Splashing the paint and finding the joy with Monjajaja

While AI has its uses (cough), nothing compares to looking at a work that fully expresses the hand of the artist and what they were feeling as they composed it. To engage with real, living, breathing people, many clients prefer to work with a real, living, breathing illustrator, and that's where artists like Monjajaja come to the fore.

A recent graduate of Kingston University's Illustration programme, Monjajaja – real name Shimeng Jiang – takes the little things in life and makes them matter to the viewer. "My ideas mostly come from daily life – what I see and hear. I'm interested in topics like food, people and places, and creating something that is hand-made and organic," she says.

"I usually start on paper, playing around with watercolour, gouache, pastel, and pencil; it is a medium where you can embrace mistakes for spontaneity. I then combine the outcome in a digital process to create the final piece," she continues. "I hope viewers can find joy and stillness in my work."

Mon's style is playful, naïve, and a little raw. She's willing to mess with forms and perspective if it will give her work the expressive qualities she seeks. Elongated limbs have long been on-trend in figurative work, though mainly in graphic-led illustration; however, she uses this look to add to the feeling of a piece.

"Maybe it comes from Expressionism and artists like Pablo Picasso," she muses. Through this approach, I want to achieve a sense of humour and dramatic feeling in my illustration. It's also for the composition. For example, in the work Poke Bowl, the figure needs to stretch their arms out far enough to hold the bowl."

As her career in illustration begins to take off, Mon is working for editorial clients. For example, she has illustrated an interview with the band The English Teacher for So Young magazine and an article about ramen noodles for Finger Food magazine. The latter led to her recent exhibition, Japan Meets China, in which 13 pieces of work explore the links between the two cultures through food. Delicious.

To stay inspired and develop her skills, she undertakes self-initiated projects such as The Haircut, a hand-drawn zine that traces its origins to a visit to the hairdresser with her mother. Meanwhile, Bloom and Wild uses a wildflower as a metaphor for modern life, with pastel and coloured pencil imagery in an accordion card format.

"It's a reminder to myself and everyone that it's important to stay true to yourself, and aims to resonate with anyone experiencing self-doubt," says the artist.

For her graduate project at Kingston, Monjajaja created an animation in the visual language she's developed, which portrays life at the university from an outsider's perspective – how do we connect with our environment when we arrive in a new place? You can watch it below.