An Illustrator’s Ink: Lines from a Sketchbook
A Corner Conversation with Lisa Liglou
This post is part of The Written Corner series: Corner Conversations, preserving voices from the worlds of creativity and culture through a writer’s pen, archiving them as a historian, and listening with the heart of a lifelong theatre child. I grew up in a creative milieu where storytelling was part of the craft itself, passed from one generation to the next as a precious gift. Each anecdote a living legacy, letting their lessons ripple forward to inspire new journeys. Rooted in that tradition, this series is my way of paying homage to the creative spirit that threads through our lives.
In this edition of Corner Conversations, I sit down with illustrator Lisa Liglou. Born in France, Lisa now lives and works in Lisbon. In this conversation, we explore her journey, reflections on art and creative process, her sources of inspiration, and her experiences navigating freelancing and social media, including the development of her animated series documenting her journey.
Drawn Before Decided
Opening our conversation is mirrored in the act of Lisa opening her sketchbook and showing me a page. It is not for the public, nor for commissioned work - but rather a rare insight into an artist’s everyday life: a diary of doodles and observations. It is a privilege I do not take lightly, and one that is echoed in Lisa’s generosity throughout our conversation - something I am determined to commemorate in this piece. There is a freedom in her marks that resists polish, a looseness that holds its own quiet precision: bursts of colour that open like sudden light, or pared-back line drawings that feel almost whispered. Each piece carries the trace of a hand unafraid to pause, shift, or begin again. Moving between illustration and animation, her practice holds both stillness and motion at once - images that breathe, flicker, and sometimes simply sit in their incompleteness with ease.
For Lisa, the decision to become an artist did not arrive as a long-held plan, but rather as a realisation - one that surfaced through a period of personal upheaval. “It’s quite recent,” Lisa shares.
Before fully stepping into illustration, Lisa’s professional life moved along a different path. She worked in roles far removed from drawing. What followed was not a linear unfolding, but an interruption. A period of depression in 2022 paused plans, momentum, and clarity.
“Art has always been there with me,” Lisa says. “The only thing I could do was to draw; it was my way of dealing with emotions.”
In many creative journeys, there is a moment where making shifts from something optional into something necessary. For Lisa, drawing became less of a choice and more of a language - one that held what words could not. “At that point, art was too strong to ignore,” Lisa reflects. “I felt like I had to do something with it.”
There is a careful distinction in the way she speaks about this period. Drawing as a lifeline during depression is not the same as drawing as a profession - two different relationships to the same act. Yet, for her, the two came to exist side by side, each feeding into the other.
Now, just over a year into fully investing in her practice, Lisa speaks with a quiet conviction. Not because the path is easy, she is clear that it is not - but because it feels true. “It’s a hard path. It’s super intense,” she says. “There are huge downs and few ups. But I feel I was right to make this choice.”
Before illustration, there was another life - structured, corporate, outwardly distant from the fluidity of drawing. Her previous work is tied, in part, to a period marked by depression, and the memories remain complicated. “I’m not in a place where I can be thankful for it.”
Still, with distance, certain traces become visible. Not as defining features, but as quiet tools carried forward. Organisation. Structure. An ability to navigate client relationships with clarity and care. “I can do more than just illustration,” she explains. “I can understand what a client needs. I can help shape it.”
Colour Palettes of Life
Lisa was born in the west of France - a place shaped by coastlines. But the inheritance of place, for her, arrives less as geography and more as medium. “My father and grandfather both painted with watercolour. But that was not for me.” She also lived in Paris for a while - a city often romanticised, but for Lisa, did not translate into creative energy.
Years later, in a different city, under a different light, something shifted. If her birthplace was defined by muted tones and inherited imagery, Lisbon arrived as a kind of visual reawakening. Colours lifted, expanded, took on a new vocabulary. “I was so inspired by the colours when I moved to Lisbon.”
“I often go to the beach and draw,” Lisa shares. “I just sit and observe. It’s one of the best moments.”
Not scenes in the traditional sense, but people - bodies in motion and rest, small gestures unfolding without performance. Figures lying in the sun, eating, talking, simply being. These sketches often live in what she calls her “ugly sketchbook” - a space deliberately freed from expectation, where drawings are allowed to remain raw, unfinished, unpolished. Perhaps this is where the place reveals its deeper influence: not only in palette or scenery, but in permission.
There is something distinctly human in Lisa’s work - a visible hand, a looseness, an almost - unfinished quality that resists over-polish. Lines remain open, forms slightly uncontained, as though the drawing is still in conversation with itself.
When I ask her about this - how she arrived at that language, and how she knows when a piece is complete - her answer begins with distinction: “Great question - for me, there are two kinds of work,” Lisa explains. “There are the more refined pieces, where time allows for detail, for layering, for precision. Then, there are the others - particularly in animation - where time itself becomes a constraint. Movement demands repetition, frame by frame, and perfection quickly becomes impossible to sustain.”
The so-called “unfinished” quality in her work emerged partially due to small disruptions such as the unfamiliar act of drawing with her non-dominant hand, and to timed exercises - three-minute drawings, quick responses, imposed limits - shifting her understanding of what a drawing could hold. “I realised that even in a few minutes, I could still express the subject matter,” Lisa reflects.
It is a radical shift: from labour to immediacy, from perfection to presence. Lines become less controlled, more instinctive. “The work becomes more intuitive, less rehearsed,” Lisa says. “It’s not always my usual style, but it’s still a version of it.”
There is freedom in that allowance - in letting something be different without immediately needing to name or refine it. Perhaps this is why, when faced with the Written Corner’s signature question - does the blank canvas frighten or liberate? Lisa’s response is immediate: “Freeing. Always.”
Where others hesitate, she sees possibility. “A page is a space where nothing is fixed, and therefore anything can emerge. Even during creative blocks, I focus on the permission, rather than pressure.”
Again, her “ugly sketchbook” holds that space - a place for drawings that are not meant to be seen, not meant to be shared, not even meant to be good. In a culture that so often demands visibility, there is something radical in keeping work private. In allowing creativity to exist without an audience.
From Reference to Resonance
If Lisa’s personal work resists structure, her client work follows a more defined rhythm - though still guided by intuition rather than rigidity. “I start with a brainstorm,” she says. “Just words. But it is the most difficult part - language to me does not come as naturally as image - it’s important for laying the foundation and to create a loose framework of ideas, and direction.”
From there, the process opens outward. “Then, I create Pinterest boards - one for each project, a growing archive of references, textures, colours, atmospheres,” Lisa shares. “Other moodboards follow, then sketches - many of them are exploratory.”
She shares the example of a recent project: collaborating with a Portuguese wine producer on a label - one of her long-held dream commissions, and a project rooted in both tradition and reinvention; she moved through multiple iterations before arriving at the final direction. “There were a lot of sketches,” she smiles, “before the perfect ones appeared.”
It is a process of a gradual movement towards clarity. When everything aligns, the resolution feels effortless.
Music inspires Lisa’s work. Certain songs linger, repeating themselves over days or months, asking to be translated into image or motion. Some become full projects - visual interpretations, fragments of animation, attempts to hold sound in form. “I have songs in my head for months,” she says. “I feel like I need to animate them.” This was the case with her project, Thelma and Louse - a self-initiated project inspired by the song ‘Thelma & Louise’ by French singer-songwriters Solann & Yoa.
Cinema, too, shapes her visual thinking - its framing, its colour, its rhythm. Then, there is the everyday. Food. Coffee. Wine. The quiet theatre of restaurants. One of her personal projects included illustrating her favourite restaurant, Soeurs. The way light settles on a building, or how a window frame holds its detail.
In Lisbon, she is drawn to miradouros - elevated points where the city opens itself up, and offers panoramic views. Drawing, here, becomes a way of staying with a moment a little longer. Of resisting its passing. “Time stops, and there’s only that moment.”
Movement & Meaning
As Lisa’s practice expands, it moves not only across subjects, but across forms. Illustration and animation sit side by side - sometimes distinct, sometimes interwoven. I ask her how she navigates that decision: how a piece becomes still, or begins to move. “Animation was not something I formally trained in, but something discovered - first through my collective (Inkygoodness created by Lisa Hassell), and then through a growing awareness of the industry itself, as well as the possibilities.”
There is, she notes, a hesitation around animation, even among illustrators. It carries a certain weight: time-consuming, technical, often perceived as complex. But Lisa approaches it as an extension of what already exists. “Even a small movement can be enough,” she says. “Just a flicker, something subtle.”
Rather than building from scratch, she begins with the still image. A finished illustration, already holding its own atmosphere. “Then I ask myself what could move?” Lisa shares, “It’s as simple as that, but movement creates a whole another layer and feeling to an illustration.”
A small example: a self-portrait posted online, where tiny stars flicker gently around her. Minimal, almost imperceptible - yet, it shifts the entire image. It draws the eye, creates rhythm, introduces a sense of life.
This search for dynamism, and sensitivity to where movement might carry meaning, is a key element in Lisa’s work.
A Practice of Continuing
The conversation turns to the reality of freelance life. Having experienced both a traditional working environment and now a self-directed creative one, I ask Lisa what surprised her most in the transition: “too many things to list.”
“One of them, unexpectedly, was solitude,” she shares. “In my previous role, I worked remotely - a setup I once valued deeply. Distance from colleagues felt like relief, even freedom. Hence, I imagined freelance life would extend that feeling: long days alone, fully immersed in her work. I thought it would be great - to be alone all day.”
But the reality felt different. “It can be lonely, and depressing.”
What she discovered was not just a need for solitude, but a need for people. Not only socially, but professionally - shared spaces, conversations, the quiet energy of others working alongside you. I do need time alone. But I also get energy from people, and from conversation like this.”
Practically, her work unfolds mostly at home. But not exclusively. “When the weather is nice,” she says, “I go outside.” Cafés, terraces, parks - the city itself becoming a kind of extended studio. Spaces where drawing meets observation, and work blends gently into life.
When I ask what aspects of freelance creative life are not spoken about enough, her answer shifts in tone. “The money,” Lisa says. It arrives not as a complaint, but as truth - direct, unembellished. “The lack of money - artists, I think most due to the uncertain nature of the work, always have that as some level of stress factor. Less so of a logistical concern, but more as an emotional weight.”
Starting out, she had imagined a quicker transition - an earlier moment where illustration would fully sustain her. But the reality unfolds more slowly. “It takes time, especially when one is a bit more shy to reach out, to network” she says.
Yet, within all of this - there are moments that hold everything in place. When I ask about her favourite part of freelance life, her answer softens: “I’m in a flow state, doing what I was meant to do.”
Those moments where time shifts - slows, dissolves, almost disappears entirely. Where the work takes over, and she moves within it effortlessly. It is these moments, the uncertainty recedes. “It’s hard to define,” she says. “But it’s… everything.”
The conversation turns then to balance - to the invisible tension between creative freedom and the practical realities of making a living from it. The question of how to hold onto something that began as joy, while it becomes work - Lisa shares: “Every morning I try to start with doodling.”
There is also a ritual she returns to: a small system she built with her husband. At the end of January, she asked him to write 28 names on pieces of paper and place them in a small bag. Each morning, she would draw one at random and create a portrait - fictional or real - within 10 to 20 minutes.
I’m curious to know what once felt important, and no longer does as a creative: “I think before releasing my first episode that was super successful on Instagram, I had the wrong idea about followers,” she says. “I was really impressed by illustrators with a lot of followers. I thought if I have more than that - then I’ll have more projects, it will be better, I’ll be happier.”
It was a logic that felt certain at the time. But it did not hold. “Now I have some recognition, and it’s really nice to be recognised,” she says. “But the financial situation is not reflected in these numbers, or popularity. In my opinion, Instagram cannot be the only priority for any creative.”
The origin of her own series is almost incidental. Not planned, but discovered through necessity, emotion, and response. “I don’t really remember deciding it,” she says. “I knew I wanted to do something on Instagram, to be seen, to catch attention.” Before the series, there was a single animation. What Lisa did not expect was the response. That was the moment of recognition - of possibility.
A conversation with another illustrator reinforced it. Someone from her collective suggested she should tell stories on Instagram. At first, she was unsure. “I was not convinced,” she admits. “ I did not expect that engagement. It has been so successful.”
Later in the conversation, the question turns toward what she values now as a freelance artist: “The kindness,” Lisa says. “Being kind to one another. Being kind to someone else, and someone else being kind to you.”
It has become, she explains, a guiding principle in how she now chooses collaborators.
When asked what she would tell her younger self - or someone starting out in illustration - she pauses. “You don’t have less value than someone else,” Lisa shares. “Keep doing. Keep drawing every day, keep practising. This way you can’t be wrong.”
As such, in Lisa’s creative practice, freedom is not a final destination but a way of moving. Whether in the openness of her sketchbook, the rhythm of commissioned work, or the fleeting movement of animation, there is a constant trust in what the hand already knows. In this way, illustration becomes less about arriving at certainty, and more about remaining in conversation with the image as it unfolds - line by line, moment by moment, always becoming.
Thank you, Lisa, for sharing your journey - your reflections and creativity will become an important part of this growing archive! It has been a genuine joy to put some words alongside your illustrations!
Find Lisa on her Website, and Instagram.
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Amazing conversation and writing and illustration!! ✨💕