What is a Katsuya Terada live drawing?

The format is stark. Terada stands before a blank surface with pens or markers and draws a finished, complex image from imagination, no preliminary sketch, over sessions that can run for hours. His own account of the method: 'The drawing starts as soon as the line becomes visible. As the lines start to emerge, you start to see more connections.' When the connections stop appearing, the drawing is done.

The performances anchor his public life. His first American exhibition was at Portland's Compound Gallery in 2004, co-hosted by Dark Horse; he returned in 2011 with Terra's Black Marker, and at San Diego Comic-Con 2014 he signed books and drew live for the launch of Dragon Girl & Monkey King. Los Angeles sees him most Decembers at Giant Robot 2, and his Japanese exhibitions, from the 2013 Kyoto retrospective TEN onward, build drawing sessions into the show.

The form was popularized internationally by the Korean artist Kim Jung Gi, and the two men are its twin pillars: a joint art book, Terada Katsuya + Kim Jung Gi, appeared in 2017. Many of the marker pieces first performed at these events are what Real Size later printed at full scale, which makes that book the closest a shelf can come to having been in the room.