This week, we welcome Surjit Chana to the CBFC Artist Spotlight!
Q. Where are you from?
A. I am from a small town just north of Toronto, Ontario. I attend shows across Canada.
Q. How long you’ve been drawing?
A. I’ve been drawing as early as Kindergarten (4 yrs old), but did not go to school for art. I am self taught. Let’s say I’ve been drawing a looong time.
Q. What materials do you prefer to do your art with?
A. I use a variety tools for my art, depending on the type of commission:
-My preference is traditional drawings on heavy weight paper to absorb ink, markers, and paint
-Majority of my art is pen and ink drawings, primarily superhero art
-For original artworks/commissions, majority of my requests are traditional hand drawn art (blue pencil, and usually going straight to inks using Tombow brush pens), and using a mix of alcohol markers
-To make some of my art pop, I will incorporate paint markers (usually posca). with digital colouring
-I use a flat bed scanner to scan my larger pieces
-Digital Art: Most people use Photoshop to do most of their digital art, but prefer to use Procreate as it is an easier tool to use and less functions to remember
Q. Character you love to draw?
A. My favorite character is Batman (I describe my style for Batman as old school Neal Adams style mixed with a bit of Jim Lee!). I also have been enjoying drawing Spiderman and many of the Spiderverse characters. I have been drawing for so long, I have a variety of characters/styles that I love to draw, ranging from superheroes, sci-fi, to anime.
Q. Character that you want to draw that you haven’t drawn yet?
A. I’ve drawn a lot of characters and I can’t think of anything that I haven’t drawn, so I think I would like to go back and do more Transformers/mecha robots. My passion in the past was very much around old school anime robots from the 70s/80s, and I want to jump back into drawing them (especially Transformers).
Q. What artist inspires you the most and why?
A. I have many many artists that have influenced me over the years. Younger me had influences from Saturday morning cartoons to 70s Anime. Through the eighties, I was influenced heavily by DC/Marvel, and then more heavily into Anime again, and then flipping back to superheroes. Artists that come to mind off the top of my head: Neal Adams, Arthur Adams, Adam Hughes, Frank Cho, Masamune Shirow, Masami Obari, Haruhiko Mikimoto, Frank Miller, John Byrne, Mike Zeck, Bill Sienkiewicz, Jim Lee, Bob Layton, Walter Simonson, Jim Aparo, John Buscema, John Romita Sr/Jr, Ivan Reis, Alex Toth, Bruce Timm….
Q. What was your first published work?
A. I’ve done some minor work (uncredited), but most recently I have done a few covers for Zelpha Comics for their horror book “Dalf-Lo: A Cereal Worth Killing For” – Variant Cover for Book 1, and the Standard cover for Book 2
Q. Which artist would you love to do a collaboration piece with?
A. Many of the artists I listed above are definitely on the list of people I would like to collaborate with. I also have a bunch of artist friends that I work with here in the Toronto area and across Canada. Basically, there are too many to name!
Thank Surjit Chana for taking the time to answer a few of our questions! Be sure to give him follow!
Don’t forget to check back next week for our next Artist Spotlight! If you’re an artist and are looking to be featured on our page, please hit me up here. I’d love to hear from you.
-Chris
East Coast Member, Comic Book Fiend Club
Personal quest, search every dollarbin in Philly!