Drawing: from the canvas to a career

As she moves her stylus across her Wacom Cintiq Pro 27 Pen Display, sophomore Bella Luo makes her finishing touches and a new character emerges from her artwork.

Luo has been interested in pursuing a career in art ever since she was 11 years old. She takes inspiration from the anime, manga and games she watches and plays every day. One of her favorite anime and manga to take inspiration from are Toilet-bound Hanako-kun and Persona 5. 

“I saw other people doing manga and game-developing art and I was thinking maybe I can make my own manga or game in the future,” Luo said. “I want to work on that as my job for my whole life if I can.”

She first got an interest to her passion for anime and manga at the age of five when Luo’s father introduced her to the genre. Because of her love for this genre, it inspired her to pursue art more avidly as something she enjoys. When she started drawing seriously at the age of 11, Luo enrolled in Krenz Cush Art, an online art class that she continues to attend every week. 

“My teacher gives me advice a lot so I don’t have a lot of moments [when I get stuck],” she said. “[In the future,] I’m going to draw more realistic [art] for practice, and then I might go with environmental art and designs to improve on.”

Before going to art class, Luo learned by herself. She would watch YouTube videos over and over again to perfect her drawing skills. Her routine was always to sketch a draft of her drawing on her iPad before starting the line work. 

“Seeing the animated people move just makes me feel fascinated,” Luo said. “I’ve read many manga and anime works and I just wanted to do this as my future career.”

Luo’s current art style takes inspiration from Japanese pop art; one of the main features of her art incorporates many different styles of anime and manga art. One of her strengths is drawing character designs and creating stories for them. On her Instagram, @yenkurl has some of the many characters she has drawn and published over the years. 

“I like that if it’s [a] physical [artwork] then you can put it in your house for decoration [and it] just looks nice,” Luo said. “Being able to share work [with] others online [and] letting other people see the work that you did for many hours is nice.”