We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Tosin Akinkunmi . We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Tosin below.

Tosin, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

It’s a cliché, but I’ve always been drawing. My mother noticed that I gravitated towards art as a child, and made it her mission to help me pursue that interest however I could. The first set of art supplies I remember recieving was Christmas when I was six, and I walked in on my parents wrapping an easel, canvas, paintbrushes and acryclic paint for me.

Gettinng into the habit of drawing all the time wasn’t hard with their encouragement. I steadily drew as a hobby throughout my teens, learning from Youtube tutorials and observing life around me. Getting my first Wacom tablet at 13 meant that digital art soon became my niche, and I never grew out of it. I, like many artists, are completely self-taught, and I was motivated by all the cool art I saw on Deviantart and Tumblr. I kept going, because I wanted to be as good as them, and I was determined to improve my skills in drawing portraits and characters.

I got an iPad at 18, and I’ve been working on my iPad using Procreate ever since, and I fell into a career by posting my work on Instagram. I didn’t even know it was an option to have art as a career until I got my first commissions.

I think the most essential thing I learned – and am continuing to learn – is that striving for perfection hinders your growth and creative development. If you’re so afraid of making mistakes, you’ll never get to a place where you can look at your own work and feel challenged to do better. I didn’t challenge myself for a long time, because I was so scared of looking foolish – especially because at this time, I was posting my work consistently on instagram.

I think if I could go back, I would encourage myself to post my artwork, but not worry too much about getting stuck in a niche. I like to explore creatively, and I think it shows up in my work – howi it ranges from illustrative work to portraiture to cartoon style illustrations. Worrying about a niche, or the niche that your online audience wants you to draw, can make you stuck creatively and that’s never where you want to be.
Thinking too much about what is expected of you instead of what you’re drawn to is a tricky trap, and it definitely impeded by creative progress. I’m glad that I finally have confidence in myself, and I’m not worried too much about making mistakes or looking like a student – every new piece is a way I’m pushing myself, and I’m glad I’ve reached that point now!

Tosin, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My name is Tosin Akinkunmi and I’m a 23-year-old Nigerian-Grenadian digital artist and illustrator based in London, England. I’m self-taught, and I began properly pursuing my craft in 2018, and decided to step into it fully and make it my career at 21. I like drawing everything, and I don’t like to limit myself to a specific niche or subject, because I feel that impedes my creative growth and development, nor does it reflect the breadth of my interests. I greatly enjoy drawing diverse ranges of characters in different styles, reflecting my love of graphic illustration and video game art, as well as portraiture which reflects my love of the history of art and its movements. Whilst my work is varied, what underlines my art and my practices is emphasising themes of community and connection.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

I think that society needs to place importants back on the arts. Recently, in the past ten or so years, there has been a huge culutural shift away from respecting the arts to reviling them and thinking of them as a useless extra or worse – something that can and should be commodified. With the recent trends of NFT art – that seems to be dying out – and worryingly, AI art, it’s a huge concern of mine that society is starting to view art as a only having value as a commercial product, rather than having intrinstic value because someone or people laboured to produce something that only humans can make poignant.

There needs to be a shift back towards nuturing the arts of all kinds – humanities, visual art, music, design and all the rest. I think it’s such a shame that things have become more narrow and the only thought around art seems to be related to trying to get consumers to purchase something. If there were more grants available that didn’t mean you had to jump through a million hoops to make it more accessible; if there were more programs that were readily available to teenagers or even just having thigns like public art instead of billboards, I think that would represent a hugely positive shift in moving away from the commoditisation of art and creativity.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I don’t think I properly realised until towards the end of 2022, after almost a year of working for myself, but what drives me is having agency in my own creative process. By that I mean, being able to tell my own stories, create my own characters, build my own worlds and explore my creativity through art how I would like to. Working for others has its upsides of course; there are things I will work on that I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to do otherwise, and sometimes that necesseitates going outside of my comfort zone. I’m often pushed to learn more when I’m working for others, and that in itself expands my creative horizon. However, there is something to be said for having total creative freedom on my own projects.

I’ve always been so interested in stories – I used to make up stories with my twin when I was younger, inspired by graphic novels I read as a child and other storybooks that my mother passed down to me. I would have so much fun with my siblings creating characters to slot into existing worlds or in ones we thought up together. That feeling of joy in doing that, in creating my own environments and places, and people to live in those environments, hasn’t left me. I’m more driven now than I ever was before to explore that part of my creativity and to see what comes of it. I’ve drafted some comic ideas with friends, created concepts and worlds that I’m so excited to properly get stuck into.

Contact Info:

• Website: artbytosin.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/artbytosin
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/tosin-akinkunmi
• Twitter: twitter.com/artbytosin