Artist Portfolio: Djamila Knopf

The artist tells Gary Evans about practising in secret, losing her artistic voice and being told to try “proper art”

- Gary Evans

Djamila Knopf’s website has a page of FAQs. One of the questions the German illustrator gets frequently asked is this: can you give me career advice?

“If you’re an artist wanting to become a professional,” she writes in response, “I can give you the following three pieces of advice: 1) Work on your craft 2) Don’t try to force yourself into a style that isn’t natural to you and 3) Share your work on social media.”

Good advice. It’s solid, precise and applicable to pretty much any line of work – artistic or otherwise. But these three seemingly simple points come from years of trial and error. It’s hard-won advice.

Not that long ago, it looked like Djamila was going to quit working on her own craft. Then, when she did commit to art, she tried to force herself into a style that wasn’t natural. Her work became a big success on social media, but only after practising it in secret because the people she initially shared her work with said it wasn’t proper art. Behind each piece of Djamila’s advice there’s a story.

WORK ON YOUR CRAFT

Djamila doesn’t speak publicly about her childhood, except to say it was “the kind of upbringing I wouldn’t wish on anyone.” A couple of things got her through it: one was visiting her grandparents, making fishing poles, bows and arrows, running about their garden and exploring the surrounding forests, canals and fields. The other was a group of animated TV shows that looked a little different, and told stories about heroines and magic.