Tell us one thing that not many people know about you?

I don’t speak Italian. I’m just mentioning it because a few clients who read my bio or just random waiters have approached me in Italian. My Milano Dad had to translate for me. Blood aside I, unfortunately, have little to do with Italy. I even enjoy pineapple on pizza - Call me a monster. I’ve been called worse (so much worse!). As I had to move quite a lot I had to learn a few languages, so I'm fine with English, German, Cebuano, Japanese for client projects. Kudos to my polyglot parents! Unfortunately, I haven't retained much of their linguistic inheritance as well. There are some highlights but usually I sound like someone who was raised by dyslexic wolves.

You’ve never lived in one place longer than 5 years. What impact do you think this has had on your creativity?

It’s tied to my habit of getting easily bored once I feel like I’ve gained a certain level of expertise in something. When I notice that I finally feel comfortable navigating through the streets of a new city, using a foreign language or building up my social circle I have this urge to leave and start from scratch again. Same goes for my interests.

I do need an unfamiliar environment to feel stimulated. My siblings are the opposite and such imaginative people who could just invent things and make up worlds seemingly out of thin air. While I can’t even begin to sketch without doing extensive research.

“When I notice that I finally feel comfortable navigating through the streets of a new city, using a foreign language or building up my social circle I have this urge to leave and start from scratch again. Same goes for my interests.”

I was recently asked how I come up with the compositions for my isometric crowd scenes and I jokingly answered it’s second nature for me, as I already live in a surreal hellscape: Berlin’s public transport. My commute involves passing through “Kottbusser Tor” hoping the train will arrive somewhat on time or at least I won’t get stabbed. But of course, it’s delayed, so you reroute with a hot air balloon, flying over deserted industrial areas, watching aboriginal people fight with spears against horse-sized rats. While waiting for the bus, you work for 3 years as a yoga teacher in a lonely mountain shed. Once at the studio, there is simply no other way I could draw but this.

At least that’s one way to post-rationalize how the surroundings influence the work.
It’s difficult to tell. You’re always just a stitched-together monstrosity of everything that happened to you. Something that holds everything together is quite a critical habit I’ve developed while adapting to a new place, culture, field of study, language: A stubborn patience to work through things I don’t understand.

Do you consider Berlin as ‘home’ now or is being a bit of a nomad your way of life?

For personal reasons, I moved here kicking and screaming, but by now I lovingly call Berlin Germany’s postmodern plague-spot. In defence of Berlin's hipsterism, there’s a certain energy here, a willingness to explore and experiment that you won’t easily find everywhere. The downside of that enthusiasm is definitely a shallowness, and an inability to stick to a project or path and this longing to drink out of every well. I have more than enough of that myself, I don’t know if it’s healthy for me to be in a city that encourages that.

Certainly, the Berlin Zeitgeist has a lot of a cherry picking mentality. Like “I want to make an independent horror movie and I want to open a fried sushi restaurant and I want to participate in this westernized bastard of Buddhism” and so on. I’m not necessarily against that eagerness because I think there’s something beautiful in this desire to try absolutely everything. And there’s something applaudable about a culture that permits you to do that. That doesn’t say there is one way, one belief, one style and everybody must march and lockstep. But it does get a little flaky. I’ve been so guilty of it myself so I have to say it with a measure of compassion and humility. I could have easily been accused of every single piece of Berlin weirdness that I judge.

“I think there’s something beautiful in this desire to try absolutely everything. And there’s something applaudable about a culture that permits you to do that.”

At the moment I still feel like the benefits of that mindset, that people in this city are willing and encouraged to feel about things outweigh the goofiness that is sometimes a little too easy to be cynical about.

You capture your personality so well on your website, across press and in your work. How do you think you’ve achieved this?

Those 3 things are very different but the common denominator would be that I try to marry the instructive with the amusing. Practical and tactical pieces tend to be torturously dry and I don't want to be silly without conveying any meaningful information. Nowadays we have this notion, that the serious can’t be amusing and the amusing can’t be serious. I don’t know what bothers me more. It’s reflected in my work as well, I hope. My favourite assignments tend to centre rather weighty topics like factory farming, transhumanism or social injustice but I get to explore that through a more lighthearted, optimistic or sometimes even funny lens.

My website is organised in the common categories portraits, crowd scenes, food but I also included the topics I’m interested in like queerness, politics or morbid stuff, which is an easy way to communicate the things you like to draw. Even my website footer, which usually only includes links and legal stuff, has a dynamic section with random facts about me, as I couldn’t stand having something so dry in my portfolio. Funny enough client’s reached out saying they’d like to collaborate because we seem to share the same sense of humour or they like to challenge me to a Harry Potter quiz.

For the press, I don’t know. During my very first interview I thought it would probably be my last, so I decided to be as disgusting as I can. Please remember me this way!
I’ve gotten so much positive feedback on it, including someone spitting coffee on their keyboard while reading. If that isn’t making an emotional connection with your audience, I don’t know what is.

© Ari Liloan - NY MAG, Alternate Hollywood

What cocktail of skills does it take to become an illustrator?

It ranges from business skills, the craft of drawing, marketing, being somewhat knowledgeable in the legal and tax aspects to communication skills. There are so many people who are much better at drawing or even coming up with visual solutions than me, but they lack everything else or might not enjoy that the creating aspect doesn't take up as much time as they’ve expected.

A requirement that I’ve recently noticed is the promotion of your work. And by that I don’t mean social media, but the way you frame and talk about your work. To a certain extent clients want to be led and told what they are looking at. Especially when they only quickly scan your portfolio or are looking for illustrators who are already specialized in a certain topic. One line bios like “the psychedelic lettering artist” the “erotic minimalist with a quick turnaround” or the “South Asian political illustrator” shape your career. So it’s best to be the very first person to tell what your work is about, before anyone else does that.

“A requirement that I’ve recently noticed is the promotion of your work. And by that I don’t mean social media, but the way you frame and talk about your work.”

“Cold emails” seem like a dirty approach, but you’ve won a lot of work this way. What are your top tips when it comes to this?

Something that probably stood out was how prepared I was. I created a carefully crafted pdf with all my work, which was the template I’ve worked from. I deleted all irrelevant pages depending on the publication, so each email contained a curated PDF, centering either finance, technology, pop culture etc. It’s more work than just attaching a few JPGs but that way you can present your work in context, talk about the concept and restraints for a project, so the client can have a glimpse of your thinking process.

Persistence and a lack of perfectionism is also key. Writing 50 emails with no responses can feel like shouting to the void, but that’s the name of the game. Just recently a client I’ve reached out to early in my career, who rejected my portfolio with “Sorry, but it doesn’t fit our publication” contacted me again. She started at a new publisher and somehow kept my work in mind. I wouldn’t have gotten this job If I hadn’t planted the seed by sending my half-baked website back then. So “No” doesn’t always have to mean “No”, but you have to keep trying. There are art directors who aren't even born yet who will reject my work and ignore my emails. That's how long I plan to keep knocking on their doors. And I’m looking at you New York Times!

“Persistence and a lack of perfectionism is also key. Writing 50 emails with no responses can feel like shouting to the void, but that’s the name of the game.”

True or false - You’ve had a project commissioned via a dating app?

It's sad but it's true! In fact it was my very first commission! Art Directors do have a love life as well. I linked my Instagram on my dating profile, which was still a conglomerate of food, selfies and some drawings at this point, but the client luckily saw some potential. It was quite a workload and I still had my dayjob during that time, so it was a great exercise in speed and how much Monster energy my body can contain. (Not sponsored… yet) The reason my first project didn’t turn out to be a trainwreck was the client’s resourceful Art Direction magic and me being a deeply disciplined half-ass.

Meaning I'm totally willing to stay up for days, balancing my day job and this commission as best as I can. But once the deadline lurks around, I don't bother fixing minor issues. No one is going to notice the extra finger or that wonky line. Being a professional means that the quality is always above a certain level, but you have to be strategic about your energy and focus. A number of all nighters will probably always be part of the illustrator's job but by now I’m so much better at managing that. That week was just such a cautionary example for me, it truly made me a better illustrator and a worse human being.

“Being a professional means that the quality is always above a certain level, but you have to be strategic about your energy and focus. A number of all nighters will probably always be part of the illustrator’s job but by now I’m so much better at managing that.”

© Ari Liloan - Emotion Mag, Female Purchase Power

Why do you ‘lean in’ to the things you are bad at and how do you do this?

One strategy is to play to one's talents and accept the weaknesses. Growing up I didn’t have any talents I could foster, maybe math but I was mostly looking up to my older siblings who all dabbled in the arts. I didn’t want to accept my more mathematically minded nature in sacrifice for a chance to do anything creative.

With all due respect to the self care and self acceptance movement, I don’t entirely buy it. I’m suspicious of self acceptance being a form of Stockholm syndrome to one's own personality. I mean you're chaining yourself to something that holds you back for the sake of “authenticity”. Richard Bach said it well “Argue for your limitations, and sure enough they’re yours”.

I don’t want to defend my limitations because I don’t want to keep them either. That doesn’t mean betraying and torturing yourself in order to please someone else. I oppose any form of asexual masochism. It’s about trading the cards life has dealt you, because you admire something so much, you are willing to do the work to change. I also know that I tend to be restless when it comes to sticking to a creative field (or anything for that matter), so I constantly tackle things that are lacking in my work to keep myself entertained.

“I didn’t want to accept my more mathematically minded nature in sacrifice for a chance to do anything creative.”

Managing finances is often a creative’s achilles heel...but not for you! What is it about tax returns that you love so much?

I’m an accountant at heart (but a naughty one). That’s the benefit of a mathematically minded person in a creative career, a certain ambidexterity.

It matters to me, because a year ago a lot of my friends were approaching their thirties and panicked into self-employment, because they had this idea of being successful and famous at a young age. For some it worked well, but most wrecked their creative work through wrong accounting, having no idea about taxes, bad project management or just being bad overall with finances. I didn’t want to do that to myself.

“To claim you’re too “artistic” to manage the financial and legal aspects of your career is self-infantilizing and demeaning.”

David Bowie said “To be an artist is to be dysfunctional” and I still want to slap him for postulating this idea. To claim you’re too “artistic” to manage the financial and legal aspects of your career is self-infantilizing and demeaning. Even if you hate it, you can find a certain level of self-respect and devotion to the work that forces you to tackle even the most disagreeable aspects of the job.

If you truly, truly hate it, get someone else to take care of that and use the extra time to compensate for that person's costs. Consult an accountant friend or other illustrator before going freelance, to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. I’m probably making it sound scarier than it is, I’ve just seen too many talented people fall on their face for being so unprepared.

I know that handling the art-side is already hard enough. Add having children, a part-time job and a mental illness and it seems impossible to make time to prepare and plan your finances long term.

But people don't succeed in this field because they have all the energy and extra time lying around. They put in the extra hours because their work matters to them enough, that they are willing to make all kinds of sacrifices for it.

Thanks Ari! Never stop being you 🧡

Recommended reading

How to become a virgin by Quentin Crisp

Recommended listening

Eunoia: Beautiful thinkers with Carolyn Hadlock

Recommended follow

Jonathan Harris @jjhnumber27

Follow Ari

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If you’d like to reach out to Ari, drop her an email ✉️

Ari Liloan

INTRODUCTION

THE ARENA

Ari Liloan

INTRODUCTION

Jody Mulvey

Ben Clarke

THE ARENA