#johnleedraws

[johnleedraws]

Wei Yingluo from Yanxi Palace aka Consort Ling aka Empress Xiaoyichun aka started from the bottom now we here incarnate

#illustration #drawing #art #wei yingluo #yanxi palace #johnleedraws #john lee

[snoopyisbisexual]

i am a monster watching my own destruction

credit: (i’m unsure of the title) an illustration by @johnleedraws / “hardline” by julien baker / “burning hill” by mitski / nightmare by deLumine on deviantart

#julien baker #mitski #puberty 2 #scary #scary art #creepy #horror art #web weaving #paralells #words #art #quote compilation #collage #boygenius #trauma

[memoandradee]

Also sorry for being away, there was a hurricane in my city.

*New review*

So let me tell you something funny, when I was in school history was my nightmare. Like I would fail and be upset about taking the class. Now historical fiction is one of my favorite genres.

In We Are Not Free by Traci Chee we follow 14 young perspectives of Japanese heritage after the 1941 bombed of Pearl Harbor. After their country declared them “aliens” and not humans.

Little by little the Japanese community was sent to determent camps where they had to wait for their fate to be declared by a country that has turned their backs on them.

A heartbreaking story full of twists, turns, gaman, fate, heartbreak, hope and memory. The masterful craft of plot and writing that Traci Chee brings into this novel it is to be admire.

You can distinctly identify each of the voices, you get to know each of the characters thanks to the bond they share together. The friendship they carry through out camps, wars and countries.

By the end of the book I was turned into pieces, I felt everything the characters felt and the writing is so vivid I felt I was with them.

This book tackles on different and overlooked topics that (most of the time) history books deny. The oppression, unfair treatment of minority communities. But thanks fo the amazing work of authors like Traci Chee the world remembers the treatment that is mostly deny, the stories that history tries to bury.

Brave stories like this are worthwhile, stories of bravery, courage and gaman.

Thanks Traci Chee for such a powerful book (and to Hailey of @haileyinbookland for recommend this book)

Title: We Are Not Free

Author: Traci Chee @tracicheeauthor

Publisher: Mariner Books @marinerbooks Harper Collins @epicreads

Cover Illustration: John Lee @johnleedraws

Cover Design: Jessica Handelman @jrhandelman

Rating: 5/5

#bookstagram #bookstagramméxico #WeAreNotFree #TraciChee #HistoricalFiction #WorldWarII #WorldWarIIHistoricalFiction #NovelaHistórica #NovelaHistóricaSegundaGuerraMundial #AAPI #AAPIHistoricalFiction #JapaneseHistoricalFiction #DiverseBooks #POC #POCHistoricalFiction #MarinerBooks #EpicReads #JapaneseHeritage #book review #new review

[forrtessofmyheart-blog]

www.glaai.com

@beautypie666 @clopnstuff @destroymejeff @harryscheesehead @celebratequotes @jue-puta @mostlyfiction @treeporn @mundobrel @tuesday-johnson @johnleedraws @laughingatmynightmare @picturedept @biologylair @staff

[tracichee]

ONE WEEK UNTIL WE ARE NOT FREE! 🌟 Have you submitted your receipt for your pre-order gifts? Did you register for my launch party? Do both here!

Since we’re seven days from launch, let me share seven facts about WE ARE NOT FREE with you:

1. There are 16 chapters in this novel-in-stories but only 14 point-of-view characters. That’s because the first and last chapters are narrated by the same person, and there’s also a chapter from all of the characters in the first-person plural!

2. The six characters on the cover, illustrated by @johnleedraws, are, from back to front: Twitchy (Ch. 12), Shig (Ch. 2), Yum-yum (Ch. 3), Bette (Ch. 4), Minnow (Ch. 1 & 16), and Frankie (Ch. 5).

3. There are photographs, newspaper articles, and letters between each of the chapters to add texture to the story. Some of them are illustrated by Julia Kuo!

4. My cousin Terry Kitagawa is one of the many incredible narrators for the audiobook! He reads Tommy, whose chapter is entirely in verse.

5. My mom and my aunt are so much a part of the research for this book. We went on road trips to the incarceration sites together, checked out museums together, listened to interviews together, and they were always willing to check a family anecdote for me! 😅 Between Ch. 15 & 16, that’s even my aunt’s photo of the graffiti from the Tule Lake jail—“Show me the way to go home.”

6. Parker Peevyhouse once asked me to write, into each of my books, a character based on her... and then kill that character off. I did it in THE READER TRILOGY and now I’ve done it again! 😈

7. After THE STORYTELLER, I was initially going to tackle a literary post-apocalyptic YA fantasy, but as soon as I floated the idea of a book on the Japanese American incarceration by my agent, she knew immediately that this was what I should write next. “The book of your heart,” she called it. And she was so, so right. WE ARE NOT FREE is the book of my heart, in so many ways I never expected. And it’s coming out in one week. ❤️

#blog #news #the reader #traci chee #the speaker #the storyteller #we are not free #giveaways #preorders #events

[pamonologues]

Art Career Tips Part 1

Ok. I have been reading and reblogging certain posts from @johnleedraws tumblr blog. If you want to see an update of his artwork, here’s his website.

I first stumbled upon his artwork when I was looking at the Everyday Chinatown project. Secondly, his artist interview featured in LIGHT GREY ART LAB is inspiring. Here’s advice for Asian American artists who feel lost in their career path and have no mentors to look up to.

My very first piece of advice would be to be careful on whose advice you internalize. Know the context in which people's experiences are formed. In my case, I still consider myself a journeyman illustrator in a lot of ways, and that I still have a lot to learn and a ways to go in terms of my career. My second piece of advice for students and artists just starting out would be to reevaluate what your definition of success is. Decide what your goals are within art, or illustration, or whatever, and use that as your true north for every decision that you make here on out. Maybe you want a Ferrari one day. Maybe you want to write a children's book that changes how a whole generation thinks about storytelling. Maybe you want to settle down and have a few kids. Whatever it is, be honest about what you want and then go for it with all of your being. I think about an awesome interview with Bruce Lee that I heard: "When you want to move, you're moving, and when you move, you are determined to move. (If) I'm going to punch, man I'm going to do it."

And now I’m here reading his old Tumblr blog posts which I find inspiring. Instead of flooding my tumblr with so many reblogs and the newsfeed, I am going to organize my thoughts here.

Know that John Lee Started From Somewhere

Here is what he wrote on March 17th, 2013.

I still consider myself a baby illustrator; there are huge gaps in my knowledge and I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I’ve learned a lot from just diving headfirst into all of this, as well as teaching for a bit. Please keep asking questions, and I’ll do my best to help and/or point you in the right direction!

We illustrators are all in the same boat, and we should help each other as much as possible!

Pep Talk

“Always create, all the time, and never let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t”

“Be yourself, draw what you’re interested in. Care about your work or no one else will care about it either.” Style will develop over time. Don’t worry too much about it.

Ira Glass on The Creative Process. “Fight your way through it.”

Recognize flaws and Distinguish Your Work from Self-worth 

Sketching in Public Tips

“Make unrelenting psychic contact.”

How to deal with being self-conscious

How to observe and make quick sketches

Drawing Process

Use references or not?: Balancing spontaneity + control

The Industry

Getting a gig: develop fundamentals + acknowledge "the “concept” part of concept part”

That’s it for today.

#asianamericans #asiansdrawthings #arttips

[originalgladiatorcollective]

Reposted from @theother5th #repost @thinkchinatown ・・・ In celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, we’re bringing back our heartwarming Chinatown animated shorts for a special encore virtual screening and behind-the-scenes look with our storytellers and artists. Gather your loved ones (virtually!) and join us Saturday, May 23rd at 8PM EST in celebrating the long history of Chinatown and the people who continue to call it home today. Register at the link www.thinkchinatown.org/happenings ⁣ Hosted by Rochelle Kwan (@rochellehkwan), we’ll have special appearances from our Chinatown storytellers, Margaret Yuen & Jan Lee, and artists, Yao Xiao (@yaoxiaoart), John Lee (@johnleedraws), and Cindy Trinh (@cindytrinh.photo)! ⁣ ⁣ *This month, in celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, Cindy will be donating proceeds from the sales from her photo series “No Boundaries” to Think!Chinatown. Check them out @cindytrinh.photo.⁣ ⁣ See you all Saturday, May 23rd at 8pm EST 💛⁣ - #regrann https://www.instagram.com/p/B_9SkmWjVwn/?igshid=1qwktfw3fkvw9

#repost #regrann

[jacarvajal]

@chriscarv progress and hanging out with @yaoxiaoart and @johnleedraws .

#journalcomic #cartoon #diary #journal #ink #nyc #burger #watercolor #diarycomic #hospital #bareburger #comics #newyork #siblings #comicart #friends #drawing #illustration #coolkids #brother

[johnleedraws]

Google streetview sketches of my family’s hometown Pozorrubio, Pangasinan.

#philippines #pozurrubio #johnleedraws #illustration #drawing #reportage #art #asian american

[inkblotting]

John Lee's Pedantry Tag

John Lee has some great advice for illustrators, this is just a taste. voice truthful work style vs voice function of illustration fear digital vs traditional picking the right scene to illustrate developing voice

#john lee #johnleedraws #advice #illustration #illustrator #voice #style #pedantry #life reference #art reference

[tracichee]

My next newsletter goes out TUESDAY with an interview with cover illustrator @johnleedraws! John’s process is so fascinating—I can’t wait to share it! So here’s a snippet to tide you over into next week. 🙂 For the rest of the interview, sign up here.

(image: sketch of the cover of We Are Not Free, with five Japanese-American teenagers from the 1940s sitting/standing on piles of luggage on a San Francisco street

Q: For the cover of WE ARE NOT FREE, what was important to you in illustrating these characters?

A: For starters, I think it was apparent to me early on that the design was going to highlight the characters specifically, rather than in a more general way (like a crowd, or abstracted in some form). This is because of the format of Traci’s storytelling, which offers us different points of views from chapter to chapter. We embody each character’s thoughts and viewpoints, which of course makes each individual real and nuanced, but moreover, it’s the structure for the entire book. Additionally, centering the individual offers a powerful counterbalance against the prevailing forces that were pressing down on this community during the timeframe of the story. American persecution of Japanese Americans and residents of Japanese descent during World War Two wasn’t the result of one person’s action and subsequent consequence; it was the systematic failure of an entire nation’s ability to safeguard its own against fear and prejudice. As America bent towards total war, the state saw the reflection of the Other and the Enemy in every Japanese face. Individuality melted away, and names were branded with numbers written on a tag.)

#blog #news #the reader #traci chee #the speaker #illustration #art #covers #we are not free #the storyteller #the reader trilogy

[collabodraw]

John Lee // johnleedraws.tumblr.com

#illustration #artists on tumblr #collabodraw #johnleedraws

[johnleedraws]

Today for Qingming, I want to offer up all the treats in the world: slivers of corn husks, tiny catnip pillows, warm laps, head scratches. I want to bridge the here and the there with an inferno of morning sun, casting squares on the floor. Missing my friends that I lost this year, Eponine and Happy.

#qingming #cats #johnleedraws #drawing

[johnleedraws]

Around 2 years ago to the day, I had one of my "purer" illustration things. I drew my fellow citizens while waiting in line to vote, and then cleaned them up the next day to run in the NYTimes Sketchbook.

#illustration #drawing #johnleedraws #john lee #election #democracy #art

[johnleedraws]

Some work in context. Man things have really changed since I started this tumblr. At first I was like, wow I wish someone would pay me to draw. Now I'm like: I wish someone would pay me to live in a tree forever.

#illustration #art #editorial #johnleedraws #john lee #artists on tumblr

[johnleedraws]

Another one for Foreign Affairs, thanks as always to AD Ed Johnson. Lisa Anderson reviews Grand Delusion: The Rise and Fall of American Ambition in the Middle East, by Steven Simon. Simon argues that America does not understand (and has never understood) the region and that misunderstanding has lead to decades of conflict.

#illustration #drawing #johnleedraws #john lee #art #foreign affairs #editorial