Bio

B 10 is a Ugandan digital artist based in Kampala. She draws a lot of her passion for art from growing up surrounded by the strong artistic personalities of her mother and a host of aunts and uncles in creative industries. A key element of her work is the expression of art as a joyful celebration of the human cultures and relationships she observes. The vibrant and colorful influences of growing up in Africa can be seen in her use of bold and cheerful tones and shades. She also loves to weave humor in her representation, the signature of her naturally playful spirit. When she runs out of creative juice and needs to recharge, B10 will go for a swim, explore the marvels of astronomy and cosmology, unwind with a good animated movie / series or catch up with friends to draw inspiration from the living for her tributes to life.

Work Process 

B 10 believes in creating intentional art with an objective to communicate rather than confuse. To achieve this, she favors a light and friendly artistic style to creatively retell complex stories through simple visualizations with the intention of being relatable, welcoming, funny and heartwarming.

Her ideas are typically drawn from real life through observation and reinterpretation of the emotions and the motivation driving the behaviors that define the uniqueness of an individual character.  After describing all the relevant whys associated with a character comes imagining a visual that reflects the write up and effectively tells audiences what they need to know about a particular character in any given scene or situation.

 This part of the process is greatly supported through research and consulting references. A lot of these are got from the internet through database platforms like Google and Pinterest. For the more specific references that may be hard to find online, B 10 relies on reenacting poses/ situations herself to get a better feel for how they may best be portrayed them.

Once she has all the necessary resources in place, she begins creating sketches in Adobe Photoshop based on her research, going through a number of iterations testing out what works best in terms of posing, visual style and overall message. This part of the process has become much faster and more intuitive over the years as her experience has grown. 

Additionally, as is often the case, when the work is commissioned and requires the approval of a third party, a review stage is included after sketching for feedback and revision to best match the work with the intended vision. After settling on a final sketch, she moves on to final lines and shading, making use of her color theory knowledge to inform her choices.

She is a big fan of captured candid moments, and finds great inspiration in the natural expressions of people doing things without being performative. To this end, her observations of life extend from people all the way to animals with the intention of capturing the sincerest representations of expression. But her biggest artistic influence remains the natural African affinity for bold, loud expression, vibrance and colorfulness of a continent loved by the sun.