Mummy’s gone digital. Illustrator, Mum and portrait artist Diana Kuksa - Interview Patrick Morgan RCA

PM - I see you are both and artist and a mum, has being a mum changed your way of working?

DK - 

Hello! 

Thank you for your interest to my work, and here is my answers!

DK- Well, now I have less time for drawing, and for some time I 'm out of business, not watching the latest fashion shows, but now I'm back and my fire burns as before. And also being a mum changed the way of drawing, now I prefer digital, just because have no time to set all my stuff- markers, pencils, watercolor, etc, and then run after the son, taking  it all away and cleaning him and also house, I better seat at the conner with my Ipad and dive into the magic world of fashion

"being a mum changed the way of drawing, now I prefer digital"

PM - What made you select the images you draw, fashion or portraits?

DK - As you know I'm a portrait-painter (graduated from the portrait studio at the Academy), so first I pay attention for a face, in my works the face often is the main object, but I love fashion so much, and often I can hook up on some detail of an imagine, and to see how it comes at the paper in that moment.

"Maybe some colour combination or a skirt with feathers or some pretentious silhouette."

PM - Looking you style what influenced you to move in this direction?

DK- I have a lot of my favorite artist, whom I follow. But I can't say that I was influenced by someone specific, that's maybe the academical education - there for I have realistic painting method in fashion illustration.

PM - Your approach is unique to how you can draw? What made you use this approach?

DK - I think i have answered to this in previous question it's long-long years of education)

PM - What is your process for drawing an image? Pen and paper or digital? Do you prefer any process in particular?

DK - I can make both ways - traditional materials, and digital, and digital is easy in my opinion, just because you can make a step back, and draw one line so many times so it will become perfect.

PM - what inspires your work and who? How has instagram changed the way you communicate your art?

DK - The inspiration is capricious and unpredictable thing, I could say that it's fashion, but not.

I'm more the artist than the fashion illustrator.

Sometimes I want to illustrate book for children or paint a landscape at the forest near my home, now I'm working on alphabet poster with animals for my son.

The Instagram for me it's a big platform where I can share with my art, it's like international exhibition point, of course it's comfortable. I have a lot of my favorites in instagram, and so many others, sometimes you can watch how other illustrators work and use it for my own.

PM - Are you trained in drawing, if so where? Did your training help inform your approach to drawing?  

DK - I have 16 years of professional education : art school, art college and Russian Academy of Painting Sculpture and Architecture in Moscow. As for fashion I started to do this while I work at TSUM market in Moscow (it's like Russian Bergdorf-Goodman) so I have six years of practice in this.

PM - where next or what next? 

DK - I've been working for a long time in office as an illustrator, now I want to work for myself, to plan my time, to watch as my son grows and to have a time for my favourite business, so now I'm totally freelance illustrator

Thank you!