Maya Djiji

Maya Djiji

What inspires your art?

Oh god- uh… uh… inspirations. Hm. Well, The Yellow Submarine movie and Alice in Wonderland. Thee Oh Sees inspire me, even though they’re a band they still inspire me. And Ty Segall. The Beatles, they inspire me a lot. The color orange inspires me… my asshole also inspires me (oh Maya….) My cat- she’s in there.

When do you feel most inspired?

Oh fuck. It’s not when I feel most inspired, it's when I feel motivated to draw. Or when I see something that looks cool and I’m like “Woah! I can put a face on that. or I can redraw that in a different way to look cool.” I’m never really inspired by having to vent anger. But mainly drawings start out when I see something and I somehow change it to one thing and then it turns into something completely different and then it’s not the original thing anymore.

What's your favorite medium?

I like really really thin pens and I also like watercolor markers like Copics and Prisma Colors. That’s mainly it. Sometimes I like drawing with a charcoal pencil.

Have you ever gotten really angry while trying to finish a piece?

I mean obviously. Sometimes it can take me way too long to do something cause when I draw it requires a lot of detail and it’s a lot of bending over and squinting to get the detail exact. Sometimes I’ll spend a whole day working on something. I work on it in all of my classes then I’ll get home and continue working on it and then I work on it after dinner and it’s usually not even done after that.

Have you ever given up on an art piece?

I mean I’ve started a lot of things and then stopped because I had another idea and I didn’t want to  work on it anymore. Sometimes when I try to draw realistic things, I’ll get really angry and scribble on it and say fuck it than go onto the next thing. 

Do you want to do something artistic when you’re older?

Yeah, when I think about the future I either think about doing something with art or with music but i definitely think I’ll be doing artistic things. Even if it’s not drawing I like making things or sewing. I can definitely see myself doing something like that. 

Who’s your favorite artist?

Well there’s this one guy- his name is Bill O’Connor. I found him on tumblr and he doesn’t sell any of his art. Well he does, but it’s really expensive. He has really cool art. I like Keith Harring. There’s this guy Monassi and he does really cool work in the style of old Japanese drawings with just ink. Those are my three main ones and those are kind of it. There’s a bunch of cool art that I like, but I don’t know the name of the artists. But mostly Bill O’Connor- I love him.

Why do you like art?

It gives me something to do because before I ever got into drawing, I’d go home and go on the computer a lot or watch Netflix, but now I go home and practice the drums, shower, work on homework, eat dinner, and then for the rest of the night I draw. I doodle a lot in class. Art gives me something to do. I can focus my attention on it. I feel really satisfied when I finish a drawing and obviously I like my art so when it takes me a really long time to finish something and once I’m done I like it and I feel satisfied and I wanna show people.