"People sometimes find the girls in my drawings to be too good looking and inaccessible, but to me they’re not. To me these girls are like friends because I spend so much time with them."
Liselotte Watkins was born 1971 in Nyköping, Sweden. She studied at The Art Institute in Dallas, USA, and has worked as a fashion illustrator since the late 1990's.
Among her clients: Vogue (UK, USA, Japan, Italy), Elle (USA, UK, France), Glamour (USA, France), Mademoiselle, MAC Cosmetics, Barneys, Victoria's Secret, Sephora, Max Mara and Anna Sui.
In 2003 she published her first book in collaboration with Pipel and publisher Modernista: Watkins' Heroine.
Q: You are famous for doing illustrations of girls with a distinct urban, cool and glamourous look. How did it all start?
"Urban, cool girls are what inspires me. Lately urban, cool guys as well, actually. It started when I was about twelve and went to see Flashdance. It was a revolution in my life at the time, coming from a small farm. I wanted to live in a big city, to read Vogue, to have a pit-bull and to weld. The welding never developed into a career, but I learned how to do it.
Q: What message do you want to communicate with your trademark girls?
"I don't think in terms of a specific message; I observe and reproduce. Especially of late when I have started to work from photographs of friends and people that I find fascinating. If I have a message it would be to promote the importance of being an individual and the pleasure of dressing up.
Q: In Watkins' Heroine real women were a departure point for most of the illustrations. What made you take the step towards something more realistic?
"Since the book was to show a multitude of women it was partly a practical solution. I had neither the time nor the imagination to invent the amount of girls I needed for the book. During a trip to New York, where I used to live, I started to take photographs of girls around me. It turned out as a sort of documentation of my life there and people that I miss when I am in Stockholm. It was very nice to get so close to them. They were not afraid of posing and playing for the camera. I got a whole new function in the process.
Q: You are not afraid of decoration in your pictures. Is that an aesthetic mission (as opposed to minimalism)?
"I really appreciate, and have always been inspired by, the Art Deco and Art Noveau movements, styles that celebrate the ornamental. I like when it's messy and you have lots of different things to look at; when the eye can move around in the picture and discover new things all the time. After the book was finished my pictures have exploded with colours and patterns. The book was quite minimalistic in comparison with what I usually do."
Q: What technique do you apply for your illustrations?
"I make an outline on transparent paper with a special kind of pen that I order by the box load from Japan. The coloring is done in Photoshop."
2004-03-29
