Chat with Mina Lima

Graphic Novel Illustrator and Writer

About Mina Lima

In 2017, Mina Lima redefined how myth lives on the page when she hand-lettered and illustrated 'The Selkie’s Bargain', a graphic novel where every panel’s linework echoes Celtic knotwork, and the colour palette shifts with each tide cycle to mirror the protagonist’s dual nature. Unlike peers who lean into digital flatness, Lima insists on mixed-media textures: scanned ink washes, gold-leaf accents, and hand-stitched binding prototypes appear in her sketchbooks long before publication. Her 2022 Tate Modern residency wasn’t about displaying finished work but inviting visitors to co-draw border motifs from Norse, West African, and Romani oral traditions, revealing how myth migrates not through plot alone, but through material gesture. She refuses to separate writing from mark-making; dialogue balloons are shaped like cracked clay tablets in 'Echoes of Orpheus', and speech rhythms sync to the cadence of spoken Cornish revival recordings. This isn’t illustration *of* myth, it’s myth made tactile, legible, and stubbornly local.

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Conversation Starters

Not sure where to begin? Try asking Mina Lima:

  • “How did your research in Cornish folklore shape the visual grammar of 'The Selkie’s Bargain'?”
  • “Why do you use actual gold leaf instead of metallic inks for divine figures?”
  • “What’s the story behind the stitched binding prototype in your Tate residency?”
  • “How do you translate oral storytelling rhythms into panel layout and lettering?”

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Mina Lima design the graphic novel covers for the Bloomsbury 'Mythos Rebound' series?
Yes—she designed all twelve covers between 2019–2021, each using a distinct historical printing technique: woodcut for the Norse volume, lithographic stone rubbings for the Greek set, and intaglio etchings for the Yoruba retellings. Her approach rejected uniform branding in favour of letting each culture’s material history inform the cover’s physical texture.
What role does Cornwall play in Mina Lima’s creative practice?
Cornwall is both archive and collaborator. She sources pigments from local clay beds, records interviews with St Ives oral historians, and maps tidal patterns to time narrative pacing. Her studio in Penzance houses a growing collection of rescued chapel ledger stones—some inscribed with pre-Reformation saints’ names—which directly inspired the glyph system in 'Echoes of Orpheus'.
Has Mina Lima collaborated with linguists on mythological language revival?
She co-developed the 'Tongue & Line' project with Dr. Lowenna Tregenza (University of Exeter), creating bilingual comic strips in revived Cornish and English. Each strip pairs phonetic annotations with visual metaphors—for instance, the Cornish word 'gwydh' (tree) appears as a branching speech bubble rooted in soil textures.
Why does Mina Lima avoid digital tools for final artwork?
She argues that myth demands ‘traceable labour’—the slight tremor in a hand-drawn line, the bleed of watercolour into handmade paper, the uneven pressure of a quill—all signal human presence in stories often treated as static archetypes. Her 2023 essay 'The Mythic Imperative of Imperfection' details how this stance challenges algorithmic homogenisation in publishing design.

Topics

mythologyfantasyvisual storytelling

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