@peihsiuchen

Instagram: @peihsiuchen Facebook: www.facebook.com/peihsiu Behance: www.behance.net/peihsiu  

1. What's your story? Where are you from?

I'm a freelance illustrator based in Taipei, Taiwan. Most of the time, I work for children's magazines, but also trying to do graphic novels.

2. Tell us about your aesthetic.

This is not easy to answer so that I just take an example. Taipei's old apartments are often considered ugly. They have gray walls, exposed wires and pipes, iron windows and advertising signs are not uniform and cheap. Even so, I like to paint these old apartments than beautiful scenery and architecture. Pure and beautiful things are good enough in themselves and no need to be recreated by brushes.

3. What is your favourite medium and why?

I like to use pencil, color pencil and a little watercolor. Those are cheap and can make great textures. But I also like to paint in Photoshop, sometimes that would be faster and easier.

4. What is your artistic process like?

Depending on the content of the cases or the mood at the time, I would use different ways. I may use computer graphics entirely, or hand-painting entirely, or draw the elements on paper and collage them by Photoshop. So that made very different looks between my works. I can't tell this is good or not, but I really like try different ways to create images.

5. Who and/or what inspires your work?

Novels/other's great works

6. What role does art play in your life? How does it change the way you view the world?

I don't know if the things I'm doing are really related to art, or I just parasitize on art and allow myself to survive, so maybe art is like a host for me?

7. Where did you study?

I studied fine arts department of a university in Taipei. The main content of my study was fine art, art history, some different materials... It was mostly old-fashioned and academic stuff. As for the illustration skills, I learned through work and observing other people's works.

8. Where do you see yourself in five years?

Still painting for magazines, picture book, blah blah....but do them much better than now.(of course!)

9. What about in ten?

Probably still doing same things.

10. What do you hope to achieve with your art?

Instead of hoping my work can achieve what kind of achievement, I hope that I can always maintain my enthusiasm for creation. I often think that painting as my occupation made me lose a lot of fun in it.

11. Now, tell us a little more about you as a person: what is your favourite food?

Rice, or food made by rice.

12. Favourite book?

it's difficult to choose one book.I like a writer from Xinjiang named Li Juan, her writing bring me some Indescribable feelings of relief.

13. Favourite genre of music?

British Rock(most of time)

14. What are your hobbies?

Searching beautiful old objects and vintages on the Internet, imagine that I have them.

15. If you weren't an artist, what would you be?

Collect many old and beautiful things and open a shop to sell them.