Kaloian Toshev (MZK) is a Bulgarian digital artist that started his journey in 2004. His mission is to turn girls into the queens they really are via his art, and to bring more beauty to the world. He first heard about NFTs in 2021, just before Beeple made his $69 million sale. After the Beeple sale, he decided that he wanted to be a part of this art/nft movement. MZK dropped his first NFT collection on Foundation in April 2021 and sold out in 48 hours.
He gets inspiration from his desire for perfection, and his desire to improve his craft. He has been fascinated by female beauty since he was a child. He also gets inspired by the music he listens to when drawing, which tends to be Indie Pop/Alternative, but includes all other genres.
He researches how to represent different feelings. In the past, he went deep into anatomy, but he has that skill, so his focus is on defining the feeling.
His style has been influenced by color and powerful emotions. He isn’t usually inspired by others’ art, but he enjoys watching other artists create amazing/powerful work.
He is shaping his identity via art. He feels that he is part of the whole NFT community, but not part of a smaller community or discord. He has friends in the space, but they are part of the larger scene.
He has slowly started to collect other artists’ work, mostly on ETH as he doesn’t care for the UI/UX on Tezos marketplaces.
We discussed the royalties being taken away on Blur and Opensea Marketplaces, and what that means as a creator. He said he is only minting with a manifold contract so that the 10% royalties are baked into the contract.
He is a full-time artist and mainly focused on NFTs these days, but is planning to create some prints soon.
He is currently working on a new collection to be minted as Ordinals (NFTs minted on BTC blockchain), called Extraordinal Women, which contains 100 nfts. Ordinals has its limitations, as it can only hold 4 megabytes of data, so 8-bit art is the easiest and cheapest way to mint.
When I asked who his favorite artists are, he said that he doesn’t necessarily have one, but he admires Felipe Pantone for his colorful work and James Jean for his powerful compositions.
He said he doesn’t have a favorite color, but uses purple instead of black for outlining, so perhaps purple is a favorite, as it is in all of his drawings.
I asked him to finish this sentence, I would never create…disturbing artwork, no horror or disfigured people.
The message he wants people to get from his work is to have positive emotions, and positive feelings, and to brighten their day.