Art for nature – Yoto Carnegie Medal winner Jeet Zdung
Jeet Zdung won this year’s Yoto Carnegie Medal for Illustration for his work on Saving Sorya: Chang and the Sun Bear.
COMIC book-loving artist, Jeet Zdung brought his unique manga style to the book which tells the story of a young girl’s efforts to save a sun bear.
Based on the experiences of Vietnamese naturalist Trang Nguyen, the story has a strong ecological message and highlights an individual’s power to create positive change in the world. Jeet’s illustrations marry his love of manga with an artistic grounding in traditional techniques – drawing on influences from his own Vietnamese culture and beyond. He says: “I have diverse drawing styles, from realistic depictions to cartoon, manga, and Vietnamese-Japanese folk styles. My favourite materials are watercolour paper, washi paper, Dó paper, canvas, comic pen, brush, ink, watercolour, gouache, acrylic, and acryl-gouache.” Jeet also writes his own books, describing his work as “multiform – including manga/comics (with or without words), graphic novels and picture books – and often depict adventures related to nature, folk arts, sports, children and wildlife”.
Jeet’s love of illustration stems from an early age, as he reveals: “As a child, I always wished that I could create my own cartoons or movies. I realised I could quite literally make my own movies on paper. I also liked illustrating and drawing, and taking lots of notes when I watched wildlife documentaries on TV.”
His childhood continues to inspire today, as Jeet says: “I loved wildlife, so my mind was filled with fantasies of thrilling adventures through ancient
Autumn-Winter 2023
forests. Sometimes I imagined myself as a wild animal freely exploring the forest, but when I was exposed to comics and manga, the way the stories were presented with their vivid characters coming off the page really appealed to me.” Jeet explains that he has always looked for inspiration in the art around him – as a child he was “mirroring what I saw in Disney cartoons, imitating paintings in books, classical painting, and manga.” He adds that his interest in different drawing styles has developed as he has grown older, allowing him to explore and incorporate new techniques into his work.
He says: “Currently, I am very interested in the beauty of traditional and folk art of Asian countries such as Vietnam, Japan, China, and Korea. I am also fascinated by the classics of Western painting; for instance, the paintings of artists like Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin and Peter Ilsted. Among more modern works, I like the detective graphic novels Black Sad by Juan Díaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido, and Rules of Summer and The Arrival by Shaun Tan. Shaun Tan’s paintings are amazing, I am so honoured to know that he was also been a winner of this award before.”
Jeet’s broad scope and desire to search out new influences is evident in his work. And he says that having a rich cultural palette enables him to develop his own unique storytelling through words and pictures. He says: “Occasionally, the story comes to me first and then I find the most suitable drawing style for it, but often, I choose to use a particular
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