Hiromu Arakawa

Hiromu Arakawa is a Japanese manga artist, most famous for her manga series 'Fullmetal Alchemist'. Her first given name is 'Hiromi'; however she adopts the name 'Hiromu' as a pen name for her work, due to the fact that it will more likely sell in Japan if her name is masculine rather than feminine. She primarily works in watercolours and is one of the only manga artists to do this, creating a unique style about her work.


Throughout her childhood, she thought about becoming a manga artist; after she graduated from school, she spent seven years doing oil painting classes whilst working on her family's diary farm. Throughout her manga series, she draws her self-portrait as a bespectacled cow to represent where she used to work! Photos of her are incredibly rare due to her keeping her personal life very private. 


Her inspirations include Suiho Tagawa, Hiroyuki Etō, Rumiko Takahashi and Shigeru Mizuki; she is also a fan of Mike Mignola's work.


I find her a huge inspiration to my work; I love the characters she creates and her style she uses. I like how she uses watercolours in her work - it gives it a real depth to it through textures and shading, and combined with her own unique manga style, makes it stand out from the typical styles used throughout Japanese art.  A lot of my art is influenced by her and I have learnt a lot from studying her work for the past few years.