The illus­tra­tor who brings light to the dark­ness and dark­ness to the light

This sto­ry is part of Cre­ative Resilience, an edi­to­r­i­al series pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Square­space.

“In terms of men­tal health, cre­ativ­i­ty is my best friend and my worst ene­my,” says Sophie Mo. The 24-year-old Vil­nius-born artist has become one of the linch­pins of the Lit­tle White Lies art depart­ment. She has brought her line and dot work to the tex­tures and char­ac­ters fea­tured in the mag­a­zine – as well as LWL book projects. She is an in-demand tat­too artist too – and she brings a fun­da­men­tal part of her­self to every­thing she does. ​“My work is the thing I can always turn to to make me feel hap­py,” she says, ​“but I am so iden­ti­fied with it that it’s dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate sometimes…”

Sophie is in a famil­iar stance in her locked down work space: hunched over a light­box, ear­phones plugged in, her face intent­ly focussed and bathed in white tung­sten light. She is draw­ing though a thin piece of paper and speak­ing as she always does – quick­ly, thought­ful­ly, reflec­tive­ly. ​“It’s not very healthy to be like this in many ways,” she says, ​“you have days when you think, ​‘What am I if this all goes away?’ But it’s how I’ve devel­oped who I am, my work eth­ic and the per­son I am becom­ing. I’m not sure that can ever real­ly change.”

Being over-iden­ti­fied with a par­tic­u­lar style is often the price you have to pay to fly solo cre­ative­ly. And doing this far from home at a young age, not to men­tion in an intense­ly com­pet­i­tive cre­ative scene, sharp­ens the edge of things. ​“I was always a black sheep in Belorus­sia and Lithua­nia where I went to school. I nev­er real­ly iden­ti­fied with the peo­ple around me. I was more influ­enced by things that I came across on the inter­net – cre­at­ing your own work, and then being able to have your own plat­form helps you feel part of a wider com­mu­ni­ty, a group of like minds you might not have met in your school yard.”

Hav­ing first encoun­tered Lon­don on a sum­mer trip at the age of 16, it was per­haps inevitable that Sophie would form her cre­ative iden­ti­ty here. ​“I was this mini goth bum­bling about try­ing to get a job,” she says. ​“I realised straight away that you can’t real­ly be an out­sider here in Lon­don. Every­one is out­side. There is no sin­gle ​‘inside’. That’s what’s so beau­ti­ful about it.”

Once she’d fin­ish school it was straight back to study at Illus­tra­tion and Visu­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at West­min­ster Uni­ver­si­ty. She grad­u­at­ed with first class hon­ours. ​“I think the goth­ic thing gives me a way to sit­u­ate myself in rela­tion to the world around me. There is a lot of dark­ness out there, and my way of see­ing the world is about acknowl­edg­ing that and embrac­ing it. It’s about not shy­ing away from that and pre­tend­ing that it doesn’t exist.”

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To draw char­ac­ters from the world of movies and music is a reflex action, and Sophie always man­ages to bring a dark, goth­ic aspect to the por­traits she cre­ates, whether she’s draw­ing Dan­ny DeVi­to or The Dude. There’s some­thing very effec­tive in the treat­ment. ​“When I’m stuck on a com­mis­sion I just nat­u­ral­ly like to draw a char­ac­ter from a playlist I’m lis­ten­ing to, or I’ll be stream­ing a movie and I’ll start draw­ing one of the cast. I like to take a char­ac­ter that already exists, and then trans­form it. I bring some­thing of me to the char­ac­ter. Hope­ful­ly that makes you con­sid­er that char­ac­ter a lit­tle bit more closely.”

The strong visu­al iden­ti­ty of Sophie’s work is mir­rored in her pres­ence. Could it be that she is a self-forged char­ac­ter in her own pow­er­ful play? ​“How you come across is so impor­tant,” she says. ​“And some­times it is dif­fi­cult to sep­a­rate that side of work­ing life from the artistry of what you do. You become a char­ac­ter with­in your work. That devel­ops uncon­scious­ly. Some­times if I go into cer­tain sit­u­a­tions I feel like I turn up the ​‘Sophie Mo char­ac­ter’ to 11, even if I do that uncon­scious­ly. I’d like not to do that, but I think that when I’m work­ing on a project that’s new it’s quite hard to ​‘detune’ myself.”

It’s hard to over­es­ti­mate the dif­fi­cul­ties of estab­lish­ing a niche with­in London’s cre­ative indus­try, and impres­sive that Sophie has been able to gain a foothold.” I’m not there yet. You have to get out there and hus­tle every day,” she says. ​“And you can’t be wor­ried about embar­rass­ing your­self. Things go wrong on every project, but you can’t let that wor­ry you. You become immune to your own bull­shit. You learn how to pow­er through strug­gles because you get so used to them.”

Cre­ate a dig­i­tal pres­ence that reflects your visu­al iden­ti­ty. Use the code LWLies to get a dis­count on a new Square­space website.

Read more sto­ries from our series on Cre­ative Resilience, in part­ner­ship with Squarespace.