Artist Profile: lawnmowerpants

For Rococo Flow’s first feature, I had the pleasure of interviewing the artist lawnmowerpants. She was born in Taipei, Taiwan but while growing up spent her time between there and Toronto, Canada. Her works have a sketchy and slightly messy feel to them. However, she has the ability to take very few colors and create pieces that are delicate and breathtaking.








How long have you been drawing?

I know almost every art interview you read says this, but I've been drawing as far back as I can remember. I wasn't allowed to watch television or play video games when I was younger so I spent a lot of time drawing and being creative but terrible.

How did you get interested in art?

My mother is a painter and she always wanted children in the family to keep art as a hobby. In terms of drawing anime/manga style... well, as a child who spent many years in Asia, naturally I got into manga and anime and wanted to try to draw it myself as well.

Who are your influences?

Anyone and everyone I admire in some way is an influence. This includes my friends and family, classic painters, and of course many professional mangaka as well as doujinshka. In particular GD (better known as GDMechano) who have drawn many Full Metal Alchemist doujinshi. There are artists that I really, REALLY like but I wouldn't call them an influence, in the sense that you probably won't see anything similar between my artwork and theirs, such as Honami Yukine and a crapload of game illustrators, like Yoshida Akihiko (FFTactics, FFIII, FFXII), Kazuma Kaneko, and sooo many more *hahaha*.

How would you describe your style?

I would say my style is fairly effeminate and fragile.


Can you describe your general approach to creating a picture?

I don't really CG or colour anything, so I'll talk about how I sketch. I start with a guideline/skeleton called a "sweep". If you've taken life drawing before then you probably know what I'm talking about. I usually start filling in the body first, but sometimes this fails miserably so I often start from the face too. It works better that way because nothing looks weirdly-sized or matched.

Like a lot of artists I draw a naked body and put the clothes on top, but I only do it for the upper torso and part of the legs, which is kind of awkward. In any case I don't actually follow the guideline I draw. It's more of a habit that makes me feel safer about how I draw. So if you look closely at any of my work you can usually see some random floating about and curls that are sort of beside/behind the characters *hahaha*. Other than that I think everything I do is the same as any other person?

What are your future aspirations?

In terms of relatively near-future aspirations, I really hope to one day (soon) publish a full doujinshi or an original comic up to something like 60 pages, all illustrated and inked and everything by myself. Except that sounds like a lot of work so I'm not sure I would be able to pull through, *hahaha*.

What programs do you primarily use for you artwork?

I pretty much only use Photoshop. I've been looking into practicing with ComicWorks so I can get better at inking, though.

What's your favorite traditional media?

PENCIL, hands down. It's my favourite medium overall.

Do have any advice for any other aspiring artists?

Hmmm for many artists, including myself, one of the most difficult things is getting past yourself. I mean like, getting upset because something you tried to draw won't turn out the way you wish, or really hating something you drew recently even though it's not too bad, or being overall disappointed in your progress. Don't let it stop you from drawing, you should just keep going and know that you can only improve with more practice.

If you could be any character from a video game, who would it be?

Most DEFINITELY the main character from Persona 3, or Serph from Digital Devil Saga, or Kuzunoha from Devil Summoner. Actually now that I think about it, any main character from the Megami Tensei series is just... *haha* wow I just really love them all.

You can view more work from lawnmowerpants at:

lawnmowerpants@deviantART - deviantArt Gallery
http://lmp.xxxxxxxx.jp - Homepage


If you would like to contact her you can email her at wander.colossi[at]gmail.com