Urban-Muse is starting a new campaign / slogan this year where we intend to do six paid artist features throughout the year, as well as an art prize. We also have dreams of doing a web series, and more issues of Urban-Muse Magazine. We have lots of dreams and not enough funding to do it. You can help. Please consider supporting Urban-Muse.com on Patreon.
We need your support. Urban-Muse is struggling financially and needs help. Things are serious. Patreon.com/UrbanMuse

patreon.com/urbanmuse

Thank You so much for visiting Urban-Muse. If you like what you see here consider stopping by our patreon. You will get early looks at big features like this as well as Download links to all the issues of Urban-Muse Magazine. Support the Arts and support Urban-Muses’s goal to give artists more paid opportunities.

patreon.com/urbanmuse

By Supporting Urban-Muse on Patreon you will receive Download links to Issues 1-4 of Urban-Muse Magazine. You can Get a free Preview of Issue #2 in it’s entirety below If you like it please consider supporting us on Patreon. The project can not go forward without more support. Download Issue #2 FREE here:
150 DPI LOW (Good for mobile)
https://www.urban-muse.com/media/patreon/FREE/Urban-Muse_Magazine_Issue_2_Low.pdf
300 DPI HIGH
https://www.urban-muse.com/media/patreon/FREE/Urban-Muse_Magazine_Issue_2_High.pdf

SAMUEL YOUN FEATURE:

If I had to sum up Samuel Youn’s work in one word I would say “Exciting.” Samuel Youn’s work is just that to me. Samuel seems to have effortlessly created a unique style all his own building on some of the greats before him, that inspired and drove him to be the artist he is today. Samuel studied at the renowned LCAD (Laguna College of Art and Design) where he graduated in 2015. If you visit LCAD you will see some of his work hanging on the walls of the school. This is a honor art schools give to their most respected and renowned alumni. And at the young age of 23 he is already that. Samuel is a prolific artist, and each piece he does goes for his unique “angular” style, and it’s really cool to see the figures he references transformed into something new and beautiful that is just “Samuel Youn.” When you see a Samuel Youn piece you instantly can tell who did it without even looking at the @ or signature. He stands alone as one of the most exciting young artists around and Urban-Muse is proud to highlight his work for you here.

Urban-Muse.com: Let’s get started! Thanks so much for agreeing to be a part of this big issue Samuel. You are one of those artists I’ve been following the past few years and have always loved reposting your best works for the Urban-Muse fans to see. The Urban-Muse fan’s are consistently ravenous for your work with it commonly getting 1K+ likes per image, sometimes the top liked image of the day, which is getting harder and harder to do with Facebook’s increasingly minimalist algorithms affecting pages across the world. You sir are a star!

Samuel Youn: Thanks for inviting me to be a part of this issue! It’s pretty crazy how much social media helped in getting my art out there.

Urban-Muse.com: So Sam, you are an Alumni of LCAD, and you graduated in 2015. I went through your asks on your tumblr so some of these things I know you have already briefly answered there. You stated you “didn’t know what you were getting into.” What else can you tell us about LCAD, what were the most important course and things you learned.

Samuel Youn: LCAD has a game art major that specializes in 2D concept art and 3D modeling. For freshman year, before choosing your major, they really emphasize the fundamentals like figure drawing, still life drawing, and sculpting. This helps round you as an artist and prepare you before you learn design theory. I think that’s what made LCAD special because it’s very focused on traditional skills, which you can use in pretty much anything.

Urban-Muse.com: So many artists these days are self taught, do you feel that attending an art school like LCAD helped you advance more than you could have on your own?

Samuel Youn: I’m pretty sure that if I didn’t go to LCAD, I’d probably be working for my Dad or something. Before going to school, I didn’t realize how many talented people are out there, and how much work goes into being a successful artist. I got so much help from my peers through critiques, or even just seeing them draw. Sitting at home alone, you don’t know where you’re at artistically.

But if you’re good at meeting other artists and going to hangouts and stuff, then maybe you don’t need to go to art school.

Urban-Muse.com: How do you like the LA Area, has that been at all important to your development as an artist?

Samuel Youn: I live in Ktown and it’s a beautiful city but I don’t go out too much to be honest haha. Location doesn’t really matter to me that much since I’m online most of the time.

Urban-Muse.com: According to your social you currently work at Lab Zero Games, and your artstation shows you recently did some work for Riot! Games and League of Legends for an April fools skin. Can you tell us more about your professional life? How did you land those jobs? What is your work day like?

Samuel Youn: Since graduating from school, I was working random freelance art jobs for about 2 years. Didn’t really know where I was headed, had an erratic schedule, and was just living day to day. Though, I did do a lot of personal work during this period, and posting online to get myself out there. One day I got a call from a Riot employee who liked my stuff and he landed me a freelance gig with them. That same guy later moved on to Lab Zero Games, and he contacted me again, this time for a full time gig as an environment artist. So that’s where I am currently. (I owe a lot to him haha) My work day is pretty great. I go in at 11 am, have some meetings in the morning, then work till 7. It’s located in Hollywood, so lunch breaks are never boring.

Urban-Muse.com: You’ve stated before that your portraits only take 3 hours. Can you take us through the process of creating a piece, do you sit at your desk or do you take your tablet mobile? Is there a specific place you site, maybe special music or certain kinds of shows/videos/movies on your second screen?

Samuel Youn: I never draw outside my room haha. I have three monitors: one for artstation or pinterest, one for photoshop, and one for Youtube. I mostly listen to kpop (don’t judge me). Kpop has such a wide variety of emotional stuff that I like tapping into and it helps me when I paint expressions on my portraits.

Urban-Muse.com: You’ve stated you use photoshop nearly exclusively and use general brush presets and opacities, but that you also use Shaddy Safadi’s brushes, (Available for free HERE – LINK) how did you get turned onto those brushes? You said “I recommend chalk brushes. Good blocky strokes with texture.” Can you take us through the whole process, from the selection of references often fashion images from Pinterest, to the sketch, blocking, then refinement and color? Step by step in detail? We want this to be kind of a mini-tutorial building on that great image you shared before.

Samuel Youn: Firstly, I explore pinterest, mostly looking at interesting expressions for inspiration. When I start a painting, I do some sketching in red; quick brush strokes everywhere across the canvas, trying to find interesting shapes. When I see a face in there, I try to sculpt it out with lights and darks. The blocky brushes help there. Then, I dabble with adjustment layers, manipulating the colors, and it helps me find a mood that looks cool. It’s all refining from there with lasso tools, gradients, and cleaning up the edges.

Urban-Muse.com: You’ve been very helpful to people on Tumblr asking how they can improve their work. You also recommended a great art book Color and Light by James Gurney. You said “Focus on form, lighting, value. Try to really practice drawing what you see and not what you think it looks like.“ Now would be a great time to elaborate on the things you said before, because you’re going to have a new even wider audience. Lots of people already look up to you and I think you have valuable insight for a lot of our readers. [LINK]

Samuel Youn: That book really shows that good art is knowledgeable art. Understanding is important when approaching painting. When you paint randomly, you may have some happy accidents, but it won’t look “right” sometimes. If you learn to understand what works and why it does, you will be more satisfied with your work. Practice your anatomy, learn how to control your values, and draw from life.

Urban-Muse.com: A key question to ask artists is, who and what their influences are. On your tumblr you cited “Max Grecke, Johannes Helgeson, Nicholas Kole, Loish, etc”. Let’s get into the Etc, and maybe what you think briefly about each artist and what you can take away from studying each of their works/styles?

Samuel Youn: One thing I think these artists have in common is they really own their style. They all know the art fundamentals, but they play and push it to emphasize what they like. Max is a master of shape language and form, giving his stuff a planar look. His rendering style is also super pleasing to look at. Johannes is great at stylizing and posing his characters. I really like the textures he uses in his pieces. Nicholas’s work gives a cute storybook feeling to me, using lines but also having a painterly look. Loish has the best faces haha. She’s so good at playing with line, color, and shapes, and it looks like she has so much fun when making a piece.

Urban-Muse.com: What do do if you ever feel “stuck” on a painting? How do you overcome that artist’s block?

Samuel Youn: If I’m stuck on a piece, I usually move on and start from scratch. I feel like I’m wasting time if I’ve tried fixing something for an hour. Sometimes I even recycle what I’m working on. For example, I’ll flip the canvas vertically and paint over it, using whatever I worked on before as a base.

Urban-Muse.com: How do you deal with haters?

Samuel Youn: I say I’m sorry that I hurt them. My friends laugh at me when I show them the comments and messages, so I guess it’s an interesting talking point.

Urban-Muse.com: Has there ever been a big issue in life that you feel you have overcome? How did that make you feel? Overcoming adversity is going to be a big focus of this issue.

Samuel Youn: Self-confidence. I used to be so afraid of posting online because I had thoughts that I wasn’t done with a piece or it wasn’t good enough. But one day I made an Instagram and forced myself to post at least once a week. After a while, I saw myself improving and I no longer had problems posting. I think if you just have a plan and start something, you can get the ball rolling. One issue I am having currently is laziness. I will post on Instagram once a month if I’m lucky.

Urban-Muse.com: What social site do you think has been most important to you, which do you like to browse yourself when looking for art?

Samuel Youn: Instagram’s the easiest to keep track of for me. Artstation and pinterest mostly for browsing.

Urban-Muse.com: Time Management is key, outside of work how do you structure your day to leave time to create art? (3 Hours per portrait)

Samuel Youn: Back when I was freelancing, I would mostly do personal work at night when it was quiet, and I could be in my own world.

Nowadays, my time management is still a work in progress. I’m creatively drained when I come home from work, so I usually go to the gym.

Urban-Muse.com: Relating somewhat to the last question. For a long time you were doing a portrait a day challenge. During this period your output was extraordinary, and each portrait you were creating daily in my opinion was great. We tried to keep up with you during this period reposting the best, but because you were producing them so fast it became difficult to keep up! What can you tell us you learned during this big exercise?

Samuel Youn: Yeah it was pretty crazy back then. I learned a lot about my style doing this challenge. There’s a million ways to do a portrait so it takes a weight off and frees you up to experiment and have fun with them. You feel yourself getting better on every new piece because you’re building on things you learned before.

Urban-Muse.com: KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! You answer your door, who is it? It’s Marty McFly and Doc Brown in the DeLorean and they say you have to come back in time with them! Once in the time machine you taken to the past and are able to talk to a younger version of yourself, what would you tell him?

Samuel Youn: Save money for college. Don’t get loans. Gym is important.

Urban-Muse.com: In Addition to you work, what else do you think the future holds for Samuel Youn? What kind of things do you want to keep working on in the future? How do you hope your art progres

es? What do you think it will look like in 10 years?

Samuel Youn: My first goal is some sort of personal art book so that I have something under my name. I hope I can hone my style more and someday I’ll get more comfortable doing full body pieces and even scene paintings. Outside of art, I hope I can have the opportunity to travel to Europe and Japan.