Note: This article is also available in Assamese.

Who are you, and what do you do?

Hello! I’m Priyanka Gogoi, an illustrator and the person behind PhophophoWorld. I created PhophophoWorld as a platform to showcase my art journey in 2015. At that time, I didn’t know any digital medium and traditional medium were my only friends. Now I am much more comfortable drawing digitally. When I look back now, my art has grown leaps and bounds, and I’m in no mood of breaking the flow. I am still trying to find what I like doing, and what is my own style; sometimes I converge, sometimes I diverge, but creating art has been a constant.

In these years since the creation of PhophophoWorld, some of my cartoons connected with the audience and many of the audience further converted into clients. Currently, I draw anything from e-invites to children’s art. 🎨

You can find more of my artworks at my Instagram @PhophophoWorld or on Facebook, Oh! And I have an Assamese Whatsapp sticker pack on the Google PlayStore. I will add more stickers to the pack. In the meantime, buy it please?!

What hardware do you use?

I’m a bit ashamed to answer this. It will show you how unprofessional I am! I started off with a Wacom One Small picked at absolute randomness at a Comic-con because it was on discount and the cheapest in the Wacom range. The device remained faithful to me until I furloughed it last year. In its place is a XP-Pen Artist 12 now, which I pleaded with a relative to buy at a Black Friday sale in the US. It was going for a 60% discount, I couldn’t let that deal go! You can almost sense it, so I will say it aloud: “I cannot let go of a good bargain!” 💰

I still don’t own a desktop (illustrators reading this post, please be kind). The Wacom was hooked to a Sony VAIO laptop, the VAIO died of old age in 2017. Then came a very low-specs Lenovo notebook laptop, which I mainly used for reading, but for that time being, it worked fine until the Wacom was replaced by XP Pen. The moment I plugged in the XP Pen, the Lenovo went into a crazy spin 🤖, it just froze up after a few attempts!

So currently, I’m using a third-hand 9years old Dell laptop with good-enough-for-now specs (8GB RAM, i5) which has a dead battery and needs to be plugged in at all times. I hope it doesn’t die on me.

And what software?

Photoshop all the way through. I know nothing else. I have the latest Photoshop CC 2020 on my degenerate laptop. This software is magnificent.

Totally irrelevant but I get very envious of illustrators using Procreate and creating masterpieces on their Apple phones, so I have recently downloaded the closest Android app to Procreate, Autodesk Sketchbook, and I am now at the pre-beginner-struggle phase with it.

How do you go about your work?

Mentally, I try not to get too stressed out about ideas. I am an anxious person and even thinking about creative blocks may actually trigger a block! So I let ideas come to me through talks or thoughts or anything that I consume, media, food or otherwise. As ideas come knocking, I note them in my phone. I have too many notes at the moment and I revisit them often.

Since my forte is feel-good art and I use both the basic cartooning style and the illustrator style, I swing between these two drawing modes depending on how much time I have. The days I don’t have much time on my hands, a quick cartoon with basic colouring is what I do. On other days, I may do full backgrounds with effects and all that jazz. I challenge myself to create 10-15pieces every month. If I don’t succeed, it is fine, but I attempt to sit for at least an hour or two and draw every day.

I used to think that I should create content that resonates with my audience or makes me gain eyeballs, but I have left that line of thought for good. My art on social media is primarily for me. I put it out in the world because I want to express it. Some people like it and choose to stay with me on my journey and for that, I’m grateful. 🤗

What would be your dream setup?

A desktop at the moment. Lol.

Yes, a desktop with 16GB RAM, proper IPS Panel monitor so I can see all the colours and a dedicated graphics card that can run all the programs easily. A stand for the tablet too. My brother has suggested that I get the desktop assembled. Knowing him and his rants on specs (which you can find here: ahilapaati/krishnashish), I know I can trust him on it.

I have been sifting through IKEA mindlessly these days, so decor-wise I know I want a table for my tablet that can be converted into a standing one, an ergonomic chair that my spine will be thankful for (currently, I have a bench) and a peg board that gets splattered with a lot of feel-good art from my favourite artists! 👨‍🎨👩‍🎨