This week *from 10/5-10/8 only* we are doing a giveaway of three limited edition notebooks designed by Nadia Rausa! Be sure to enter that giveaway at Nadia's Instagram page: @nadiarausa
Nadia’s design, “the moon” is exciting for a number of reasons: one being that it’s one of the first pieces to incorporate our new gold foil, coming soon to the shop, another being that Nadia is the COOLEST. Like, really cool. She has been a featured artist for the last couple of years and I was thrilled to ask her about her experience working with Denik.
“I was always just fascinated with nighttime and the stars. My favorite is when the moon is really big and yellow and there are stars around but also some clouds. So, the piece was really inspired just by my general love of the moon and the movement that is created in the shadows of the moon.”
Nadia describes her work as ethereal and emotive. “The moon” still brings that delicate darkness, but Nadia noted: “it’s a lot different from my other pieces in the sense that normally I draw the female figure. This is my first time doing something that would appeal to more people. As far as the technique for the drawing goes, that was a little new too. I did it digitally instead of traditionally inking it.”
(She achieved the texture and feel using brushes on Procreate by @truegrittexturesupply and @retrosupply)
Nadia is one of many artists we’ve had the opportunity to work closely with, so I asked her to detail what it’s like to bring Denik a design and work with us to get it put on a notebook.
“I did sit down and try to do some sketches and some thumb-nailing, but that process doesn’t work well for me. Usually my process does begin with the inspiration and then I go from there. When it comes to artwork, I just kinda let it happen because otherwise I overthink it and things go awry.”
Nadia explained that her and Tyler jumped on a video call together where they came up with the idea of a limited-edition giveaway. She sent over the artwork, we notebook-ed it, and the rest is history.
“We talked about doing gold-foil eventually, but not necessarily for that design. But when I made it I was like, oh, this would look really cool with gold foil and he was like, ‘yeah for sure, let’s do it.’”
Nadia often uses her art to tell stories of her own mental health struggle. In fact, she told me that her art is incredibly influenced by her personal mental health journey.
“There’s a part of my own story behind each piece that I make, but I also like to see how other people interpret my art in their own journeys.”
She also aims to share with people her Korean-American story, about how she grew up in Korea and Korean was her first language. “I’m half Korean and my Korean culture inspires my work.”
In terms of inspiration, Nadia loves the dark and emotive art of João Ruaz @feral_kid She has a long list of artist she looks up to: James Jean, Wiley Beckert, Tran Neugan, Rovena Kai (to name a few)
“I enjoy seeing their work. I enjoy being inspired by their work. They inspire me to create my own work. I really like not only their artwork, but their approach to artwork and how they interact with their work itself too.”
Nadia is a wonderful example of how working with Denik is a tangible, collaborative process. She comes to us with inspiration & beautiful work and we do what we can to highlight her.
To follow along with Nadia's journey, feel free to check out her Instagram here.
To see the Denik x Nadia Rasua collection of notebooks, take a look here.
