Natika Bhat

Aaliya Mehraj, 22, is the first female self taught digital artist of the valley, who is making strides in the contemporary art form and is striving to clear misconceptions regarding it.

The young artist hailing from Nagbal area of Ganderbal district is currently pursuing BBA and is also a young entrepreneur.

Despite facing many hindrances initially, the young artist did not give up her passion to draw.

While recollecting her past, Aaliya says, “Being the eldest child, I had no other child to play with at my home during my childhood. So my mother used to put a notebook and a pencil in front of me and I used to scribble on it. That probably instilled seeds of the art inside me,” Aaliya added.

Aaliya Mehraj came to know about her skill when she was in her 4th grade. 

“When I was in my 4th grade I was given an assignment at school to draw the sketch of a scarecrow. Usually it used to be my dad or my uncle who used to make drawings for me, but that day there was no one around. I was worried about my homework as I had to complete it. So I took a pencil and tried to draw it myself and to my own surprise I replicated the image that was on the book. I was shocked, I never knew I could also draw and since then I got interested in the art of drawing.”

From there on she started to draw the sketches and paintings and eventually she got more engrossed into this field.

But for her studies she was not able to pay much attention to her art.

“I lost touch with making sketches and paintings due to my studies. I sidelined it for a long time as I was not able to focus on both at the same time, so I lost touch with it.”

Aaliya’s tryst with digital art has an interesting story behind it.

“I was in Delhi for the vacations. While I was surfing the internet to check for some new gaming apps, I suddenly bumped onto an app called ‘AutoDesk Sketchbook'. It attracted me and I thought of checking it out. The app was quite interesting and different. I loved its features,” recalls Aaliya.

Since then she got engrossed into digital art and after that she hardly tried traditional art forms.

She has been working as a digital artist even when this form of art was not in vogue in Kashmir.

Aaliya believes that digital art is more efficient and time saving than traditional art and that is the reason she chose it.

Initially, Aaliya was reluctant to upload her work on the internet. However, her attempt to pay tribute to one of the online influencers resulted in revealing her digital talent to the whole world.

“As I started making sketches using this modern art form, I never uploaded my work on social media. I used to draw but I used to keep it for myself. After the death of a young influencer, whom I followed on social media, I made a sketch of him using the digital art and unintentionally I uploaded it on social media. It grabbed everyone’s attention. I got many good as well as substandard responses from people.”

Many taunted upon her art as people were not much aware of this contemporary art form.

“At first people thought that this is just the editing of pictures as they had no idea about it. But it is not. Digital art is not editing of the pictures. You have to make it in the same way as traditional art is made. Only the medium is different,” says Aaliya.

Initially her family  did not support her as like others they were also not aware about this new form of art. But in due course of time and after she started receiving orders, her parents came around and started appreciating the artist for her talent.

Talking about her aim, Aaliya says, "My aim is to conduct workshops to clear the misconceptions related to digital art as people confuse it with mere editing of pictures. I want people to take this form of art seriously. Misconceptions about this form of art should be cleared and I am doing my best to do so.”