Tu Anh Dinh ’11 illustrates her artistic career, one book at a time

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Creative Campus

Tu Anh Dinh ’11 illustrates her artistic career, one book at a time

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Kate Balderston

Columnist

February 4, 2011

Aaron Wolf

**SKETCHED:** As a six-year-old, Tu Anh Dinh ’11 learned English by reading picture books. Now, she hopes to make a career out of illustrating children’s books.

Tu Anh Dinh '11 learned English by looking at pictures. As a six-year-old, she taught herself new words by leafing through children's books and immersing herself in their illustrations. This educative effect left such a mark on Dinh that she continues to engage with aspects of children's literature today—she draws portraits for her visual arts major, studies English and has even tried her hand working at a publishing house.

Dinh began drawing as a toddler and has since developed her repertoire to include painting, sculpture and ceramics. At Bowdoin, she discovered a passion for portraiture while enrolled in Drawing II her sophomore year. Since then, Dinh completed two series of drawings depicting whimsical fairy tale characters, one of which was exhibited on campus this past fall.

"I received the Kaempfer Grant over the summer to work on anything I wanted," she SAID. "I decided to pursue fairy tales such as 'Snow White' and 'Beauty and the Beast,' but I also illustrated some lesser-known ones like 'Puddocky,' which is about a girl who eats parsley."

"I received some great compliments, which were really reassuring," added Dinh. "A lot of visual arts students go through a phase where they ask if their art can stand alone. This fall I realized that yes, my work can."

Such newfound confidence has motivated Dinh to experiment with her technique. Although still using people as her subject, she is now increasing her pieces' vibrancy, using metallic blues to outline her figures and adding bright orange accents. She has also begun painting people she doesn't know, which adds an element of mystery to her work.

"Right now I'm working on stretching my boundaries and experimenting with new colors and subject matter," she explained. "I'm drawing scruffy men, babies and the elderly. I'm trying to make myself uncomfortable."

"I believe artists should develop technical skills, but in order to grow we need to test ourselves," added Dinh. "Being too comfortable can make us complacent."

This desire to never be satisfied inspired Dinh to return to children's books. Rather than working in the art world this past summer, she interned for Candlewick Press, a publishing company that has printed books such as "My Friend Maisy" and "Where's Waldo." Dinh reminisces on her experience as being fun and professionally informative.

"I worked in the marketing department and was able to handle children's books everyday," she said. "Candlewick is a small company and I got to work with librarians as well as teachers. I had such a good time."

Dinh's internship allowed her to handle original manuscripts, read new books and write reviews.

"I also learned a lot about children's book illustrations and saw that they are starting to really evolve," she said. "I'd like to work in that field, but I want to work in a more traditional fashion."

Another time Dinh stepped outside her comfort zone occurred while studying abroad in Glasgow, Scotland. Determined to have a unique experience her junior fall, Dinh took classes at the Glasgow School of Art. In addition to a course on bagpipes (Dinh now can play a few Scottish melodies), she enrolled in a figurative sculpture class—an endeavor she found quite entertaining.

"My sculpture course was really intense," she explained. "It was really fun though and we were given an unlimited amount of clay. Models would pose on a huge Lazy Susan that everyone could spin around and view the subject from different angles. By the end of the year, I became pretty good. I could almost sculpt body parts with my eyes closed."

Dinh was not always so stellar at visual art, however, and she admits that she initially struggled. Inspiration to improve came to her by way of her mother. Having immigrated to the States from Vietnam, Dinh's parents encouraged her to pursue her passions. Her mother, seeing how passionate Dinh was about drawing, urged her to become an artist.

"My mom always told me to do the things that make me happy," Dinh recalled. "It was a very standard motherly thing to say, but my mom genuinely meant it. She wanted me to have the things that she could not. I started really loving art because of my mom's drawing[s] and paintings. I used to say, 'Mom, you're better than Van Gogh!'"

With her parents' blessing, Dinh seems ready to take the art world by storm.

"I keep wanting to see how much better I can get," she said. "I want to see when I have to stop or when I have to throw up my arms and say that this is the best it's going to get. Hopefully that isn't true for anything in life though...I want to test myself and see if the road will end somewhere."

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