Kim Jung Gi is fast on the draw
September 21, 2015 6:40 AM   Subscribe

Check out Kim Jung Gi doing a quick sketch - most impressive.
posted by zeoslap (16 comments total) 16 users marked this as a favorite
 
Wow.
posted by Trochanter at 6:46 AM on September 21, 2015


That's astounding. I wish there was a normal speed version of it. As the article states, it isn't the speed so much as that he appears to be tracing some invisible underdrawing, throwing down little bits that magically connect up in perfect proportion and perspective.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 6:54 AM on September 21, 2015


Yeah, amazing. That doesn't really seem possible to me. Any artists want to comment? Is that spacial awareness innate, or lots and lots of practice?

There's some NSFW stuff if you click around in the first link, fyi.
posted by Huck500 at 7:03 AM on September 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


Visual memory is improved by practice, and from going over his website it looks like Kim Jung Gi is a really skilled reinterpreter of things that he has seen. You can learn to get better at doing it! Might take a while until you are as good as this guy though.
posted by The River Ivel at 7:24 AM on September 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


I buy that basic premise that he probably has some kind of supernatural visualization that he is "just tracing", but his forms and lines have a lot of real life in them. Unless he's actually copying some Geof Darrow deep cuts verbatim from memory, this work is pretty interesting and beautiful from a pure illustration perspective even if you don't see how it happens.
posted by SharkParty at 8:24 AM on September 21, 2015


That is amazing and yes, possible. I had a roommate who drew in a Möbius/Early Crumb sort of style. I remember him bringing home a spool of white paper about a 200' long, starting at one end and filling it with this wild space opera of monsters, machinery and sexy ladies. His combination of talent and drive was sickening.

Drawing is obviously something you get better at through practice but it helps to have a bit of innate ability to build confidence and make the journey pleasurable.
posted by bonobothegreat at 8:27 AM on September 21, 2015


It's like he has Perfect Perspective, the way that some musicians have Perfect Pitch.
posted by benito.strauss at 8:46 AM on September 21, 2015


I could be wrong, but I think they might have sped up that video.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:57 AM on September 21, 2015 [5 favorites]


In interviews, Kim Jung Gi expounds on his process a bit. He spends a few hours daily memorizing visual details from reference. He has put immense effort into improving and maintaining his visual memory. In a lecture at the Art Institute of California, he also talks about how he takes that catalog of visual reference and builds his scenes by simplifying each component into a 3D box oriented with respect to a common vanishing point. The combination of visual memory and perfected perspective with his ability to deeply focus on is awesome to watch.

He's done quite a few live drawing sessions internationally. In China, Japan, and France, among others. These live demonstration originated from Kim Jung Gi's work as a teacher, where he would demonstrate principles for students in a similar, impromptu manner.

This was going to be a first post. Glad someone else appreciated these videos!
posted by TemporaryTurtle at 9:05 AM on September 21, 2015 [6 favorites]


For what it's worth, I have a college friend who has always been very talented with a pen.

Watching him draw with ink was like watching someone do an insanely complicated dot-to-dot puzzle except that there were no dots. His slowest thing to do was hands, but only because he had to sometimes put his hand in a pose and look at it before drawing.
posted by plinth at 9:52 AM on September 21, 2015


Visual memory is part of it, but certain artists also develop a "constructive" style, where they're not visualing the subject, they're visualizing the logic of the subject as a form. With experience, this looks like what Kim is doing, but it's the same basic thing as what you see in "how to draw comic books" manuals where bodies are deconstructed into spheres and muscle groups.

That's not to diminish Kim's skill, which is massive and informed by long, long experience drawing this way and studying details like clothing, anatomy, mechanics, etc. It's merely to contrast it with artists who stay mainly with direct drawing from the subject.
posted by fatbird at 11:43 AM on September 21, 2015


Not to be a pedant,...because Fatbird describes it very, very well and points out that one type of study informs the other...I just think that it would be a rare artist who drew only from life with no thought to interpreting the underlying structure. I don't want people to have the idea that drawing falls into "camps" on this principle.
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:16 PM on September 21, 2015


Yes part of what's amazing about this is he's going completely without reference. But as some have commented, what's especially amazing is he's not using any kind of sketching or roughing-in of proportions/composition, not even in ink -- he just dives straight into the details.

I discovered this guy when trying to learn how to draw. I'm not deep in the art scene, but from what I've found this guy and his workflow are pretty unique... it's the kind of thing you would only expect from like a savant's perfect photographic memory (which doesn't really exist, but even if it did he'd still have to conjure it all from imagination).

If this mural had a full pencil sketch behind it, this really could be a video of any number of professional or highly-skilled artists. But he's starting fresh, from completely blank paper, and going straight into rendering details, with ink. And somehow he still ends up with completely control over the big-picture.

In short: as an aspiring art student, this guy is nuts. I could practice all day for the rest of my life and not be able to do this.

Honestly it's like just a mystery how he does it. It's like it shouldn't be possible. But it is, and as far as I can tell he's just like a normal person. Who likes to draw. And is sorta good at it.

Here's what it looks like in real-time.

Here you can go back through years and years of sketches, which for me helps make him more human, but still no less amazing.
posted by Flaffigan at 6:40 PM on September 21, 2015 [3 favorites]


bonobothegreat is totally right: it's not a matter of distinct camps, it's a matter of the individual balance of key skills (drawing from observation, constructive drawing, and drawing from memory) that suits the artist. Illustrators and comic artists tend to depend on the last two areas most (though any will tell you that life drawing is very valuable) because the nature of their work means that assembling scenes or maquettes from which to draw takes too long and is too expensive to be of use--good comic artists tend to produce a page or two a day, and illustrators work under similarly tight deadlines. Understanding how form and light work, and having a rich memory bank of imagery and knowledge to work from, mean they can do what Kim does: crank it out at high volume, working it out as they go, and achieving a really high degree of realism or awesomeness within their style.

On the other hand, artists working from life tend to seek the unique details found in the particular scene they're painting. Plein Air artists, portrait artists, figure drawing--that's all about seeing the idiosyncratic, sometimes fleeting things that are there and aren't accessible to logic or memory. Knowledge of anatomy and light and form helps you understand what you're seeing (and thus, see more than you would otherwise), but you're still looking for something in the moment beyond the reductive essence of the subject (this is the area I try to work in). Another way of doing this side is to try to draw from the life scene and expand on it, in the way that Jazz musicians try to spiral if it feels right.

I've been drawing or painting almost daily for two years now, and the jump in my skills is immense, mostly as a result of nothing but the constant practice. I feel pretty confident in saying that there's nothing magical or "idiot savant" about Kim. What you're seeing there just is decades of drawing and learning expressing itself. It's awesome, but it totally is something achievable with continual practice.
posted by fatbird at 7:11 PM on September 21, 2015 [1 favorite]


-that's all about seeing the idiosyncratic, sometimes fleeting things that are there and aren't accessible to logic or memory

I've got to say fatbird, that's beautifully put.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:41 PM on September 21, 2015


savant's perfect photographic memory (which doesn't really exist ...)

Oh, so?
posted by flabdablet at 8:55 AM on September 22, 2015


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