#jackytsai

I did a one month work placement at Jacky Tsai studios in September 2015 where I was the first ‘Western’ intern to be accepted to Jacky Tsai’s design team.

Jacky Tsai’s work has been a hugely significant inspiration to me every since I found it during my project research in my University first year (2013). As a result I was ecstatic when my email was responded to positively, and a period of work experience was organised.

I was extremely well looked after, and enjoyed a very insightful month in which I was fortunate to feel that I actually learnt more for myself than I contributed to the studio, in contrast to the internship horror stories involving slave labour, sleepless nights and countless kettle runs.

My mentor Chuan, Jacky’s assistant, taught me extremely thoroughly how to draw neat, and professional vectorised imagery, in the way that he was working for artworks such as ‘Hong Kong Queen’ and ‘New York cityscape stamp’. The art deco style has smooth lines, and it took time to get a hang of the anchors and handles, so as to get good angles and curves in to the imagery. Translating an image into a vector, Chuan also taught me to remember to ‘design’, where you step back and look at your drawing from the perspective of creating what you want it to look like rather than replicating what it actually looks like, and consciously deciding how you are going to translate what you are looking at in to your own vision. This contrasts to my own work which I tend to do with more emphasis on a subconscious creative flow.

This work was extremely time consuming for me, but I learnt fast. I firmly believe that with CAD work, there is always a faster way to do something, and it helps immeasurably to have someone as a guide who can point you in the right direction when you come to unfamiliar problem solving territory.

I was extremely fortunate that my experience actually coincided with the launch ceremony of Jacky’s Future Past exhibition at the Fine Art Society on Bond Street, and as a result I was invited to attend. This was an exciting and important event for Jacky’s work, that I was lucky to be a part of, and it was fantastic being able to mingle with a room full of passionate and creative artistic professionals.

Above Jacky’s studio is ‘Jealous Print’s’ studio, who put a lot of Jacky’s screen prints in to production. Astonishingly, some of these are up to 36 layers, if not more, and on large scales measured in metres rather than inches. Jacky’s combination of Eastern and Western traditional art, are brought together through incredible traditional processes such as lacquer carvings, screen print and exquisite Chinese embroidery. Everything is completed to perfection and of the highest standard.