Roy Chen Interview
A UK-based Taiwanese illustrator and Cambridge School of Art graduate, Roy Chen creates evocative visual stories across children's books, game design, and personal artwork. Co-founder of an indie game studio and educator, Roy reflects on capturing everyday emotions, balancing commercial commissions with personal growth, and helping beginners find their unique creative identity.
Q. Could you introduce yourself and share how your journey as an artist began in the UK?
Hi, I’m Roy Chen, a Taiwanese illustrator currently based in the UK. I came to the UK in 2023 to pursue an MA in Children’s Book Illustration at Cambridge School of Art. During my studies, I started documenting my travels through sketching and illustration, gradually developing these personal observations into a series of artworks. Around the same time, I co-founded a game studio with my partners, where I apply my illustration practice to concept art and visual development for games. These experiences have allowed me to explore different ways of telling stories through images, from intimate moments in everyday life to the imaginary worlds we build in games.
Q. How would you describe your artistic style, and what inspires the stories behind your work?
It’s quite tricky to define your own style lol. I would say my work is more about layering colours and feelings. Most of my ideas come from the way I live, the places I travel to, and the people I encounter along the way. I’m interested in the small, sometimes complicated emotions we experience in everyday life. We’re not always happy or confident, but I believe every little shift in our feelings is precious and worth recording. Through colours, textures, and layered marks, I try to translate these fleeting moments into something visual that people can connect with.
Q. Your art connects visuals with storytelling. What do you hope people feel or discover when they see your work?
Many of my works begin with a small, personal feeling: a sense of fulfilment, loneliness, happiness, or worry. I hope people can recognize something of themselves in these moments and feel a sense of connection. Sometimes we pay so much attention to big achievements and important milestones that we forget how meaningful our everyday experiences can be. I want my work to remind people that even the smallest feelings deserve to be noticed and remembered. You don’t need to experience something extraordinary for it to become a meaningful story.
Q. How has living in the UK influenced your creativity and artistic perspective?
Living in the UK has really broadened my horizons. I’ve been surprised by how big the world is, and how people with completely different backgrounds, perspectives, and ways of living can coexist and learn from one another. Another unexpected gift has been learning to slow down. I used to live a much more intense and fast-paced life, but now I live in Peterborough, a smaller city with a quieter rhythm. Having more time and space has helped me become more aware of my own thoughts and emotions, the little things that are so easily overlooked when life gets busy. I’ve come to realize that even doing nothing can be valuable for creativity. When I slow down, I start noticing feelings I might otherwise ignore, and those seemingly insignificant moments often become the starting points for new ideas and artworks.
Q. When creating commissioned artwork, how do you balance a client’s vision with your own artistic identity?
I try to look at my own work from a third-person perspective and understand what people connect with in it, as well as what they hope to see in a commission. I’m grateful that many of my clients are respectful of my artistic approach and give me room to express myself. At the same time, I think it’s important to distinguish commissioned work from my personal practice. A commission involves understanding someone else’s story and creating something meaningful for them, while my personal work gives me the freedom to experiment, take risks, and explore ideas without needing to meet anyone else’s expectations. I value both sides of the process, but keeping that distinction allows me to serve my clients while continuing to grow as an artist.
Q. What is one challenge artists face today that you think deserves more attention?
I think one of the biggest challenges is balancing the time needed to develop your own artistic practice with the time and energy required to promote yourself, especially through social media. Being an artist increasingly means taking on the role of a marketer as well. You need to create the work, but you also need to communicate its value, build an audience, and find opportunities to share it with the world. I find this challenging because the skills needed to make meaningful artwork are not necessarily the same as those needed to market it.
Of course, artists have always needed to find ways to reach their audiences. But I hope we can develop more accessible and widely recognized platforms, whether through art agencies, curators, or other forms of artistic representation, that help connect artists with the people who appreciate their work. If artists had more reliable ways to be discovered, they could spend more of their energy developing their practice rather than constantly trying to make themselves visible. I believe both the quality of the artwork and the systems that help it reach people deserve attention.
Q. You also offer online and offline classes. What is the biggest misconception beginners have about learning to draw?
I think one common misconception is that learning to draw means copying someone else’s colour palette, techniques, or visual style as accurately as possible. Learning from other artists is important, of course, but I always encourage people to ask themselves: What do I genuinely like? What am I curious about? What do I really care about? As an artist, you need to develop your own preferences, whether they concern the subjects you draw, the colours you choose, or the way you combine shapes and textures. These preferences are part of what makes your work personal and recognizable. Technique is important because it gives you the ability to express what you imagine. But the goal isn’t simply to become better at drawing; it’s to develop the skills needed to bring your own ideas and visual preferences to life. That combination of personal perspective and technical ability is what makes an artist difficult to replace.
Q. How do you know when a piece of art is truly finished?
Honestly, I never really know lol. For me, every piece of work has its own purpose, and often that purpose is to explore a new idea or challenge myself with an experiment. Once I feel the work has achieved what I set out to explore, I try to recognize that it’s nearly time to stop. There’s always something I could improve, and if I keep pushing a piece too far, I might lose the qualities that made it interesting in the first place. I’m learning that finishing a work is not necessarily about making it perfect, but about knowing when it has done what it needs to do. Sometimes leaving a little room for imperfection is also part of the process.
Q. What advice would you give to someone who loves drawing but is afraid to share their work with the world?
Just start sharing it! If you’re worried that people will judge your work, remember that not everyone will like what you create, and that’s completely fine. But if you never share it, you might also miss the opportunity to reach the people who would genuinely connect with it. I’d also encourage artists to share more than just the finished artwork. Talk about the ideas behind it, the things that inspired you, the experiments that didn’t work, or the little stories that led you to create it. When you let people see your process, you give them more ways to connect with your work and understand you as a creator. You might be surprised by how much encouragement and support you can find along the way. You don’t have to wait until you feel completely confident to begin. Sometimes, confidence comes from allowing yourself to be seen.
Q. If you could bring one character from your artwork to life for a day, who would it be and what would you do together?
I’d bring Maru, my main character, a b&w cat to life for a coffee date! Maru is designed with a lot of inspiration from myself, so I think spending a day together would be like meeting a little version of me from the outside. I’d be curious to see what our conversations would be like and whether we’d get along as well as I imagine. Of course, we’d have to go sketching together, explore cute little shops, and document our day with hundreds of videos! I think having a character who shares my personality would be both hilarious and a little strange, like having a living sketchbook that could talk back to me.
BIO
Roy Chen is a UK-based Taiwanese illustrator and graduate of Cambridge School of Art’s MA in Children’s Book Illustration. Through vivid colours, layered textures, and subtle emotional storytelling, she transforms everyday observations into relatable visual narratives. Her work was shortlisted for the 2025 Communication Arts Illustration Competition, exhibited at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, and selected for a collaborative oil pastel set with Sennelier. Alongside her personal illustration practice, she serves as a 2D and Concept Artist at Museful, an indie game studio, and teaches drawing through online and in-person classes.
Interviewed By Vanshika Gupta
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