Meet Kristen Lee | Visual Development Artist & Illustrator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kristen Lee and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kristen, what do you want your legacy to be?
Personally, I think there’s a kind of pressure that comes with creating or maintaining a legacy. I don’t particularly desire or feel the need to be remembered. I think that with the prevalence of social media, content and art are being consumed extraordinarily quickly these days, which is totally fine! However, people itch move onto the next thing so quickly and creators often feel the pressure to keep up with the neverending waves of trends and the need to non-stop create to “stay relevant,” which I think often leads to burnout. I think that for me, creating a legacy for myself would be to be the best version of myself as I can be in my current niche. I think I’ve resolved that as long as I make a positive impact on others and myself with what I create in my sphere of influence, that is more than enough for me!

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I’m a visual development artist and illustrator born and raised in Los Angeles. I specialize in key scene and moment paintings, as well as background painting. I really love color and light, and its power in conveying a mood and telling a story. What I love most about illustrating and painting is evoking a mood or an emotion from my viewers. I find it really fun and fulfilling to be able to illustrate engaging and interesting compositions and seeing them come to life!

Getting to where I am today was certainly not the smoothest road, but I’m glad to have even arrived at who I am as a person and an artist today! Growing up, I’ve always had a keen interest in art. My parents even still have doodles from when I was as young as 3 years old! However, it was often touted throughout my life that art was an “unstable” career path that also didn’t pay well or at all sometimes (which we all know could not be further from the truth). Also the fact that I grew up in a very culturally Chinese environment didn’t help matters either, as many of my close friends and peers also did not have much of an interest in art at all. Towards the end of high school, I decided to take a leap of faith to apply to ArtCenter College of Design (with very little art education background; I was mostly an avid hobbyist at the time), and miraculously got in! My foundation year was rough, as I had zero art education previously, but I didn’t want to let that get me down! I knew I was passionate about my craft, and I let that be my motivation for the next few years as I continued my schooling at ArtCenter.

I think one of the major things I learned is that it can be difficult to grow as an artist without a community, and that spending time cultivating your community or making friends to grow alongside you as an artist is definitely a worthwhile effort. I feel extremely fortunate to have had such an amazing environment to grow as a person and to hone my craft these past few years.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
If there’s anything I can vouch for in LA, it would definitely be the food! You can probably find any cuisine you could possibly want to eat in a 10 mile radius, which I think is definitely impressive. There are also a number of cool museums and botanical gardens (such as the Huntington Library), which I personally really enjoy going to!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’d love to thank my beloved friends and family for supporting me through everything and for all the amazing instructors I’ve met through the years that really helped me to develop as an artist. I couldn’t have gotten to where I am today without them!

Website: https://kristenilee.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristenilee/?hl=en

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenilee/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ariespsyche