Charli Lin’s finely detailed dicks, dinosaurs and dead nuggets
Many of you may have read the Herald Sun. But it’s likely many more of you have clicked on a photo from Drawing Dicks on the Herald Sun – a now-defunct Facebook page that overshot the Herald Sun’s own relatively flaccid Facebook page by hundreds of thousands of “likes”.
Melbourne artist Charli Lin was one of the page’s star dick-drawers. A few years ago, her finely detailed, grotesque dicks appeared alongside 20 handpicked artists-cum-dick-drawers from around Australia in a Drawing Dicks on the Herald Sun exhibition. And she’s set to appear in an upcoming documentary on this dick-drawing community (once the creators are able to fund it).
In fact, when the creators of the page first met her, they were surprised she wasn’t a man. She tells me people more often mistake her for a young boy before they meet her.
“It’s the subject matter that really throws people. I tend to laugh at it these days - it doesn’t really annoy me,” Charli says.
Charli isn’t your typical artist. Rather than picking a style and sticking with it, perfecting it, she hops from one subject to another, and one medium to another, from drawing dicks to developing costumes.
Her inky illustrations are edgy, whimsical and a little retro at times. And her favourite things to draw are dinosaurs and tea cups. Well, specifically, turn of the century tea cups; and t-rexes, triceratopses, and stegosauruses.
“Anything with a lot of spikes and detail,” she tells me over coffee at Borsch Vodka and Tears on Chapel Street.
While all her drawings have a distinct Charli Lin flavour, it’s hard to pin down exactly what her style is. Even Charli isn’t sure.
“I just draw what I like. I don’t know if you’d call it a style because it’s all over the place. I’m very conscious of that and that’s why it’s difficult to find any stable work for me,” she says. “Not a lot of artists work like I do. They develop a style and a subject matter that they enjoy and they perfect it.”
Her work is so diverse, people have messaged her on Instagram asking for her to feature their work, mistaking her page for one that showcases different artists.
“I’ve played a million different instruments and different sports and done different academic studies. You know, you see something shiny and think, I want that now.
“I just want to know it all, and you get a very short life, you may as well experience everything. I don’t want to box myself in.”
Many of her ideas come from her vivid dreams, both day and night dreams. And when she wakes up, she quickly writes them into her phone. Lately, she says, she has been dreaming in black and white.
“I have a lot of recurring dreams. I suppose you’d classify them as nightmares, but they don’t feel like it at the time.
She’s referring to black drawings of tentacled, tree-like branches stretching, knotting and snaking into each other. I think it sounds terrifying.
“Those shapes appear when I let my mind wander too much, and I see tree branches knotting and turning to tentacles.”
When they’re not emerging from her dreams, Charli’s art can be commissioned, and her favourite project so far has been Death To Nuggets, a food event in Melbourne to educate kids about eating healthy food.
It meant Charli had the unique opportunity to think up around 60 ways to kill nuggets. This includes a nugget strapped to a rocket, a nugget in a blender, a nugget being held up by a gun, and my favourite, a nugget fleeing a bowling ball.
Death to Nuggets had a stall at the Flemington Races, in a little-known area where kids can play while their parents get messy. Charli was there taking drawing requests from children.
“I made a life-size mascot costume of a nugget. That was so much fun but also super challenging. They even hired a guy to get in there.”
Charli’s interest in art first bloomed when she was in school, doodling in her work book or on her friends’ hands.
“I read a lot of comic books growing up so I’d try and replicate the styles of writing, and draw my own.”
Two of her biggest influences, she says, are comic book artists Frank Miller (Dark Knight, Sin City) and Mike Mignola (Hellboy). It’s easy to see the dark palette and exaggerated physiology in their art reflected in Charli Lin’s own work.
“I’ve done several comic books over the years. I don’t know where any of them are - they were never published of course,” Charli says, laughing. “I just made them for friends and handed them out.”
Another influence was her father, an accomplished painter of traditional Vietnamese art. But despite his art background, Charli says he didn’t encourage her to take on art full-time.
“When he was younger, he was quite famous in Vietnam for his traditional paintings. He’s an amazing painter. So I suppose the talent comes from him, but he lived in poverty and experienced the bad side of the world so discourages me. He’s like, ‘When will you become a doctor?!’”
“The lure to art was too strong. I can’t sit still, let alone be looking at people’s insides for hours.”