Xiong LiangCreate for Fun

My first meeting with the Chinese illustrator Xiong Liang was in his bright studio in Beijing. He came to the spotlight early this year after being shortlisted for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest international honor that can be given to an author and an illustrator of children's books, but already before this mark of recognition, Xiong was highly appraised by domestic media as representing "the highest level of picturebooks creation in China."

Fair beard, a pair of square glasses, smiling eyes, an implicit sense of humor—Xiong demonstrates to me his distinct oriental temperament in no time. In his studio, there are pictures hanging on the wall; drawing tools, writing brushes, and paper rolls scatter around; and a Wooden Dummy to practice Wing Chun.

Xiong cannot be simply defined as an illustrator of children's books. His artistry takes many forms, and he always challenges himself to avoid getting trapped by conventions. It was through books for children, like The Little Stone Lion and The 24 Solar Terms, that Xiong first drew attention to his name. But he has also created profound works, such as The Tales of the Darkness.

Xiong is a smart and flexible illustrator. He constantly seeks fresh angles and stories to create popular works that are clear and easy to understand. Persistent and patient, Xiong follows his own rhythm of creation. He can suspend a story for ten years, saying "there will be a different taste in a story dragged out from the past; you can see how it ferments on the paper." He never worries about good stories losing value over time, and he is not dependent on the whims of a publisher since he prints every one of his works at his own expense. Apart from picturebooks, Xiong's knowledge and interest stretches to ink and wash painting, prose art, drama, exhibition, and children art education. He also runs his own studio. Child psychology, education, and social issues interest him deeply; non-mainstream music and literature are also topics that can fire him up. It is not easy to sum him up!

Born in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, a coastal province in southeastern China, in 1975, Xiong remembers his hometown as a typical region of rivers and lakes near the sea. The sea-water was especially yellow, Xiong recalls. He showed an interest in drawing at a very early age. His family moved into a riverside house when he was in the second year in primary school. In the house, his father built for him a wooden attic with a roof window. The attic later became a private drawing room, into which even his parents would not trespass.

Xiong was fascinated with the feeling of emptiness and desolation in traditional Chinese drawings. Every day after school, he would rush home to study the old masters, metaphorically travelling back hundreds and thousands of years earlier to see the work of artists like Zhang Sengyao (a Chinese artist active in the Southern Dynasties [420–589], birth and death unknown), Guan Xiu (monk artist, 832–912), and Xiao Congyun (Chinese artist, 1596–1873). Brush pen was one of his favorite tools for the natural lines they can create. Without a real teacher, little Xiong followed his heart, combining these early masters' works with images from his own mind. However, although Xiong comes from a town that is rich in historical relics and traditional culture—which explains his dedication to pursuing the spirit of ancient Chinese drawings—he does not necessarily have interest in traditional Chinese architectures including terraces, courtyards, rockeries, poplar, and willow trees.

Xiong finished his first picturebook, The Lu Xun Selections, when he was sixteen. All the pictures in the two-hundred-page book were secretly drawn in class under the cover of textbooks. Xiong said he liked Lu Xun for his remarkable personality.

Xiong got his first job in a design house when he was nineteen, but he quit ten months later. After a few years of scraping by, doing work for others, he eventually had a new burst of creativity and contributed commentaries and...