K-Interview: Leo Park (Artist)

Interviewer: Tejaswini Roy (Telangana, Hyderabad, India)

Questions Prepared by: Pooja Vishwanathan (Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh, India)

Editor: Jayati Bhardwaj (Delhi, India)

Meet Leo Park, a 15-year-old drawing prodigy whose artwork transcends space and time with boundless creativity. Leo is a self-taught artist, and through his work, he brings cityscapes to life with vivid imagination, blending architectural grandeur, history, and fantasy. Leo’s journey took flight in 2019 when he began sharing his intricate urban sketches on Instagram, inspired by his travels. Influenced by Bernini, Wren, and da Vinci, he reimagines reality with a bold vision, seamlessly fusing cultures and eras.

Despite his young age, Leo has already published Leo’s Art Adventure in the United Kingdom and Leo’s Fantastic Urban Sketch Coloring Book, solidifying his status as a rising creative force. With relentless curiosity and passion, he continues to inspire the world through his art. 

This interview explores in depth about Leo’s creative process, his artistic journey, and how he is investing his time in nurturing his goals and dreams. 

Could you please introduce yourself to our audience and say a quick hello before we begin this interview?

Hello, my name is Leo, and I am a 15-year-old artist from South Korea. I am a self-taught artist, and I enjoy traveling around the world and sketching things I see on my travels. My interests include history, traveling, and architecture. When it comes to creating art, I think that for me, having diverse experiences is the key, and that is the main reason why I enjoy traveling so much.

Now, let’s dive into your creative journey. We’re curious to know what sparked your interest in drawing. What was your first inspiration? And the artists who continue to influence your work today.

Art isn’t something that I started doing at a certain point in time. It’s something I’ve been doing since before I could remember. However, if I had to choose a turning point, I would say that it was when I started using Instagram in the year 2019. I began to share my art with a broader audience, and this very act motivated me to continue to create more advanced pieces. As time progressed, Art, which had previously been something of a hobby for me, turned into something that eventually became my dream and my career.

As for the artists who continue to inspire me, I would say that Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Sir Christopher Wren and Leonardo da Vinci are my three greatest influencers. Bernini influences me with his sheer talent and genius. His statues convey action and energy that I find truly inspiring. I think his statues have this kind of special effect that you can’t truly feel in the statues of other artists of his age or any other age, for that matter. He is not only a talented sculptor, but he is also a phenomenally talented architect. You can see his brilliance in that field if you visit the Vatican City. Another example is St. Peter’s Square; it is one of those timeless architectural masterpieces that never cease to amaze or inspire me. On my vacation to Rome, I sketched it.

Sir Christopher Wren—many people don’t think he’s an artist. For me, he designed St. Paul’s Cathedral, and that is, in my opinion, the most beautiful building in the world. I have drawn St. Paul’s Cathedral at least seven times, and I find that someone who can design such a beautiful building has to be considered one of the most brilliant artists in history. As for Leonardo da Vinci, he inspires me through art, but also his intellectual qualities. He always observed the world around him and made notes on those observations. He then incorporated those observations into his art, making his art ever more accurate and ever more nuanced. This is something that I want to learn as well, the art of observing and implementing it into my art. I look at his work, and I learn something new from it every time.

St. Paul’s Cathedral, drawn by Leo (2021-23)

Your Instagram username, @draw_vengers, sounds very distinctive and appealing. How did you come up with such a clever moniker?

I made that name when I was 10. Back then, I was very interested in the Avengers series, and I still am to a degree. I wanted to make a name derived from it, but also tell them that I was an artist. So, I thought, why not add Dr at the front of Avengers, creating the name Dr-Avengers, which not only tells about interest in this series but also conveys to the people that I draw. Yes, that’s the story behind how I came up with draw_vengers as my nickname. laughs

How have your parents supported your journey so far, sensing you have developed it early on and have quite a vision?

My parents have been my greatest supporters. And the way they have supported me is by trusting me completely. They never doubted that I would one day achieve my dreams. This is crucial to how I can pursue and create art despite the great costs and sacrifices I’ve made. Because when we go on travels to foreign countries, it costs, of course, and it takes up a lot of time and money. I strongly believe that they would not be able to support me if they did not trust me and did not believe that I would do my best to achieve my dreams. I think that belief and trust are the most important parts of how they support me.

What is your process for starting a new piece of art, especially your urban sketches? Could you walk us through your creative process—from selecting a location and framing the composition to capturing details? What key elements do you focus on to bring a cityscape to life?

There are multiple reasons that make a building or a place compelling to me. It might simply be that it is very beautiful architecturally or has a beautiful atmosphere. It could also be the history behind it. For beauty, I think a good example would be St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Louvre Museum in Paris, or the Vatican. But for history, it might be like when I sketched the statue of Churchill in London or when I sketched Napoleon’s Tomb at Les Invalides in Paris. That would be a good way of showing how history inspires me to draw a location.

After I have chosen a location, I usually like to draw it from the location where I am. Of course, I sometimes draw immediately, but that is usually when I draw from my imagination. When I draw from where I look, I don’t usually draw exactly what is in front of me. I always like to change it in ways that make it more distinctive. For example, I change details that I might think make the building look better, then I add stuff that I think would make it more impressive. I remove the points that I think distract us from the overall beauty of the composition. I tend to focus on the most eye-catching and most centrally impressive detail, in my opinion.

Can you share an example of a particularly challenging work you’ve created using liner pens? What specific difficulties did you encounter with this method, such as precision, ink flow, or composition, and how did you overcome them?

There have been occasions when I faced difficulties creating art, but I don’t personally think that the fault was ever with the materials I was using. But I rather think that I was at fault more when I faced those challenges. I remember when I was drawing Churchill’s statue in front of the House of Parliament in London, I faced difficulties in drawing the statue because my strong point is usually in architecture, not human forms. I was faced with the difficulty of rendering the statue effectively to portray its living power, but how I drew it made it look too bland. The solution I came up with was using hatching to convey a sense of texture to the statue, which had the desired effect of giving it a sense of reality and life.

As a 15-year-old, how do you balance the hours you spend drawing and attending school?

I recently graduated from middle school. Up till now, school wasn’t a particularly time-intensive part of my life. So, it wasn’t a real obstacle for me while drawing. I didn’t need to create a balance. However, I recently made the decision not to attend high school but instead to focus entirely on my art. So instead of attending high school, I will take an exam which will give me a high school level qualification.

In one of your pieces, you merged traditional Korean architecture with influences from the Harry Potter series and Gwanghwamun Square. What inspired you to blend these Eastern and Western elements so seamlessly?

I’ve always been inspired by cosmopolitan cities, especially the fusion of different cultures. On this occasion, I decided to fuse the heritage of my home country, Korea, with the Harry Potter series, which I have always enjoyed and loved. I often imagine alternate settings for plots of stories that I read or movies that I saw. And I’ve often imagined what a school of magic might look like if it were in a different nation, such as Korea. Such enjoyable imaginations, as well as conversations with my families, inspired me to create a Gwangwan-inspired Korean version of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Your latest art piece beautifully brings together iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Hogwarts, St. Paul’s Cathedral, etc., with the magic of musicals such as Les Misérables, Wicked, and The Greatest Showman. How do you train your mind to connect such diverse inspirations into a single, cohesive vision?

So, my mind kind of thrives on thinking diverse and often radically different thoughts at the same time. I relish the mental challenge of fusing different thoughts and different subjects to make something new and distinctively my own. Since I enjoy doing this so much, I do it all the time. This is something habitual to me, since I am doing it every day, 24 hours a day. I think that’s how I’ve trained my mind to do that kind of thing.

You also published your book, “Leo’s Art Adventure in the United Kingdom: The Boy Who Draws the World”, in the year 2022. What inspired you to tell this particular story, and how did the journey from concept to published book unfold?

So, the publisher with whom I worked on this book saw my art on Instagram and asked me if I would be interested in making a book about my art with them. I was thrilled and honored to have such an opportunity. The reason why I chose the particular story of my trip to the United Kingdom is quite simple. I’ve recently been on a very long trip to the United Kingdom, and therefore I had a lot of drawings, as well as a lot of stories to tell that were still quite fresh in my head, featuring numerous artists, writers and friends I got to know during my travel.

What plans or ambitions do you have for the future? Do you have any goals you would like to accomplish in the upcoming years?

This year, I’m going to embark on a long, year-long street-sketching trip across Europe. I intend to focus entirely upon this trip. Afterwards, I intend to focus on self-improvement through more learning, practice and experience.

Do you have any plans to visit India and experience our vibrant culture and heritage, and possibly consider exploring any of our traditional art forms?

I’ve always been interested in India. It’s one of the world’s most ancient civilizations, and I’ve always found that highly interesting and appealing. As of the moment, I don’t have any specific plans to visit India. However, India’s rich cultural heritage and rich history make it a country that I cannot avoid visiting one day in the future. I just hope that that day comes sooner than I expect.

On behalf of the entire team at Hallyuism, we would like to extend and express your precious time and share insights about your journey, Leo. We wish you all the best with your future projects. And lots of love from India!

We hope you all loved reading this interview as much as we loved conducting it. Let us know your thoughts in the comments!