Jiho Song

Shown is the digital artwork created by sophomore Jiho Song during the Illustration Art Throwdown, a live-streamed contest where entrants created an album cover within a designated time on Oct. 26.

Sophomore Jiho Song placed first in the Illinois Illustration Art Throwdown, a live-streamed contest where entrants created an album cover within a designated time on Oct. 26. Online voting took place Oct. 26-28. Senior Eliza Dearing also competed in the event.

Jiho felt completely shocked and honored to have won first place after facing creative challenges during the competition.

“I made a lot of bad decisions in the first half,” he said. “I was planning to do traditional and I switched to digital. I had like 10 minutes left to color. So I’m really really shocked but really, really glad I did win.”

Although this competition had been in the works for a couple of months, Jiho only found out the Tuesday before that this was the one he was going to participate in. 

“I got it mixed up, there’s another one in April, and I thought I was supposed to do that one,” Jiho said, adding that art teacher Brian Wildeman approached him in the hallway two days before the contest.

During the competition, technical difficulties didn’t allow the commentators to see what Jiho was working on or allow him to explain his creative process. 

“For everyone else, they would go through it and point out what made them different and had people talk about their creative processes,” he said. “My creative process is that I typically start everything planning out what I’m going to do with little thumbnails. Then after that, I find references for those, because I only work from references. After that I sketch it out, I put the references away and I color that in.”

The full Art Throwdown can be streamed on YouTube. 

A U-High student placed second in the 2022 competition.