Tomomi Mizukoshi uses humour, form and composition to create utterly bonkers illustrations

Illustrator Tomomi Mizukoshi’s style sees her create images that use colour, form and composition to create her own reality and give us a peek into her wild imagination. Using compasses and rulers to create her shapes, Tomomi controls over each element, providing an unusual neatness and order to the surreal nature of her illustrations.

Inspiration comes from Tomomi’s daily life, “such as plants growing, goods in supermarkets and things on construction sites” and she unconsciously looks for interesting things to draw while walking, she says.

Starting each image using a ball point pen on a piece of paper, Tomomi tries not to think too deeply at this point, instead opting to just draw as much as possible. “Being good or bad is not important,” she says. “Then I choose some drawings that look interesting. And after that, I draw them up and configure with Illustrator.”

“When I was a college student, I found a magazine at a used bookstore in which Teruhiko Yumura’s Heta-uma illustrations appeared. It was light and powerful, and I was impressed very much,” Tomomi says of where her style derives from. Heta-uma translates as “bad but good” and is a Japanese manga movement started in the 1970s. The style appears badly drawn yet has an “aesthetically conscious quality” that removes it from the traditional, polished quality of mainstream manga.

Tomomi has adopted the aesthetic to create images that see her depict a chef chopping a giant baguette surrounded by birds, bunny-like characters sleeping atop a mountain and a slick character talking her balloon dog out for a walk, all captured in bright and vibrant hues. “It is really fun to draw anything with deformation. Simple and strange shapes are pretty cool,” says the illustrator. “There is no strong message in particular in my work. But, I am glad if people think my pictures are interesting.”