'The freedom to create'...An interview with: Antonio Wisesa
Sep 5
5 min read
In discussion with Indonesian illustrator and concept artist @antonioreinhard
"My biggest passion is for world building, creating concept arts for environment, character design, writing lores, plots and character backstory, these characters i've created so far, you can ask me about them and i'd tell you about them as if they're my oldest friends." - Antonio Wisesa
Read on below for the full interview...
Firstly how are you and how is life?
I am alive and well, the Petrea I planted years ago is starting to bloom, and in my spare time I'm excited to work on my personal project's graphic novel, learning so much as I go along. It's been in my mind to start working on it for years, so it captivated me so much. as it deals with our far future and immortality.
Please tell us about yourself...where are you from, where do you live now, and what do you love?
I'm from Indonesia, I now live at Tangerang Selatan, and i love whisky. and plants, though admittedly the ones inside the apartment are harder to keep alive.. the ones on the balcony are doing great though.
What are some of the key ideas and themes that inspire your work and where do you think your fascination with these ideas stems from?
Both the future and the past, I really love delving into the research of cultures, mainly on javanese culture and Indonesian as I am from there. admittedly i only skimmed on surfaces and was attracted to the mere aesthetics, but when i got into the rabbit holes, how they turned out as they are from their history, how cultures around the world keeps influencing each other, always interesting. And as my personal project goes, Mutja, I'm most interested in what happens after a story ends, when the heroes succeed, and the world is saved, like, what now? stories like One Piece, Star Wars, The Lord of The Rings, what happens next, are the people then keeping the peace? are they satisfied, or do they still have things they want to do, problems they still want to solve.
When did you first fall in in love with illustration and are there any particular books, films, artists, or thinkers etc that you hold close to your heart who have sculpted how you look at the world?
When I was a kid, My grandma had a couple of books illustrated by Adrienne Segur, her illustrations are ornate and honestly creepy looking, which intrigued me. and incited horror vacui in my works that's for sure. The works of Isao Takahata such as Grave of The Fireflies, Tale of Princess Kaguya, and his old series Anne of the Green Gables, it's weird to see the most relatable fictional character for me is a red-haired Canadian girl. Haruko Ichikawa's Land of The Lustrous, and Sylvain Chomet's animated features. Somehow they gave me relief. Oh, I don't have to make a straight line to make an artwork 'finished' . With a gun to my head I can't make a straight line, even with a ruler. But holding shift in photoshop helps though.
Could you please tell us about the practical process of creating a new work of art in the methods you use to bring the piece to life; and also what sort of emotions arise when you are immersed in the creative act?
For starters either a brief, or if for Mutja an Idea pops out, a rough sketch, very rough, i only use round brush in photoshop with very thin line, so at the very least it captures the composition, the hierarchy of the subjects and objects, or the movement if it is needs to be captured. then rough colors, which will tell the emotion and mood, atmosphere of the artwork, and the focus of the artwork as well, with the needed values, and i play with negative space, most of the times because i love detailed backgrounds, the one with the biggest negative space is the focus, so the eyes can rest in the main point of the artwork, instead of all the swirlies, plants, buildings and congregation of overwhelming details around it. then i brute force the work until it's 'done'. with all the details and cohesive narration in it. and i just have to decide it's done, either because of the deadline or i believe the audience would know what a thing is in the artwork, since none of it i felt ever totally 'finished'.
As for emotion, I'm grateful that I live from doing what I love, and amazed by the briefs given, in wonder and awe how they came up with that idea. For my personal project, grateful I have the chance to work on it, and wondered too how did I came up with that lol. or remembering the scenes of my life, either when it rains, or the sun lights the window panel just right, streaks and glows of the light because of my short-sighted eyes or my dirty glasses. and other times the dread of deadlines or the need to pay rent lol, and why did i ever choose a style that is so detailed, and lots to work on. But, when it's done, I look back and just say, wow, i did that. I'm pretty good, am i. Or damn it that pillar should be more detailed, why did i spend too much time on that bush there.
What fills you with the most joy in relation to your work and life?
I love to draw and I live from it. That feels like a privilege. It's honestly the freedom to create what i want to create, and meeting people to exchange ideas, and work on things i love, that includes drawing of course, plants, and whisky.
Do you consider there to be a spiritual element to your work, and if so what does spirituality mean to you?
Inevitably yes of course. I worked for Ehipassiko publishing, they're a buddhist publisher, and many of my works are influenced by Buddhist cosmology, Thangka is a great source of inspiration, and the story and aesthetics of Land of the Lustrous. Mutja talks about our far future and immortality, both are simply things in reality out of reach, so, in a world I create myself, I have the freedom to explore that, to explore how spirituality influences our cultures and way of life. Mutja is set in a post-scarcity world, a utopia almost. and when our worldly needs are all fulfilled, will we be satisfied? I don't think so.
We'll look for another problem to solve, which in Mutja's case, death is seen as a 'problem'. therefore the immortality comes in. somehow something intangible is made.. tangible. I genuinely don't know what 'spiritual' actually means. But somehow, wishing for a better future, trying to make a better future that we won't see, for other people that we won't know, for the children we may or may not have, leaving a world that could lead to a better path that we won't enjoy, feels spiritual to me.
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You can discover more of Antonio Wisesa's art via:
- Astral Magazine
