“We all know that the surface of our industry beneath us is shifting.” – Marcos Chin
Read through freelance illustrator Marco Chin's blog and you can't help but feel a connection to him. Chin's not only one of those illustrators that can pull you in with his colorful and rich work, he has a way with words that makes you feel like he's that wise friend you can always count on for some sound advice.
99% (under Behance) called him “one of the most well known illustrators in North America” but you wouldn't know it from the way he describes his struggles. Though Chin's work has been featured in magazines like Time, Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated, his success has come with hard lessons he had to learn along the way.
“I'm trying to make my work more experiential,” Chin says. “I'm exploring projects that make me uncomfortable even if it has or doesn't have an illustrative application; I'm making tons of mistakes along the way, but each step that I take, these mistakes seem to be minimized. I've hit so many blocks and wasted money that could otherwise be spent in more productive ways. However, I keep telling myself that if I build it then it will come. Right now, I think it's anyone's game.”
“Success makes me happy. Failure makes me sad.
“But it's those teachings that rise out of failure –wait, let me digress here, and pull back a bit — it's the information we discover in those uncomfortable moments within our studio practice that makes us stronger artists. It helps us to think more critically about our work; define our vision and to to clarify, and concretize our vocabulary so that our work can over time, become a style, or signature that a client and our peers recognize.”
It should come as no surprise that Chin teaches Fashion Illustration at New York's School of Visual Arts. (If his work looks familiar, Chin's also the one behind Lavalife past ad campaign illustrations.)
