Manjit Thapp finds the whole universe in a cosy, quiet room

There is a particular kind of stillness that Manjit Thapp excels at capturing. Just to be clear, we're not talking about emptiness – her illustrations are too richly detailed for that – but the specific quality of a moment that belongs entirely to you. A woman alone at a diner booth, unhurried with a spoon in hand. Another stretched across a sofa, surrounded by flowers, going nowhere and enjoying an evening with no plans. Someone sitting on a train as a purple dusk bleeds through the window, blissfully lost in thought. "I especially enjoy drawing those quiet moments we have to ourselves," she says. 

Manjit's process is, fittingly, quite hybrid. Part analogue and part digital, she will begin with a rough sketch on her iPad, where she works out narrative and composition. Then comes the colour test, which she describes with the tone of someone who has been through this rodeo many times: "Although I love colour, I can sometimes get frustrated doing my colour tests. There's something about the beginning when you're looking at a black and white drawing that is so daunting, but once everything clicks into place, it's so rewarding!"

From there, she produces a clean sketch, prints it out and tapes it to a lightbox – because real pencil on real paper, she is firm on this, simply cannot be replicated. "You just can't beat real pencil textures!" And finally, it's time to scan, before tweaking the final colours on the iPad, layering in the digital brushes, and adding the paper grain that gives her illustration style its distinctive tactility. 

In Candles, you feel that warmth immediately through the soft gold of candlelight bouncing off patterned tiles, a figure moving through a kitchen that feels lived in, every surface and detail considered. Or Blues, there's a woman sunken into an armchair in a teal-walled room, the whole scene so cosily composed you half-want to climb in beside her. And then there is The Night, where you see a tiny figure perched atop a vast white moon against a field of absolute black, the stars scattered above her. It's one of the most minimal pieces in her portfolio, and somehow the most affecting – proof that Manjit can say everything with almost nothing, when the mood calls for it.

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Nature and the seasons are also recurring reference points, which fed into her 2021 graphic novel Feelings: A Story in Seasons, a narrative structured around the emotional ups and downs of the natural calendar. Colour is also a central pillar to her practice, and her palettes feel well thought out, from teal and terracotta to dusty rose and forest green, or the deep indigo of an evening seen through a train window. The latter refers to The Commute, a recent favourite of hers, which has a backstory that tells you a lot about how she works. She nearly abandoned it, because it felt too sparse compared to the busy interior scenes she'd been making at the time. She pushed through, thankfully. "I love it now," she says, "particularly the cool colour palette."

Although commissioned work has been on the quieter side lately, Manjit is leaning into her free time to work on personal projects – amongst them is a sticker mailing club, which she started this year and is utterly delighted by. "Sticker sheets are one of my favourite things to create, and I love the idea of sending mail to people every month." It's such a Manit thing to do: taking something small, tactile and handmade and sending it, carefully, to someone's door.