Scenes of everyday life, a girl on a bicycle or a man sitting in a waiting room. Although the subjects of Manshen Lo‘s illustrations have nothing extraordinary, the final result is surreal. 

Manshen Lo was born in China and spent her childhood wandering around her neighborhood in search of something to do in her free time, one of her favorite pastimes is definitely reading manga and graphic novels from the ’60s and ’70s. Today Manshen lives in London and is involved in animation for films and advertising, but when she returns home to her studio she dedicates herself to illustration. 

In her creations she relives her love for comics, in fact you can see a style that refers to Chinese manga, but Manshen herself said that she is also inspired by Japanese and Belgian animation. The texture of her illustrations is the result of a technique that blends hand painting with digital, preferring flat backgrounds and the use of few colors.  

As for the subjects, instead, the Chinese artist illustrates scenes of everyday life in which the protagonists are lonely people, isolated from the world. To make it more realistic, the people we see are often friends of Manshen Lo, or even herself. Her works narrate reality every day focusing on moments of peace and calm, but also of waiting and reflection, suspended moments in which everything seems stuck forever.