Chewing Pencils

Ming from ArtMaker was the winner of the first Chewing Pencils Group Drawing Project. If you missed it, the aim of the project was to draw a cartoon with a Christmas theme that contained the world ‘blog’ in it somewhere. Darren Rowse from ProBlogger was the judge and he chose Ming’s from a total of seventeen submissions. The prize, if you could really call it that, was to be the feature artist on Chewing Pencils, with the added bonus of a torrent of web traffic coming Ming’s way after being featured on ProBlogger aswell!

Anyway, I did a brief interview with Ming to find out more about who this cartoonist really is…

G’day Ming - where abouts are you from?

I’m from Malaysia. Born in KL, I now live on a little tropical Island called Penang.

(Matt winces with jealousy - a cartoonist in a tropical island sounds like heaven)

How long have you been drawing? (or painting or producing art or whatever!!)

My first recolection of a drawing (a story i always tell) is when i was about 3years old and i did a scribble, my mum came in and said “wow! you drew a tree” .. and I thought, so i did! I’ve been drawing since.

I’m 25 years old at time of writing.

How did you get into it in the first place?

I started learning to draw comics from books at the age of 12, to impress girls.
I started painting seriously at the age of 18 (in art school)

Would you class yourself as a full-time, part-time or hobby artist?

No, not hobby artist. I have a full time job as a car salesman. I carve out time to paint and draw. I have been very lucky to sell my fine art paintings (I’ve had 1 solo show) , I’ve done many commisions for corperate clients (mostly painting cars). I’ve had a stint at a monthly cartoon illustration, published in the inflight magazine of our national carrier. And I run 30dayartist.com full time.

So while I am not producing art full time. I spend a good amout of time thinking and working on my artistic endeavours.

It is my personal belief, that about 10% of a painting is in the actual act. The rest is seeing and thinking. I am very drawn to comics because of the wide audiance that can appreciate it. At the same time I love fine art because of the wide scope of what can be done on a canvas.

What tools/media do you use to produce your work?

Pens and pencils, Oil, Acrylic and photoshop

What benefit have you seen in having a website/blog?

In a word: “Acceleration” - acceleration in maturing as an artist (thinker) i mean what are the chances of us having this correspondance otherwise. (Good point - I doubt that I would be a cartoonist at all if it weren’t for the Web)

And the speed is important for me because of the large scope of art I hope to create in my lifetime.

Tell us a bit about 30 Day Artist. How did that start?

30 day artist is like living your artist life under a microscope for 30 days. it is also a project for accelerated growth. I feel I grow in leaps and bounds after each bout.

It started when a friend from artschool was envious of my ‘artist life’ while he was stuck in his mundane and stressful job. He wanted to quit his job do some paintings and make an artshow.

At the time I had just started blogging and was amazed at the potential.

So i told him, I have a better idea. So 30 day artist was born in the few conversations following that.

It was a rite of passage for him.

And now he is very happily living his artist life.

I undertook the project next, and then we opened it for anyone who was intrested. There are 2 main thrust in the project.

1. Visual artist get to almost perform in front of an audaince.
2. 40 works in 30 days really test your metel. It makes you eiter rise to the ocassion, or if your passion is insufficient, fall.

We can’t make it in this business without sufficient passion.

Congrats again on winning the group drawing project - how did you come up with your idea for the cartoon?

Thank you it was fun, i did it right after reading your post in my google reader. It was a very spontanious thing. Being a contest I chose to use a very appealing style of drawing and colour (although i prefer balck and white) my goals were.

1. Portray santa in a new way visually.
2. Infuse that with the emotions of a blogger.

the rest was taken care of by “the collective unconcious, intuition, or whatever you choose to call it”

What sort of advice would you give to people aspiring to be professional cartoonists/artists?

Attitude is more important than ability by far! Any combination of good attitudes can work.

Pick the attitudes that are suitable to your character, but above all, passion is key.

Where abouts can we see more of your work?

http://www.30dayartist.com/aboutus.php -about 30dayartist
http://www.30dayartist.com/ming1.php - my first stint as 30da
http://www.30dayartist.com/ming2-1.php - my second stint as 30da

Thanks again to Ming for taking the time answer some questions for Chewing Pencils. Make sure you have some nice cool drinks ready too - I can see Penang suffering from an influx of cartoonists in the near future…
Note: See the full size image of the ships in the storm by clicking here.