Here is a 4 minutes video interview of Kim Jung Gi on the Korean channel EBS News
Translation in english (thanks OnlineNexus for this one !)
Reporter: When you see this blank paper, what comes in your mind? There is a cartoonist who, from a blank piece paper without even an outline, draw out the most elaborate story out of the white pages. A sketching savant and worldly renown Kim Jung Gi is presented here today.
0:36 Subtitles: What will it be? Watercolour flowers blossom from a white canvas Manhwa (Comics) A truthful story revealed vigorously through a candid storyteller Etching his soul onto the blank canvas: comic artist Kim Jung Gi
1:09 Jung Gi: When I was in kindergarden, I didn’t know by then, but I saw a picture drawn by the Dragon Ball Z comic artist Akira Toriyama about Dr. Slump. When I saw the picture, I thought “Oh, if I want to draw pictures like that, I need to become a comic artist.
1:26 My parents were against the idea: even when I was a kid they hated that I was always and constantly drawing. They were worried that this was a job where I wouldn’t be able to support myself and I’d lead a perilous life. Even in a notebook, I’d always fill it in to the corners– all of it fully to the ends– and then my mother would reprimand me harshly whenever I did so.
1:46 [I still draw in every corner wherever I can], like the flippant drawings on the top of a tissue roll, and on paper handouts and on monthly cellphone payment receipts; I draw on anything that is made of paper.
1:58 Reporter: All your drawings look like they’re objects from life copied onto the piece of paper. Your comics always have the feeling that the pictures were life wrote onto canvas so fluently.
Jung Gi: Nowadays many artists are interested in drawing fantasy, but I’ve always been more fascinated about the daily lives of people– places that are seen with my eyes, the daily lives of normal people. I think that our world is much more dynamic and exciting than fantastical worlds.
2:52 Reporter: I’ve seen recordings of your sketching process, and I saw that you always draw without any outline and fill the canvas with a finished drawing.
Jung Gi: Unlike artists who put finished artworks on a frame and put them on exhibits, as a teacher someone asked me if I’d just draw out the picture onto a blank sheet of paper, so I started with the habit, but after a while I’ve gotten used to this way, and when I see the image in my head, my hand merely acts as a girdle (support)
3:20 At first look, most people are surprised at this. There isn’t much to the ‘secret’ of drawing without an outline. I think it applies same to any other studies: you just keep on practicing and drawing, and as for me, I haven’t lost my enthusiasm for drawing, so I keep on at it. I think that’s the secret.
3:37 In a really hillarious comic I read, there was this comic artist who wanted to off himself and cut the oven gas pipe and lied down, but he wasn’t dying. Then he realized that it was already been a long time since the gas was cut off from him not paying his bills. Like that, the image of a comic artist wasn’t that great. However, the comic artists of today are greatly different than the artists of the past. There are so many ways to express and display your art, like smart phones and tablets and many more environments where it’s possible to look at art, so I thought how greatly improved the job was. I’m optimistic about the prospects of this career.
4:15 Subtitles: A ‘great job’ to have: being a comic artist A realism more real than life but also more warm; To draw on paper the ‘great world’ that we live in
