Ahmad, graphic artist passionate about digital art
An inspiring example of human endeavor and determination
Today’s article takes a look at Ahmad Budham, a young graphic artist designer passionate about digital art.
– Editor
Ahmad Budham is a young Kuwaiti graphic artist passionate about digital art. Since he could remember sketching whatever came to his mind was his pastime, when he grew older digital art became his passion.
As a child he loved to sketch cartoons; his father, an artist of some repute was encouraging him, indeed he was proud to show to relatives and friends what his little boy was sketching and he preserved his work. This early encouraging led Ahmad to take to art seriously.
In school his favorite subject was biology, fascinated by the development of life from simple bacteria into myriads forms by which it conquered the oceans, the land and the air, each specie endowed with amazing adaptation to its surrounding.
Ahmad’s predilection for biology inclined him to become a doctor one day; but at graduation from high school, though he brought high marks in his finals that granted him a scholarship in medical science, he took the suggestion of his Art teacher to enroll at the High Institute of Drama to widen his knowledge in art through practicing painting, sculpture, digital art and design.
Incidentally, it was at the High Institute that Ahmad discovered a strong affinity to graphics in which the basics are design and photo-shop.
While continuing his education at the High Institute, from the second year Ahmad entered the market in graphic design producing posters and logo for his customers.
Team
After graduation with a Bachelor degree in art he continued in this line of creativity, working with the TV director Nawaf Al Shimmery, a man easy to get along with, a good judge of character able to harness any talent in his team and encouraging the development of latent potentials.
In the TV program “U Turn” of Nawaf Al Shimmery, consisting of comedy sketches on a variety of topics in multimedia: animation, light action, music and graphics, Ahmad’s job was to create the background of characters in cartoon animation.
He then worked with Sami Al Hers in his TV program “Block 13”, a successful hilarious soap opera for adults and children alike, the first all Kuwaiti animation production that lasted three years. Subsequently Ahmad worked with other directors, working with Yarub Burhama production mainly consisted of documentaries and TV video clips.
On the occasion of the Amir’s anniversary working on the sketch “Sabah Al Watan”, a sophisticated work carried out with cutting-edge technology in digital art that included fire-works, was an experience that flared Ahmad’s enthusiasm in digital art.
Another program that got him engaged is “Baby Broadcast”, while creating posters, logos and other advertisement media his customers commission him to do. This is a lucrative job, but Ahmad feels his creativity is being limited by the market. As most creative artists he yearns for the free expression of his feeling and emotions and work in self abandon to his inspiration.
Power
Working to please the public is important, but the artist’s greater satisfaction is to imbue his creation with cognitive depth and human sympathy through symbols that communicate his passion, his spiritual steam and intellectual power with which he reconstructs his experience into an original creation; because what counts in a work of art is the mental and emotional stimulus that lingers on.
This Ahmad tries to communicate through his posters, making them convincing and inspiring; but when the flame of inspiration burns high, and lights up a region of the spirit over which the artist becomes the master, it is hard to silence that feeling! For most of us human an inspira- tion is only marginal, indeed we rarely become fully conscious of it, but in the creative artist it takes over his whole consciousness, fusing an experience into a vision that demands expression.
Art like language is at the heart of our humanity, it shapes our beliefs and view of the world around us. With the information revolution art has assumed an unprecedented role; it has been changing our image of the world and of ourselves thereby altering our concept of reality.
The spreading of knowledge opens our mind; it can change even our most sacrosanct belief, our culture, our ethical and our political point of view, which in turn affects our behavior and the choices we make.
We form our own concept of the world around us according to our personal experience and cultural inculcation. A change in our ways of seeing the world affects all the structural pattern of information, art included.
There is a powerful relation between people’s belief and the society they form. In the simplicity of the old days in Kuwait, when people were more producers than consumers, they were less materialistic, money meant something but not everything.
As the Kuwaitis evolved into a consumer society the whole structural interaction of human values changed. Even art which is mainly an intellectual creation has been conditioned to follow the market and the society it serves.
The tantrum accompanying conflicting values engendered by profound cultural transformation leaves the artist in a fog of uncertainty.
One needs purpose and structure around which to manage his life, without it he sinks into hopeless apathy.
Self-motivated individuals build their own structure through their own endeavor Ahmad didn’t sit around waiting to be appreciated as an artist. He began working producing what society has been demanding of him; in so doing he is not entirely pleasing himself, but he is gaining knowledge and recognition as an artist, thereby improving his chances of becoming his own man one day and pursue his goal of making animation movies.
Such individuals in our midst are an inspiring example of human endeavor and determination!