We recently connected with Tea Nguyen and have shared our conversation below.

Tea, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

To me, I suppose creativity has always been something of a second nature, so I can’t pinpoint a definite time. Since the beginning of time, I have been the kid who excels in art among my peers, and I held some pride in that. Drawing and emulating beautiful drawings that I saw in comic books were my things.

My junior high classmates and teachers would catch me drawing during class in my notebooks, onto papers, textbooks, and even on the tables sometimes. I used to be so prolific that they had to confiscate my art to make me focus more on studies (lol). And that was my initial reason for creating: I just liked making very nice drawings. However, things started to get a little muddy when I grew older and I wasn’t sure what happened, but I lost touch with my passion for making art. All I was left with were my skills, and an appreciation for art.

One could argue that adolescent me may just haven’t explore her options, but up until high school, I never knew any better than drawing during classes and acing my English tests, so in my point of view, I was left without much of a choice besides pursuing a creative career – which led me to spending the next few years overseas to learn the crafts.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Firstly, hi everyone! Please call me Tea (like the boba tea!).

I’m a Southeast Asian born and raised in the capital of Ha Noi, Vietnam. It’s been a long way here (literally), but long story short: I made a decision to pursue my creative career in Savannah College of Art and Design and I graduated last year with a bachelor’s degree in Illustration.

My college journey in itself hasn’t been smooth sail either as I confused myself with two or three different career options in conjunction with COVID affecting our lives in different ways. A lot of us were thrown into the real world in the midst of a struggling economy as freshly graduates, and I admit, breaking into my industry hasn’t been easy. As we speak, I am still trying to figure it out.

However, if I have to be perfectly honest, I think that my biggest obstacle is my internal turmoil. Like I’ve mentioned, I lost my creative spark in high school, and I’m trying my best to find it again. I’ve regained some of it during my journey here, but for the most part, I don’t really know what it is that I want to do. I work with digital media, I mostly paint using my trusty iPad and wacom tablet. My work is a mix of Procreate, Photoshop and sometimes Adobe Illustrator if the nature of the work involves a lot of design.

You can say that I’m sort of a jack of all trades. Much like myself, my body of work is a growing entity.
While it may seem like a weakness, I also want to it to be seen as my strength: my various skill set can work for different fields. I was trained for concept art and visual development (they are jobs found in games, animation and films), and my focus is background painting – it doesn’t sound like the most exciting expertise but background design can really define the look and feel of a project. On the other hand, I also enjoy illustrating subject matters in pop culture or casual things like food and places.

With my love for color, good design, cute things, Japanese culture and background art, I strive to make something out of these combination. If I keep heading towards my goal while surrounding myself with things that I love, I believe that I will get there one day! Bear with me, because I will go through many more “transformations” to find out what my art genuinely looks like.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

This question really speaks to me because it reminds me of what my professor once told me. It was one of my very last classes at SCAD, and I was still standing before him as a ball of ANXIETY about what I wanted to do or needed to do; “I’m a senior, I spent 5 year in college yet I still haven’t figured this out??” I thought.

When you get to that point in your career, he said that you’d have to learn how to love the craft again. And that is when I had a revelation: Every fixation I had with creativity, every pre-conception about who I was as an artist, every judgement I had with myself, I needed to UNDO them. I need to let go of who I WAS in order to become who I’m meant TO BE. Of course, it’s easier said than done but nowadays, I worry less about having all the answers and more focus on just making the things that I love.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Another piece of insight I was told by my mentor is that sometimes, businesses don’t even realize that they could use an illustrator. Graphic design jobs are numerous but it isn’t the same for the illustration market. Why is that? For starters, I think that society needs to bring up the demand for visual artists.

Art tells stories. Art makes people sad, happy, seen, empathized, etc. Art brings up the quality of the things we consume. Art is a powerful tool that can empower our causes. Yet, most companies and businesses are not willing to expend resources for that, and artists are often underpaid. In my impression, those that employ artists are mostly people that have long been in the industries that require the presence of artists, or they hire them on a demand basis. However, I think that more employers and owners of business should step up and bring in the help of artists even if it doesn’t necessarily apply to their line of work. Now that A.I is making waves in the creative world, we need to value human creativity more than ever. Creatives have always been about thinking out of the box, so I don’t see why the rest of the world shouldn’t use a little more creativity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://milkteadraw.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/milktea_illustration/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/milkteanguyen/
• Other: Behance: https://www.behance.net/milkteanguyen ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/milkteanguyen

Image Credits
Credit to Kevin Vo for my personal photo.