Jian Guo is a native of China’s largest city and the world’s busiest port – Shanghai. A qualified architect, he spends his days producing CAD designs to feed the now legendary growth of his home town. “And after a day at work I go home and create my art.” 

Though not a professional illustrator, Jian Guo has taken on a number of commissions, including book covers and posters. Even so, his work is produced, by and large, for the love of digital painting and fantasy itself. As the man himself says: “Everybody loves to challenge their imagination.” 

Once upon a time

“I think it started when I was at nursery school,” says Jian Guo. “The teacher was training some of the children to paint traditional Chinese watercolours for the guests who were going to visit the school.” Finding himself among the lucky few planted the creative seed which later developed into a serious digital art habit.
But the road was far from straight. “After nursery school and even in my college days I hardly had the opportunity to get into my stride. I only had time to do some simple comic-like paintings in the margins of my exercise books,” he explains. Art of any kind was put on hold while the practicalities of life took hold.

“Then, about four years ago, I was searching for some information on the web, and I found some beautiful illustration on a CG site and that was it.” The online world was calling and Jian Guo answered. “I began to learn how to use the computer to produce art.”

Re-awakening

Discovering that the computer could be used as an artistic tool was a creative revelation for Jian Guo. “After all, I only drew comic-like pictures on paper before that,” he says. Discovering the huge community of online artists waiting to check out his work was the stimulus he needed to start work.

Like many, Jian Guo’s transition to digital art was done in stages: “In the beginning I would put my ideas down on paper, then scan them and finally do the colouring on the computer”. But because he didn’t have a classical background, this approach quickly felt contrived, “Now I put my sketches directly on to the CG canvas, it’s more convenient to adjust and I don’t need to worry about the size of the canvas.”

And of course it’s easier to get your work seen, too: “You can get the advice you need to fix the shortcomings in your work,” he explains. “And you can learn more advanced skills and ideas from better painters”. The web certainly plays a central role in the seemingly unstoppable growth of sci-fi and fantasy art. That fact is nowhere more true than in China.

Shanghai style

Jian Guo rightly points out that it’s part of the human condition to strain at the boundaries of what is real, to repeatedly test hypotheses. It’s this drive which attracts people to fantasy art: “There’s far more freedom in the creation of the image, and that takes you beyond everyday life!”

But despite the escapist angle, what makes Jian Guo’s work so appealing is its brilliant narrative quality. “Even if it is just a character design,” he says, “my idea is to make the picture show more story.” It’s this which makes each image so absorbing to look at; the fact that the scenes are fantastical only add to the effect.

The sources of inspiration are many and varied: “Sometimes it’s from novels, or more often from a simple sentence I heard in a film or on the radio,” he says. This should not come as a surprise as Jian Guo’s pictures have a whimsical feel to them and often a number of visual focal points. Considering that, as he says himself, “I am not a professional painter so I don’t have too much time to train my skills”, they are enviably sharp all the same.

Call of the wild

Jian Guo rightly points out that it’s part of the human condition to strain at the boundaries of what is real, to repeatedly test hypotheses. It’s this drive which attracts people to fantasy art: “There’s far more freedom in the creation of the image, and that takes you beyond everyday life!”

But despite the escapist angle, what makes Jian Guo’s work so appealing is its brilliant narrative quality. “Even if it is just a character design,” he says, “my idea is to make the picture show more story.” It’s this which makes each image so absorbing to look at; the fact that the scenes are fantastical only add to the effect.

The sources of inspiration are many and varied: “Sometimes it’s from novels, or more often from a simple sentence I heard in a film or on the radio,” he says. This should not come as a surprise as Jian Guo’s pictures have a whimsical feel to them and often a number of visual focal points. Considering that, as he says himself, “I am not a professional painter so I don’t have too much time to train my skills”, they are enviably sharp all the same.