Ahmad Nur Ihsan is a young self-taught digital illustrator from Jambi, a big city in the middle of Sumatra Island in Indonesia, who loves to draw Hijab Girls. Hoodie Mag was struck by Ahmad’s playful, but respectful representation of the young Hijab Girl. At just 17, Ahmad has impressive design skills and a mature work ethic. We are thrilled to be featuring Ahmad in our collection of young artists.
I like drawing Hijab Girl. They are beautiful and most of my subjects are my friends, or my sister or my partner. I'm glad to see them happy and love to present them in this uplifting and positive way. I’ll often make a special drawing for a birthday present. I use photos (with permission) as the basis for my digital drawings. I use a wireframe and begin making line art. Line art is a graphic art that uses the line as a basis to create illustrations. I teach myself design techniques by watching YouTube tutorials. I also ask my fellow design friends lots of questions and spend hours on my laptop experimenting.
I get my inspiration from the internet and social media. I have a lot of designer friends and their posts and uploads inspire me. My artistic style is inspired by vector, WPAP and low poly techniques. I specialise in anomali pop art, a digital design style that uses an existing image as a starting point. This style of artwork reflects modern, everyday, popular culture in an often humorous and/or ironic way. Like the original pop art of the mid 1950’s and 1960’s anomali pop art often combines multiple colours, giving works a bright colourful, even kitschy appearance. My favourite work so far is 'Muslimah with Niqab’ (Muslim woman with veil, image #2) I really love this one. It's my best vector yet and I really like the style I am achieving here.
I find that whilst Jambi City has many designers, they mainly prefer to work alone, and don’t gather together very often. Because of this, I mainly connect with designers online, mainly via social media. There is actually a very active online design community and I really enjoy this world. I can connect with people with similar hobbies and interests and I also collaborate with designers who have more skills than me and this really supports me and my design work.
Nothing is instant in the design world. All work requires a process – some processes are more complicated than others. But, with learned skills, practice and the know how to operate apps, tools and methods you can create anything! I Use Adobe Illustrator CC 2015. (I cannot upgrade at the moment, because my laptop is not able to run it). I take orders and sometimes my friends ask me to work on their photos. I’m currently freelancing, but I really want to become a professional designer. In the future, I would also like to mentor other young designers.
As a young artist... I love that I have so much time and energy to experiment with my designing. I don't see being young as an obstacle. I have a laptop and internet - that is enough for me.
@creative.insomniac
Behance.com/Ryzemage
Images: 1. Your Hijab is forcing men to look deeper into who you really are. 2. Muslimah with Niqab 3. Sinta 4. Putri 5. Dianty 6. Muslimah with Niqab 7. Karnilasari 8. Fifi 9. Rizkia 10. Laura,