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Dika Toolkit: A focus on beauty and emotions
The Artist: Dika "Toolkit" has amassed close to a half-million followers on his Instagram account
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The Artist: Dika "Toolkit" has amassed close to a half-million followers on his Instagram account.
With close to 500,000 followers on photo-sharing social media app Instagram, Dika Toolkit is certainly one of Indonesia's most beloved artists.
The global fandom of artist Dika Toolkit has plenty to do with the quality of his illustrations.
He makes minimalist portraits ' mostly of solemn-looking women ' that draw from a variety of influences; Japanese and American comics new and old, vintage Indonesian movie posters, all sprinkled with more than a dose of realism.
Depending on the project, he shifts between hand-drawn and digital techniques, all without sacrificing his character, which he describes as focusing on 'beauty and emotions'.
Known in the art scene as Toolkit04, Dika, or Andhika Nugraha, was born in 1984. He began drawing at an early age and later earned a Bachelor's degree in graphic design.
In his early twenties, Dika worked at a variety of design and branding studios, as well as other, more conventional jobs. It was only in 2010 that he had built enough confidence and clout to become a fully-fledged illustrator.
The prevalence of social media also helped him garner many new admirers from home and abroad, acting as an effective ' and free ' promotional tool for Dika.
'My interest in drawing started in elementary school after seeing how many of my classmates were making Japanese anime-style drawings, but at the time I didn't have the ability to do what they did,' he says.
It wasn't until after high school that he decided to enroll in design and visual communication classes, though even then he mostly drew corporate logos, designs for clothing lines and magazine illustrations.
'It was only seven years ago that I began creating illustrations,' explains Dika about his artistic growth.
It mattered little that Dika was a late bloomer; his interest in drawing solemn-looking girls came and grew quickly.
Developing side-by-side with the artist's interest in K-Pop and its attractive performers, Dika says that there is 'nothing special' about his style.
'But there is a stark difference whenever I create digital art and when I do things manually. For digital I utilize a lot of colors while for a more traditional approach, I use a lot of pencil work and I mostly create only in black and white. I also listen to a lot of Korean music while I create,' explains Dika, adding that he also likes looking at other artists' work to stimulate his artistic drive.
'Some say my work doesn't look 'finished', some say that it looks 'alive'. I just smile and let the public decide.'
For Dika, there doesn't seem to be any further goal than to satisfy himself and, in the case of commercial work, his clients.
'There are no particular goals that I am looking for through my drawings; I just draw what I consider to be beautiful subjects. In an era of smartphones and social media, people can easily give out positive and negative comments, so I do consider the quality of my output.
'But other than that, I just hope that people are happy with what they see and that they might create their own tales because of it.'
' Photos courtesy of Dika Toolkit
