Tran Nguyen immigrated with family to the United States at age three. “We were fortunate to be sponsored by a US program in the early nineties and were given the option to settle in either California or Georgia. I’ve been told by my parents that they were advised to move to Georgia due to the gang violence occurring in the West Coast at the time. As much as I love to travel, my roots have settled in Georgia.” She credits Pizza Hut with having a major impact early on. “This was way back when Pizza Hut had arcade machines in the waiting area, and my favorite of all time was the SNK cabinet, which introduced me to Samurai Shodown. It had the coolest splash art, and I would do my best to burn it into memory so that I could go home and redraw it on white computer paper. Later on, I started collecting Magic: The Gathering and Ani-Mayhem cards, just for the art. I struggled with English as a kid (I took ESL classes in school to keep up) and couldn’t figure out how to play Ani-Mayhem, so instead, my brothers and I would play Tiến lên and bet with the Ani-Mayhem cards.”

Nguyen earned a BFA in illustration at Savannah College of Art and Design, even using free elective slots to take courses outside of illustration but still exploring arts. “I took classes in sequential art, video games, et cetera, and quickly realized that illustration was where I thrived the most.” During her final year, she received a scholarship to attend the Illustration Master Class by Rebecca Guay, who had started the workshop. “It was a pivotal moment in my career where I had the opportunity to meet both emerging and legendary artists that I admired from the early days of DeviantArt and Society of Illustrators.”

Significant early pieces in genre include the cover for The Insects of Love by Genevieve Valentine (Tor.com, 2014), which earned her a Spectrum Silver Award, and the cover for Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey (Subterranean Press, 2016), which won her a Chesley. Nguyen’s interiors go back much farther and are only a part of her overall body of work. She’s a two-time Hugo finalist, won a World Fantasy Award and an Ignyte Award, took home two Spectrum Gold Awards, and won two Chesleys, among a host of other nominations, nods, and accolades, including being named among “Top 10 Designers” by Paste and being named one of the “Top Masters of Fantasy Illustration” by ImagineFX. Her site lists a broad range of venues and clients, including VH1, World Wildlife Fund, Smithsonian magazine, Buzzfeed, even McDonald’s, Toyota, and Playboy, and notes that she has also shown in galleries.

Tran Nguyen works full-time as a freelance illustrator, after years of developing a name and a reputation for striking work. “When my career was still finding traction, I would clock in at the day job then come home to work on the few illustration gigs that came my way.” Nguyen has worked at places like Staples and a hibachi restaurant, while also designing graphics for local companies or doing background animations for studios. “It was stressful juggling two jobs, but it was worth it to build the foundation that I have today.”

Nguyen still lives in Atlanta, Georgia. “Atlanta’s a beautiful city for most of the year! It was originally a stepping stone before I moved to New York City, but over time, I slowly fell in love with Atlanta and ultimately decided to stay. It may not be as flashy as other metro areas, but it’s filled with culture, good Asian food, tons of greenery, and is much more affordable than most big cities.”

Do you have any hobbies or any interesting tidbits you can share about yourself?

A fun fact about me is that I’m partially deaf, so if I meet someone at an event or show, and I’m slow to respond, it probably means I’m trying to work out what was said to me! I promise I’m not ignoring anyone. I’m just hard of hearing.

Another fun fact—I keep track of the hours I spend on a painting by the amount of audiobooks I consume within the time frame. To date, I’ve listened to over 325 books. The better the audiobook, the more productive I become.

In terms of hobbies, I passively collect Anime cels, the highlight of my travels abroad is petting stray cats, and I’m exceptionally decent at Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

Tell us a bit about your journey. How did you initially start doing art, and what led you to decide to pursue art seriously as a career?

Every other weekend, my parents would treat me and my brothers to a trip to Blockbuster to rent the newest anime and JRPG releases. I loved flipping through the game manuals and seeing all the incredible key illustrations. When we rented Bubblegum Crisis on VHS, I would pause it on the frame I wanted to replicate and scribble as fast as I could on paper what I saw on the TV screen. That was sort of how I taught myself to draw. As I learned more and drew better, I became adamant that this was what I would spend the rest of my life doing. I applied to SCAD and got in but couldn’t afford it, so I attended a local college my freshman year until I was able to reapply with a better portfolio the following year, which landed me a substantial scholarship. There was never an alternative to art for me, and I was willing to fight for it.

You are a multi-award-winning artist, with clients in publishing, streaming, and much more. Were there ups and downs along the way, or did things fall into place smoothly?

I don’t think artistic struggles ever end—in a good and bad way! It took a lot of tears and years to accumulate a steady flow of clients. I was also refining my process/style along the way, figuring out the business side of freelancing, and learning to be resilient when projects would fall flat on their faces. After two decades, I can confidently say I have a good handle on things, but there will always be new challenges on the horizon, which can bring excitement and keep me on my toes.

What do you see as your first “landmark” sale or commission—what was the moment when you felt like things were really happening?

My first landmark moment was the opening of my solo exhibition at Thinkspace Gallery. This was my first big show, first time traveling across the States, receiving and responding to feedback from attendees, a lot of firsts as an artist. It felt surreal being there. To my surprise, the opening went phenomenally, and the show sold out. At the time, I was still wrapping my head around the fact that people wanted to pay real money for my paintings.

What were your goals as an artist when you first decided to pursue art seriously, and what are they now?

My goal early in my career was to simply make a living out of art, no matter what kind of art I was making. As long as I could pay bills, it was enough. Nowadays, my goal is to focus on assignments that align with what I naturally love to paint, as well as prioritizing personal projects that remind me why I got into illustration.

Are there specific artists or illustrators who have influenced or inspired you?

There are so many! I cherish the works of Amano Yoshitaka. His paintings are made of top-tier elegance. Back then, I would accompany my parents on their weekly grocery store visit and spend the entire time in the magazine section, flipping through issues of GamePro magazine to look for Amano’s illustrations. I have a humongous, limited edition Amano Final Fantasy X print hanging in my foyer, and I find myself staring at it all the time! It brings me so much joy. To name a few other artists, I adore the works of Kōsuke Fujishima, Tetsuya Nomura, Eric Fortune, Alphonse Mucha, and Gustav Klimt.

How did you become interested in science fiction and fantasy in particular, and where does genre fit into your creativity or your artistic body of work?

Like most kids before the existence of cell phones, I would escape into the fantastical world of Evangelion, Record of Lodoss War, Breath of Fire, Resident Evil, et cetera. These genres injected magic into my life when it felt dull. Sci-fi and fantasy were where it was acceptable to be creative and weird. I’ve pulled from these genres to add touches of surrealism and whimsy to my gallery work. It helps me think outside the box and explore conceptual imagery rather than grounded ones.

Looking back on your earlier pieces, from the time of Our Flutter-some Ordeal or Way of Words or A Place Once Home I & II, what are the most important ways you’ve changed as an artist?

Through years of learning about what subjects I’m drawn to, and how I think and interpret ideas, I feel that I’ve developed a solid visual vocabulary. No matter how my style will change over the course of my career, the themes and motifs stay the same. It’s a mark of how I see and visually encase the world on paper.

You describe your process on your site. Does your process change if you’re working on a book cover, as opposed to an ad, mural, or something else?

Whether it’s a gallery piece or commercial illustration, the process is generally the same. It’s painted with acrylics and colored pencil on paper at home in my studio. The exception is hand-painted murals. That’s an entirely different beast that involves a lot of physical labor plus the element of working large scale while maneuvering a boom lift with spray paint. It’s an incredibly fulfilling job to take on, but I’m 85 percent sure I developed a sun allergy from working on outdoor murals over the years.

You’ve done murals in California, Hawaii, and China, and have, perhaps, traveled to more places than these. How much does the experience of travel or physical locations influence your art?

I work from home every day, so it can be isolating at times. After a long stretch of deadlines, my world feels narrow, so traveling to sublime mountainsides removes the horse blinders and helps me feel how expansive the universe really is. I also love admiring the different styles of architecture found abroad, which sometimes makes its way into my paintings.

What have been a few of your more challenging projects, what made them challenging, and how did you face those challenges?

About a decade ago, I worked on an editorial assignment that didn’t go as planned. After the art director approved the preliminary sketch, I began the final painting. Once I sent in the final, they realized there was a problematic tonal shift from sketch to final. I had made a last-minute decision to slightly shift the figure’s posture that inadvertently changed the image’s narrative. After a stressful phone call with the art director, I worked from sunup to sundown for three days to repaint the entire piece. From that experience, I’ve learned to be more mindful when I make last-minute modifications to approved sketches!

Technology is constantly changing. What do you see as some of the most important technological advancements in illustration over the past ten or fifteen years, and what are some of your favorite tools that folks outside the industry might not know about?

In high school, I discovered Photoshop and only painted digitally for many years. My first Wacom was the Intuos 2, which I kept for about twenty years before it broke. Today, it blows my mind how technology has fine-tuned digital tools to accurately mimic traditional paint strokes and textures. Now that I work traditionally, I don’t keep up with new advancements in digital art tools. However! For all the traditional artists out there, I want to share my favorite way to digitize my paintings. The best way to scan a painting made on textured substrates, such as watercolor paper, is to find a local print shop that carries a Cruse scanner. It’s basically a huge scanning bed that digitizes your art with the highest level of accuracy and detail. It hurts me to see artists spend hours on a painting just for them to send the art director a poorly lit/blurry file.

Looking through your work on your site, gold is often prominent, and when not prominent, often makes a striking appearance; blues are another important color in many of your pieces. What are the palettes or combinations that you feel speak to you the most, and what do you like about them?

My go-to comfort colors are blue and brown with a splash of gold. I started using these colors in my senior year of college. I’ve shifted to other palettes on the color wheel, but this color combo is my favorite. It feels like home.

The perspective of an artist can potentially be different from the perspective of folks who don’t practice a specific craft. When you think of your work and the pieces that you really like or feel are most successful, what are the things that you are looking at?

Funnily, my favorite paintings are never other people’s favorites (it’s usually their least). It happens nine out of ten times, whether I ask my husband, friends, or peers. Personally, what makes a successful painting is one that comes out as close to what I envisioned in my head as I start the painting. I think the biggest hurdle for artists is translating the vision in their mind onto paper.

What are some of your favorite pieces or projects you’ve done, whether or not in genre, or perhaps pieces or projects that you’re most proud of, and what do you like most about them?

I had so much fun working on Eshki Dragonclaw for Magic: The Gathering. It was my first time getting to design a character (based on established themes). The final painting also came out quite close to what I envisioned in my head when I first got the assignment. Recently, I’ve worked on a few comic covers and have had the chance to paint some of my favorite characters from X-Men, including Storm and Psylocke.

What is your favorite advice for aspiring or up-and-coming illustrators?

There isn’t a straight line to establishing an art career. Trial and error is the best way to learn everything you need to know about making art and being a freelancer. Also, be kind to yourself.

Is there anything else you’d like Clarkesworld readers to know about you or your work?

I’ve been away for the past year working on a goliath of a project with Dragonsteel Books that will come out in December. It’s a multi-illustration project accompanied by a magical story, and I hope everyone likes it!