Keiji Ishida is a Japanese American artist currently living and working in Los Angeles. He is an artist and visual philosopher, whose work encompasses graphic design, illustration, painting, and product design.
Keiji's first major commissioned work was for Apple for their grand opening at the Champs-Élysées in Paris, later leading with his first international solo exhibition, Paris Playground was held at an influential skate shop in Paris called, Nozbone Skate Shop. Since then, he has been collaborating with street brands like HUF Apparel, AirWalk Shoes, and Converse. Furthermore, Keiji continues to create and experiment to explore his creativity and unleash his ideas and thoughts onto a blank canvas.
What inspires you?
Recently, I've been inspired by architecture and the relationship between my art and the environment. It's important for me to curate my work to respond to space as it makes a huge difference in the way people view my work. For this reason, I had an amazing time working on this mural and see the final with the interiors all laid out! I'm curious what people will think about this work but I hope they will appreciate it as much as I do.
Who are your biggest influences?
I am inspired by many artists from different fields like– Paula Scher, Christoph Niemann, Cleon Peterson, Doug Aitken, Jason Polan, etc. Lately, artists like Geoff Mcfetridge and Robert Irwin have been my influence on colors and shape-making.
What drew you to this style of drawing?
A lot of my work stylistically is very clean and bold but when I draw on my sketchbook, my line becomes looser and more flexible in terms of the character's anatomy. I was captivated with my sketching style so I decided to take it to the next step by using this design for this mural. I was very pleased with the final outcome of the mural and I think this style gives a friendly atmosphere!
What was your design process for our Tenant Lounge project?
For this mural, I started with sketches and hand drew the characters one by one, and I later positioned each character on photoshop and produced few mockups to see which one works. Once the design was approved, I used a projector to project the image onto the wall section by section and traced it using a pencil. Then when tracing was completed, we began painting the inside layer with color, and we finished it with the black outline.
