Hi! I am Nicola

he/him

I am a 28 year-old, lgbtqia+ artist from Austria.

I love to create characters and draw their stories.

I always enjoyed drawing but my passion for art really started in secondary school.

On German TV was a show called „Pokito TV“ where I watched an anime for the first time. My favorites were Digimon, Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z but the one show that actually made me draw was Naruto.

I loved the style and I was obsessed with copying it. Especially Sasuke and Itachi – which are still two of my fav characters – got me drawing. Their relationship was so interesting and traumatic, I was hooked.

Anime wasn’t a big thing in Austria, back then. It didn’t take long for me to finish all the shows available with German Dub (like Wolf’s Rain & Fullmetal Alchemist). After that I started to watch a lot of anime in original Dub and – because German Sub was also not a big thing – with English Sub. And this is how I learned English.

Fairy Tail, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood, Sword Art Online, Seven Ghost _^(goat), I watched them all.

From then on, I was obsessed and I wanted merch. Merch that, of course, was not available in my country. So I started to draw my own posters. But it was not enough to have any art of the shows, no. It had to look like it was an official thing, so I copied every style of every show I wanted a poster of. And to this day, I would say that copying different art styles is my biggest strength.

At that point, my interest in different art styles awakened.

What is an art style? How do mangaka decide on their style? And how different are western styles?

I started to read western comics and watch animated shows and movies with different styles too. Some of my favorites are (Manga) „Undead Messiah“ by Gin Zarbo, „Cold – die Kreatur“ by Ban Zarbo, (Movies) „The Mitchells vs. The Machines“ and „Nimona“ by ND Stevenson, what also started as a webcomic.

2019 was the year I was finally able to start with digital art and 2020 I decided that I want to persue art as a career. That was the moment I allowed myself to get as obsessed with art, as I did when I was younger.

I discovered amazing artists who inspire me to get better and challenge myself more. Some of my biggest influences are:

• Loish, who draws with this kind of lightness I’ve never seen before and finding beauty in every casual moment.
• Nicholas Kole, who’s style varies from something that looks like it’s 3D modelled, to pencil drawings that are just as stunning.
• Yoneyama Mai, who has the prettiest anime stylization I’ve ever seen. The reminder that I don’t have to abandon my beloved anime style to have an artistic career.

But not just the big names are an inspiration. Through social media, I’ve met a lot of other artists. Traditional painters, digital artists, people who are making art as a hobby and others like me, who are trying to make it their career. It does not matter why people create. Sharing your space with other creatives is a big boost of inspiration and motivation. Having creative friends you can experiment and grow with, is one of the biggest pleasures you can have.

Today, I am mostly working on digital art but I am still enjoying traditional mediums. Just like my workspace, I am pretty flexible. Usually I sketch either on paper/ in my sketchbook or on my iPad + Procreate. Whenever I want to give my digital art some kind of a handdrawn look, I prefer the iPad. Whenever I work on bigger artworks, I prefer my XP-Pen tablet + Clip Studio Paint.

For traditional work, I prefer canvases and acrylic colors, tho most of the time I am only working on paper with just a mechanical pencil. XD

Usually I end up working digitally because it’s quite troublesome to get everything ready before you can actually start painting, especially because I prefer everything that need water. Tho I got a lot of water brushes/ pencil brushes giftet from my sister which are a lot of fun to draw with. They are the reason why I’m always buying water resistent sketchbooks.