Don’t expect to compare Jon Han’s work with anyone’s that you know. His pieces are a summary of his life up to this point, a snapshot of his consciousness, influenced by everything from Japan to modern illustration to Wes Anderson films. An “accumulation of everything” is how he describes it. 

 

“Everything you do is a piece of you,” says the 27-year-old freelance artist, sitting in his Los Angeles home studio, a tidy workspace where paint brushes and pencils are scattered on a wooden table, along with an unfinished project of blue circular scribbles on a white piece of paper.

 

There’s a slight hesitation in his voice as he continues this thought. He understands that to survive in the fierce world of print illustration, he has to play by the rules — that is, follow the promptings of art directors while maintaining his “voice.”

 

It’s this delicate balance that’s resulted in Han’s thought-provoking illustrations seen in high-profile publications. On a Sunday morning, readers across the nation can open up the weekend paper and find his work boxed inside a Los Angeles Times book review or spread across the New York Times travel or op-ed section. He’s also illustrated for The New Yorker.

 

With thick emo glasses and slicked back hair, Han pauses occasionally in his speech as if worried about appearing larger than life. While he has no problem praising other artists’ work, he shies away from describing his own collection. And when asked about his favorite personal piece, he stops for a good minute before answering.

 

“There is one piece I like,” he says, turning toward his computer to pull up the digital version of a five-layer silkscreen print. “But it is strange. I don’t know why I like it.”

 

The print, titled “Cloud Storm,” depicts a rather ominous-looking scene of lightning firing out of black and red scribbled clouds in an unkempt blue sky. Han says it’s not the most welcoming piece, but he enjoys it because he made it without thinking about the outcome. “Some people get it, some people don’t,” he says. “I think most people don’t.”

 

Growing up Palos Verdes, Calif., Han says he was one of the many kids who enjoyed drawing as a hobby, but hadn’t considered it seriously as a career. His watershed moment happened while taking an engineering class at El Camino Community College. He remembers hating the class. Yet he saw students carry the same enthusiasm for applying scientific theories that he had for art. It prompted him to compile a portfolio.

 

After he was accepted into the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Han made a decision. Despite the cautionary tales of “starving artists” and the qualms of an unstable income, Han decided “to go for the hardest thing to do.”

 

Knowing what the freelance life entailed — living paycheck-to-paycheck, waking up to a new set of projects every morning and knowing his days wouldn’t end at 6:00 — Han dove into his career. In freelance work, Han says, no one’s going to tell you what to do. “You just have to really want it.”