Art and Design) and are currently working as a freelance artist. I love cooking and baking and I’ve slowly found a way to create art that shares the same love. I have a lot of projects that I’m working on at the moment, but my biggest one is my fully illustrated cook book called The Bakery. It’s been a passion of mine for about a year now to create something that can bring the warm and deliciousness of a bakery or cafe to the comfort of your home. Food illustrations aren’t something common when it comes to the presentation of food, and I want to show that drawings can be just as delicious as an image.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I never really had a path or focus on what I wanted to draw, I really just drew what I had to for my assignments, which wasn’t the best because I didn’t really have a portfolio like the rest of my peers. It wasn’t until my senior year of college that I finally found my love for food. At the time I had about 4 months before I graduated and no portfolio to show to art directors. It really made me realize that I wasted a lot of time and I really started stressing out about the future of my career. I had to sit down and make a plan for what I was going to do and that’s when I came up with my passion project The Bakery. Within about a month and a half I was able to create an entire portfolio that consisted of food illustrations for all different markets. Something I was proud to show to art directors.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Building an audience on social media can be very hard because everyone looks at different things. For example many art directors will go to Instagram to find artists but then will go to Linkedin to hire people. It can get very confusing. The best advice I can give is to have multiple places to post your work and to connect with people. For me I found it helpful to connect with my peers and professors from college. Say one of them gets hired and that company is looking for a specific person, that connection could suggest you and next thing you know you’re getting hired.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://simonkun12983.wixsite.com/simonkunart
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/_simonkun_/?next=%2F
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-kun-87b271295/