Chula Vista resident Lee Kohse has a dazzling client list –Lucasfilm, Marvel, Disney, DreamWorks and has contributed his art to Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Speed Racer and more. Kohse will be manning booth #4820 at this year’s Comic-Con International: San Diego.
“I went to Comic-Con the very first year it was at the San Diego Convention Center,” said the 45-year-old artist. “I went as a volunteer for two years.” After that, he attended as an artist.
Part of his experiences helped form him into artist he is now, in the industrial, goth, and fantasy genres.
But his early struggles in high school simmered to the point where his sister, Sherry, took his sketch books to an art teacher and demanded that Lee be transferred from a drafting class into an art class.
He had been branded as a drafting student in internal notes at Hoover High School in San Diego which carried over to Chula Vista High.
“He (art teacher, the late Fred James) put me in the supply room,” said Kohse. “James said, ‘You owe me five sketches every week,’ and he wanted one comprehensive piece every other week.”
“I was always drawing, even as a little kid,” he said. “I didn’t talk. My mom had to take me to two psychiatrists.” His “talking” was his art, he said.
Over the course of his youth he did not always receive encouragement.
He says his formal education ended the year he graduated from Chula Vista High School in 1992. He acted in skits with classmate Mario Lopez, of Saved by the Bell fame. Another friendship stemming from Chula Vista High was with comic-colorist, Jeremy Cox, who graduated before Kohse.
“I knew he would be a success,” said Eric Esperon, who met Kohse in 11th grade. Esperon is a high school teacher at National City’s Sweetwater High School. “He has found a way to keep his art contemporary, trendy, and fresh.”
Currently, Lee is working on a new horror graphic novel and various Star Wars projects.
Kohse lives with his wife, Maria, and their 16-year-old son, Juan, in Chula Vista.
