Lisk Feng

List of Keywords that I think reflects the visual language of Lisk Feng’s commissioned work:

• 2d

• Editorial

• Representational

• Textured

• Reflects narrative

• Colorful

• Whimsical

• Chubby characters

• Deals with issues (mostly about body image)

Lisk Feng is a Chinese illustrator currently living in Queens, New York. She graduated from MFA Illustration Practice from Maryland institute College of art in 2014. She has worked for magazines such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Life Magazine, Wired, and Medium, but she is also a book, product, and comic illustrator. Her illustration materials started as mostly traditional, and had been so during most of her schooling, however, nowadays she mostly works digitally, as it is much more convenient for working fast (a requirement in editorial illustration). But she has kept her approach to art and style the same, Feng even uses similar textures to screen-printing, which she had been doing a lot of during college. She describes her style as colorful and full of whimsy. Her images are meant to make wishes and dreams come alive. Feng’s favorite illustration is of a happy family in their backyard. Her characters are created from simple rounded shapes, given life through the colorful backgrounds and wealth of texture.

Because she is mainly a editorial illustrator, her work does not center around a single topic (and even a single stylistic approach), but one of the reoccuring themes in her personal work is body image. Growing up in China was difficult for her because of her more rounded body type, but after moving to New York she started to heal from that, and she has expressed this through her illustration.

All her illustrations, even those about rather cold topics like finance, manage to include some sort of story or whimsy.

On Body Image

Feng’s sketchbooks are her brainstorming and inspiration diaries. She uses them to both create initial sketches to send to clients and as inspiration for when she’s in the middle of artist’s block. When she feels she has run out of ideas, she flips through her sketchbooks then opens another page and starts doodling with more freedom. Her sketching approach looks similar to her final artwork in style, if a little looser and experimental. She uses small, portable sketchbooks when on commute and at coffee shops and larger sketchbooks for coloring an inking experiments.

The main thing that I would like to replicate for my own artwork is her texturing and coloring technique. In a skillshare video, she talks about how screen-printing inspires the way she approaches coloring in a digital medium. She chooses a limited palette and sticks with it throughout the illustration. She also talks about how this is useful when creating a series of illustrations, as I will be doing, because a limited color palette automatically creates a cohesive final product. I, too, have been experimenting with digital textures recently, but her work has inspired me to take it to the next level.