Social media, when used properly, can be a comic creator’s best friend. It’s a tricky beast to handle, as it easily can push readers away just as easy as it can bring them in, but as someone who wrangles social media for a living, I’d say on the whole comic writers and artists leverage social media pretty damn well. For artists, one of the best tools of today is Instagram, as it is purely visual and allows artists to share their work with large audiences with just a few clicks while also making their work even more sharable and searchable. It’s a great tool, and some artists like Jamie McKelvie and Kevin Wada do a really great job with it.
One of my personal favorites on there is Tula Lotay, though. You might know Lotay from her work on the recent “Supreme: Blue Rose” #1 at Image and from “Bodies” #1 at Vertigo, and if you do, it’s easy to see why she’s quickly becoming one of the biggest – if not the biggest – breakout stars in comics in 2014. Her work is transcendent and uniquely beautiful, and on Instagram, Lotay takes readers and fans inside her work sharing line art, brush tests, process work and much more. It provides wonderful insight into how her dazzling work becomes what it ends up as.
For me, just getting more looks at the art from a creator who is the center of a Venn diagram of Mike Allred, Ming Doyle and Tommy Lee Edwards is reason enough to follow her though. She’s such a feel based artist that even though I’m trying to place her in a relatable, relative context, it does her no favors because her work is truly her own entirely. It’s why I wanted to feature her today on Artist August, to share her art with more readers who may have missed out on her so far. If you haven’t yet, read her work though. It’s brilliant stuff, and give her a follow on the Instagram while you’re at it.
Page 5 from “Supreme: Blue Rose” #1
Maplewood sketches from “Bodies”
Hat and Scarf…only The Shadow knows
Willem Dafoe?
Deckard “Doodle” (We have hugely different definitions of “doodle”)
