Alice Li

Year of birth: 1999.
Where do you live: London / Chengdu.
Your education: Postgraduate.
Describe your art in three words: alive, fairytale-esque and bright.
Your discipline: Illustration.
Website | Instagram

Could you tell us about your experience studying both Design at the China Academy of Art and Illustration at Kingston University? How have these different environments influenced your approach to art?

During my studies at the China Academy of Art, I was exposed to collaborative interdisciplinary research. By taking different courses, I have tried different aspects of graphic design and product design. Our teachers also gave us great support and guidance in our various endeavors. As a result, I have enjoyed experimenting with different materials and media in my paintings. As a freshman, I never imagined that my final project would be a short theater film. Our program also starts various Chinese-foreign collaborative workshops in the semester before the summer holidays, which allow students to be exposed to art and design works from different cultural backgrounds and to interact with professionals. During the illustration workshop in my first year, I met illustrators from the UK as well as teachers who had graduated from UAL’s illustration program. With such a strong learning atmosphere, I was eager to study illustration in the UK.

Kingston University is located in London, UK, and has world-class workshops and equipment that can meet my needs for creating with different materials. London is rich in art and cultural resources. I visited various museums, galleries, and exhibitions during my time there, and our main program included field trips where our teachers took us to museums and galleries to visit and learn. We combined the methods taught by the teachers with our individual interests to create our own works of art. 

When I enter a new environment, I am full of curiosity and more willing to explore. During my undergraduate studies, I had very little time to explore a new place with my heavy course load. During my time at Kingston, I have explored more places and found myself and my own creative style and rhythm.

Alice Li | Prague | 2024

Your sketches capture a sense of daily life and personal experiences. What do you find most fulfilling about documenting life through sketches?

I love to paint, travel, and share, so I decided to combine all three. During my travels, I use a paintbrush to make notes of the sights and later share them via text on my social media platforms. One of the things that makes me feel very accomplished is that by documenting my life in this way on the platform Xiaohongshu, I have gained thousands of followers in less than a year, which has attracted the attention of publishers. I have also recently signed a contract with a Chinese publisher to publish my personal sketches, and I hope they will soon be available to everyone!

When I draw my sketches, I look more closely at my subjects and discover more details, while at the same time I subjectively leave out some content to achieve a balanced picture. Because drawing is not as quick as taking a picture with a mobile phone, I will spend more time concentrating on what is in front of me, looking for the right composition and what is worth capturing in the picture, and interpreting the master’s work from my own point of view. This also makes it easier for me to find the beauty and interesting things in life. It can be said that sketching has influenced the way I look at the world.

You experiment with various drawing media and mixed materials, such as RISO printing and digital painting. How do you decide which medium to use for a particular project or idea?

Influenced by my design studies, I take into account the emotions and ideas I want to express through the project when deciding which medium to use. Different projects have different qualities that they carry and express, so I don’t fixate on one form of expression. For me, different painting media have different characteristics and bring different feelings and experiences to people. I take this into account when I paint.

Sometimes I also create works specifically for a particular medium in order to experiment with it. For example, RISO gives me a vintage feeling, and the form of my composition will be more vintage. Watercolor sometimes gives me a feeling of tears dripping on the paper, making the painting dense, so I will use watercolor to paint some melancholic paintings. In the process of mixed media painting and combining hand-painting with digital painting, or imitating hand-painted effects with digital painting, every detail conveys the mood and idea I want to express, not just for the sake of ‘beauty.’

When I make a formal drawing on paper, I might first try to match the colors on the iPad. After drawing on paper, I sometimes continue to make minor adjustments and refinements on the iPad. The reason I use different materials for sketching is because I take different materials in different colors with me when I go out, and sometimes the colors I need to use are only available in a certain material, so I use different materials to meet the color needs of the painting.

Alice Li | Sir Henry Unton | 2024

The drawings you’ve shared depict a range of subjects, from detailed skeletons to natural landscapes and cityscapes. What themes or emotions do you aim to explore through these diverse subjects?

In the beginning, I was in the mood to explore painting with the intention of documenting the beauty and interesting routines of everyday life. I drew things and subjects that I hadn’t drawn before, and I drew the objects that moved me the most in a situation. I can say that with each sketch, I can tell an interesting story behind the image. For example, in a small shop selling freshly squeezed orange juice in Camden Market, London, when there were no customers, the shopkeepers would attract customers by pretending to be busy. Sometimes they would move the orange juice around on the counter, and sometimes they would rearrange the oranges in the boxes at the front of the shop. These are all details that you can’t see at a glance.

I hope my work can make people in this fast-paced society put their feet down, slow down, be curious like a child, and appreciate the interesting and pleasant side of life. Perhaps there are many people who have never been to the places I have traveled, so I would like to pass on the scenery and my feelings at the time through my brushes. I also want to leave a different record of memories for people who have been to the same place. My works will also attract my followers to visit that place or to revisit the objects I have painted with my brush that they have not paid attention to before.

What role does spontaneity play in your creative process, especially when sketching in everyday settings?

Before I left to study in the UK on my own, my friend sent me a postcard of the place she had traveled to, writing about how she felt at the time and how happy she was to share the beauty with me. The postcard arrived at the same time as her return, and I was even more surprised to see my friend. My other friends also said they wanted me to share more of my life with them. I can say that I drew the things in my daily life with the feeling of sharing my joy and surprise with my friends. When I went back home, I gave the sketches on postcards to my friends and relatives, and they were all very happy. There was a very popular mobile game called ‘Traveling Frog’ in China. They said I was like a real-life version of the Traveling Frog and brought them postcards and souvenirs from my trip. At the same time, the encouragement of the teachers in Kingston is one of the motivations for me to keep creating.

Alice Li | Mammoth | 2024

Could you share more about your interest in mixed materials? How do you incorporate them into your artistic projects?

I first became interested in mixed media because I saw the work of many different types of artists. They experiment with other media besides painting to create their work. For example, Dali, Picasso, Mucha, and so on. Therefore, if the use of a single material does not satisfy my creative needs, I will try to experiment with other different media. Sometimes you can’t predict the final result because new ideas come to me during the process, which makes the project more interesting. Whether a project is interesting or not is one of the criteria I use to judge whether or not I am satisfied with my work. Sometimes mixing materials can make a simple project more detailed and present the project from different angles. This time it may be that design thinking is more dominant. Which materials bring warmth? Which materials make people feel fragile? I will continue to ask myself these questions throughout the design process, looking for the option that comes closest to answering my subjective feelings.

Have any of your recent travels influenced your artistic style or subject matter? Could you share a memorable experience that translated into your art?

I recently returned to the Tate Modern in London. With a new picture book project in mind, I was able to appreciate different artists’ explorations of materials and different ways of presenting images. It gave me a lot of ideas about what I would like to do next. At the same time, because of my love of the theater stage and Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, I went to see the ballet Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at the Royal Opera House a few days ago and was also impressed by the stage presentation and the story, which inspired my work. I used purple and green watercolor pencils to sketch and simulate the effect of RISO and the dizziness of falling into a dream world.

Alice Li | Isabella Plantation | 2024