Featured Artist: Radiomode

Doom, gloom and political nit-picking. Honestly, it’s hard to stomach your breakfast with the news switched on these days. If there’€™s anything the world needs more of, it’s a bit more fun, and Budi Satria Kwan (radiomode) will help your Fruit Loops go down with a smile. While he describes his portfolio as ‘€˜Surreal, carefree, minimalist. Mostly colorful’€™, some of us would go a step further and call it innovative, insightful, sometimes fantastical and often side-splittingly funny.

Budi’s work is ingenious in its own right, but he has an appreciation for other people’s finest repartee as well, and in many cases his visual treatment of such commentary functions as an effective value-adding tool. Check out the pencils in The Wittiest of Them All for a feel. Don’t let the jovial mood fool you, though: Budi also likes horror films and doesn’€™t shy away from a bit of black humor.

Born and residing in Indonesia, Budi is largely self-taught, having first been called to action by a graphic design competition. From here, he began learning how to achieve visual effects from a digital platform. After graduating from Illustrator, much of the artist’€™s recent work is now finished off or made entirely in Photoshop. Working with a tablet, he starts drawing directly into the new file and will often take it all the way to completion on screen. However, that old lure of paper, pencils and ink is once again having its intoxicating effect on Budi and he is moving back towards traditional media, describing the process as ‘fulfilling’. Those of us seeking a bit of quiet delight with our toast might use the same adjective to describe a browse through radiomode’€™s portfolio.

See radiomode’s full portfolio here