Meet Rainy (Yushan) Zhang | Illustrator & Art Educator

We had the good fortune of connecting with Rainy (Yushan) Zhang and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Rainy (Yushan), what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
In a way, it just came naturally because I love drawing and have enjoyed it since I was very little. I was a little troublesome during primary school because I kept making up imagined stories and told everybody as if it was real. Every time when I finished a comic / movie / anime, I started to imagine what if I or my friends were in that story and what we might do. That was the starting point of me trying to draw and record those fantasy thoughts on paper. As everyone knows that China has a very strict primary and middle school education, but I was very lucky to meet an art teacher who encouraged me a lot to keep doodling and introduced me to a lot of artists like Yoshitaka Amano, a genius in world-building arts. So I would say my passion in storytelling was my first step into the creative world.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
It might de-excite a lot of people who wanted to go to art college, but the journey to be an artist is never easy. Not only you might question yourself why you could not draw well enough but also creating art requires a lot of emotion digging and analysis which is very exhausting. I do not think there is any method for solving technical problems besides practicing. I remember I saw in an artist interview when I was in college (sorry I could not recall whose interview it was) that they were saying never put yourself in a comfortable zone. Practicing drawing skill is definitely a boring and time consuming process but it is worth it.

I have been pondering over the very question since I decided to be an illustrator— how illustrators could move the needle for society with our artworks. As the world moves into an era where everyone enjoys the convenience brought by the internet, we have increasingly effortless access to all the artworks shared on social media. No matter whether the artwork is made for grown-up audiences or teens, it could be appreciated by an unprecedentedly massive number of people and have much larger influence on its targeted group than that of in the past 10 years. During my down time, I drew a sequential illustration to channel my anxiety. It was about a seed growing up and hugging the girl who accidentally used her tears to water it. I posted them on my social media, and my chord was struck when a stranger left a comment under that post saying, “thank you so much it made me feel better”. All at once, I realized the emotion conveyed by art works may be more powerful and influential than I had thought. At the same time, I understood that this was why I decided to be an illustrator.

Drawing from imagination is fun but personally the most exciting thing about creating art is all about human observation. In my understanding, illustration has evolved into a language to express thought on myriad aspects of society like literature, technology, music, and business. I understood that a remarkable artist should be a connoisseur of life. In recent years, I was fortunate enough to participate in different programs where I had the chance to exchange opinions with members of Japan Graphic Design Association at a little izakaya in late night summer in Tokyo; to join in a Journalistic Illustration program in Viterbo and portrait this picturesque ancient commune of central Italy. After living in various towns for months with terrific artists, I aspired to be like them, an outstanding illustrator of broad perspective and peripheral vision to reap inspiration and pump up creativity from the curriculum of life and society. How I perceive the world affects how close I come to my potential.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I think this question is interesting to me. I read this as a tour around the city that I am living in right now, but unfortunately I was not bonded to Baltimore that much. So I came up with this little itinerary of a trip in my hometown Shenzhen, China. It is a modern and busy coastal city in southern China. There are tons of glass skyscrapers and beautiful buildings, but my favorite place is the narrow road between those old residential short buildings where you can hear puppies barking and kids laughing. I was always surrounded by the smell of delicious home-made food every time walking along the street. There was a whole area of old buildings next to my high school and my friends and I loved hanging out over there.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are a lot of people who have helped me along this still-continuing journey. First of all is of course my parents. I was not born in an artist family. I joked around when I was in college saying that I was a witch from a ‘muggle’ family. In highschool I was one of the 8 students out of 230 in my grade who decided to go to an art college. Lots of people could not understand my decision. But my parents always told me they would support me no matter what I chose as my final career. My mom even secretly kept all my doodles and practice drawings from the very beginning.

Corona 2020 was a tough year for everyone, especially for those who graduated in that year trying to get a job. I was also one of them. I really appreciate everyone who supported and encouraged me during that year, my parents, friends, professors and college / high school alumni. No matter it was mental support or actual job providing, all of them did help me walk through that hard time.

I would say I was a very fortunate person because most teachers and professors I met along my journey were super inspiring. My very first illustration concept class in sophomore year was taught by Professor Fred Lynch. A suggestion to all illustration students in RISD: take Fred’s class no matter what! He was the best professor in my personal opinion, inspiring, supportive and interesting. He was very good at encouraging students while at the same time pointing out the shortage very clearly. All the assignments and critiques I had in his class helped me understand what he meant by “illustration is a visual language”. Another professor who helped me a lot was Chris Buzzelli. He was very strict while critiquing and some students thought his crit was a little intimidating. But I thought a good critique should be like that because that was closer to what we would actually experience in real life. Right now I am pursuing a MFA degree in MICA. Professor Mai Ly Degnan was the cutest and thoughtful teacher I have ever had. She was so encouraging and always supportive when I hesitated to make personal artworks and thought too much about future careers. Also shoutout to my art teachers in high school Dawei, Tracy and Clara who pushed me a lot in challenging myself.

I left home and came to the US for college when I was 18-19 years old. Moving to a totally strange environment was a little intimidating but I was very very very lucky to have one of my best friends during highschool in the same college with me. Now it has been 10 years since we knew each other. Every rising artist during college had a lot of ambitious thoughts and ideas and so did us. I met 2 other interesting and caring souls and we 4 lived together for 3 years after freshman year. We always exchanged our thoughts over each other’s projects and discussed our future careers. The talks could last for hours and hours until 4 or 5 am when we all fell asleep in the living room together. I could say that it was probably the happiest period of time I have ever experienced that there wasn’t a second I did not feel supported. It makes me super emotional just recalling those memories. We still kept in touch and exchanged thoughts even though we are miles away from each other right now.

Website: https://yushan-zhang.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rainyyyyz/