Get to Know Yuko
Yuko Shimizu is a Japanese born, New York illustrator who gave an entertaining and educational lecture in the Steinberg Auditorium at Washington University late Wednesday, February 18th. An illustrator with a love for saturated tones, texture, and dramatic figures, Yuko’s art has a complexity that is very intriguing. She once painted a ceramic rabbit with an intricate black and white pattern comprised of just dots. The bunny sold on Ebay for over a thousands dollars and the proceeds went to Save the Children Foundation. Other artworks she has done include: an evocative illustration for a sex story in New York Magazine where hundreds of couples were making love in the middle of a colorful Times Square, a chic aristocratic female lounging in ornate outfits for a Neiman Marcus advertisement, and an offbeat summer illustration of a wave rendered in a cable knit sweater pattern engulfing a swimmer as balls of yarn are tossed around for a Superphat magazine cover. Although her finished work looks so polished, Yuko’s career path is almost as complicated as the patterns she creates.
Yuko stressed that all her success did not come so easily; she kept learning even after she had finished her education. Yuko’s creative kryptonite was portraiture. She remarked that as an illustrator, “portraits make up about fifty percent of your projects,” so she had to learn portraiture. One of her first commissioned portraits was so poorly done that when she looked back at it to show the audience she shuddered, “this will never go in my portfolio.” The portrait she created of Tom Cruise looked very flat and lacked compositional insight. She said if she could do it again, she would have angled him differently to give him more depth and volume in the picture, but at the time she created her illustrations by copying photographs of celebrities and did not have as recognizable a profile picture as Cruise. Yuko had difficulty drawing portraits because she had trouble “seeing people.” Later, she found out that she has a medical condition called prosopagnosia. Also known as “Face Blindness,” prosopagnosia is a brain disorder that hinders the ability to recognize familiar faces. Despite this disorder Yuko persevered, and when she presented a recent portrait of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie the improvement was incredible. Jolie was unmistakable with her pouty lips and dominating glance and Pitt was just as 
recognizable with his perfectly rendered pronounced jaw and manicured hair. Shading in the contours and contrast in the colors lifted the figures out of the page and gave it a three dimensional quality. The portrait as a whole was comparably better because the characters demanded presence, they held a power over the reader which is something that the previous portrait lacked. Seeing this work, one never would have guessed the artist found portraiture challenging, let alone had a brain disease that affected her ability to work in this genre.
Towards the end of the lecture Yuko shared what she had learned during the process of developing her craft. The best advice Yuko received while she was in school at SVA was to “start your own visual library.” Yuko urges aspiring illustrators to go to a bookstore and leaf through pages of illustration books and find striking, inspiring images. It is important to start collecting these books in order to have an arsenal of references, that way an artist can always work on, develop, and improve his or her craft. Yuko advises that an artist’s style is something inherent that cannot be forced; it is something that finds its way out and through your work after much experience. Yuko’s ability to convey substance and personality in her portraits came from years of practice and experience. Her lecture and earned success proves that although art at times may be frustrating, the artistic process, if trusted, can be very rewarding.
Interested in more? Read additional student reviews of this lecture.
