MacDirectory magazine is the premiere creative lifestyle magazine for Apple enthusiasts featuring interviews, in-depth tech reviews, Apple news, insights, latest Apple patents, apps, market analysis, entertainment and more.
Issue link: https://digital.macdirectory.com/i/1401427
I said at the beginning that social media helped me in “almost every step” in my career. Yet, no one taught me how to draw, be active and visible online, work with clients, price my work or manage a business, but it has worked well for boosting my portfolio and creating a network to find friends and contacts! What is one of the best opportunities, business or personal, you have had so far, when it comes to being an artist? Undoubtedly, the biggest moment out of all best moments is being able to meet up and talk to the artists that I would otherwise admire secretly and quietly online. The moment when one artist reaches out about a meeting and the other one replies “I have been following you online for so many years, I love your art!” is great. Or simply seeing each other at a comic convention (before the pandemic took it all away) and just being able to talk, hang out and share experiences. This is worth more than any money and any business opportunity to me. Social media can really bring people together! I remember one day seeing an Instagram Story of RossDraws that he will be in the same city as me in Japan on holiday, and despite never having talked to him before, I asked if he’d like to meet up for a coffee. We have stayed in touch since then and worked on some collaborations together. For me there are many other situations like this, and I think that in this way social media is an incredibly powerful tool that transcends borders and even continents. Did having a large following on social media influence your content? Both, yes and no. At the beginning of my social media adventure, when the reach was smaller and response easier to see, I would read comments and try to draw what people wanted me to draw. I had fun doing it, I was learning, and this also helped my Instagram grow. This has changed a lot over the years as drawing the same things the same way over and over again makes me feel like I am not improving and it simply gets boring. Fan art is much more popular online but redrawing a character that someone else has chosen colors and outfits for is not always enough of a challenge for me. It doesn’t give me the same satisfaction as trying to come up with my own characters, poses, outfits and colors. However, creating original characters does not work very much in favor of social media popularity and algorithms. I think that overall it still makes me happier with my art. I still draw fan art when I feel like it, but I don’t want to be driven by the madness of likes and other statistics to live up to the algorithms. Your art style is very cute and feminine, what has inspired it and why do you think it is so popular online? Thank you! I actually never thought of it. Before I started my Instagram page I was very inspired by the creations of Ilya Kuvshinov and without thinking much I started to draw female portraits and illustrations myself. I didn’t do it because it was popular or to be popular, but because I really love to draw portraits and because it makes me happy. As someone who uses Clip Studio Paint for your work, which features are your favorite? My absolute favorite feature of Clip Studio Paint is the smart bucket tool! As a manga-style artist, I work with line art a lot and the bucket tool that can recognize my line art even when it is on a separate layer is just a lifesaver - it saves me hours of making color selections manually with every single artwork. Then there are the incredible default brushes and many others available for free in the Clip Studio resource library (Clip Studio Assets). Brushes are easily customizable and I love the fact I can change more than size and transparency of it - I can also adjust paint amount and blending easily. My favorite brush is a transparent watercolor brush, which works really well as a color blender for me. When working on comic panels or more complicated illustrations I always reach out to 3D resources that help me pose characters and