This story was the cover feature in the October 2023 issue of Seafood Magazine.
Tim Li, 37, is a Wellington-based artist specialising in photorealistic graphite drawings and Japanese gyotaku prints of many of Aotearoa new Zealand's best-known marine species. He opens up to seafood about his fascination with fish and why his creative process encourages him to slow down.
Have you always had a deep connection to kaimoana? I grew up in Taupō, Central North Island. My parents owned a fish and chip shop for about 30-odd years, and I grew up in that environment. Just like a lot of Kiwi kids, we all obsessed over that commercial fishing species poster. My parents always had big stacks of the Seafood New Zealand magazines and at the back were these brief stories on different commercial fish species. I used to be fascinated by those articles.
Did you always want to become an artist? I always drew as a kid from New Zealand fishing news magazines. Every time I go back to my parents' with my kids, we go through all our old stuff and I found early drawings of all these fish! I drew all through college, and I studied design and a bit of fine art at university. But all of my working experience early on was cheffing for quite a few years. Then I went and did teacher training, because I wanted to put my degrees to use and did about 10 years of secondary school teaching in the art side of things, but also in hospitality.
I started drawing again, properly, for myself about five or six years ago - I took the mentality that if I was going to be teaching high school kids how to how to draw and paint and photograph and do design and all the different facets of the art curriculum, I needed to practice what I preach. At that time, because I was diving so much, my obsession was the ocean. So I just put two and two together and just started drawing fish. Not necessarily thinking about what I was doing as a kid, but just drawing what I got enjoyment out of. I made the call two years ago to pull the pin on teaching and just pursue a full-time art career.
What's your artistic process? I take good reference photos of actual fish. Then I do a quick freehand sketch. And then I just slowly invest weeks and months bringing the draw into life. Everything is fluid and freehand - there's no tracing, there's no predicting; everything's done off the cuff. Sometimes I can get lost in the flow and crank out five hours.
How do you choose what fish to draw? At the beginning, I wanted to draw the crazy species that New Zealand waters had and all the things that interested me. It started with a lot of the stuff that I was spearing myself. So I'd shoot a fish, and then I'd photograph it and have high-quality reference images on hand. I started wanting to draw all of the lesser-known species, but I was always limited to what I could access myself. So I started trying to nurture some relationships with fishmongers around the country, and fishing companies, and slowly started to accumulate a really good, diverse network of contacts who could supply me with fish for photographing. Recently I got a moonfish.
And you're also known for your gyotaku prints. What's that? Traditionally it's printing fish with sumi ink on rice paper. I managed to get some paper, but it was pretty expensive and I've burned through a lot very quickly, just having failure after failure. But I found out you can do it on cotton, so I thought I would give it a proper crack now, because I was starting to get some more results with the fabric. I started with India ink because India ink is a carbon-based ink as well. But now I use a print-making ink, which is a non-toxic, water-based ink you just have to dilute down so you can control how viscous it is. And now I'm getting to the point where I'm returning to paper to try and master that approach.
Gyotaku for me is a side project that helps me keep a bit more balanced, and absolutely tick off some of those species I've always wanted to draw, but just don't have the time to do. Plus, when I'm diving in the thick of summer and spring, I'm harvesting fish for myself and my family. I can do a few prints to help refine my process and my technique, but also get more out of what I'm taking from the ocean - having those commemorative artworks for special fish that I'll always remember, but also as a way of honouring what I'm taking and being able to slow down and appreciate the qualities and intricacies of the fish.
So it becomes a meditative process? I want to really emphasise is trying to get people to slow down and think about how much time it takes to grow for a pāua or a crayfish to get to legal size. My drawings might take four or five months to complete. And people are blown away by that length of time. But that's nothing compared to how long something like a crayfish takes to grow. And then we'll just go and dive and take a crayfish and chuck it in a pot and eat it, and it's gone. I'm trying to encourage people to have more of an awareness about what they're harvesting, and acknowledge and appreciate how amazing and beautiful nature is.
When I started to get really into my art and started to slow down and observe all those intricacies and patterns and details, I looked at what I was taking versus what I take now. And I take in a much more selective way. In a much more humble way.
And with gyotaku you can still use the whole fish? Yeah, absolutely. That's another thing I want to try and encourage. I printed a 24-pound snapper this guy up in Northland speared. He reached out to me because his partner wouldn't let him get it mounted, and it had been in his freezer for six months. By the time we got to me, it was in pretty poor nick. We should be primarily harvesting for sustenance - so you can get that trophy image out of it via a photo or an artwork, and then still be able to fully utilise that fish. That's the perfect outcome for me.
