Featured Artist Update: Nikury

Double double toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble. Calling all witches, familiars, and fans of Halloween because it’s time to fall under the spell of this week’s returning Featured Artist Nikury. Gather your witchy ingredients for a potion, call your familiar to your side, and head out into the night to meet up with your fellow witches to make some magic happen! Or – if you’re too busy to trek out into the cold night this Halloween –  bring the magic to you with a delightfully spooky design from Nikury’s DBH store instead.

Nikury, or Nina, is originally from Finland, but is currently living and working as a freelance artist in the Netherlands. She shares that her art hasn’t changed much since her last feature; although she creates “more serious pieces sometimes” she continues to gravitate towards her characteristic “cartoony + cute” graphics with soft pastels and Halloween-inspired creatures like cats, ravens, and bats. Nevertheless, her “vision is to create more art” and she has been eagerly making mood boards for inspiration and spending time on promoting her new stationary/pin shop. She also shares that she loves working with DBH to help with her goal of “more art” because she appreciates the “human contact” that is at the core of DBH’s philosophy.

Like many freelance artists, Nikury struggles with balancing her creative work with her free time. She says, “in the past year I've tried to balance my life a bit more” and works to find time for hobbies like World of Warcraft or exploring her local forests. Still, Nikury confesses that she never considered herself an artist and jokes that she thought she needed “some magical skills” to become one. However, in 2013 she pursued her passion for Game Development at University and gained the confidence to think, “wow I'm actually an artist.” Today, she loves pursing art in a professional capacity and encourages other artists by saying: “You can be an artist if you really want to. It's not always easy, but if you really want to be an artist you can do it. It doesn't require any magic skills, just hard work & practice.”