Friday March 29th, 2024
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Mazen Lotfy: A Twist on Digital Art Portraits

Farah Karim talks to the man behind the digital comic-like artworks of celebrities going viral all over Instagram and delves into the story of a young artist who followed his passions...

Staff Writer

Self-taught artist-turned-digital artist Mazen Lotfy first entered the world of digital art about just three months ago, when he started off by making pictures of his friends and close ones. "At first, I was completely taken by surreal art, but then my attention slowly started to turn to portraits and I began looking through known artists' work for inspiration and experience, but my biggest inspiration came from comics," he tells us. "Batman and Superman, DC, Marvel, you name it. That's what had me get into cartooning portraits of people in the first place." Since then, his celebrity portraits have taken the internet by storm, with the celebrities themselves having noticed his work on Instagram.

 

 

"My artwork is very different from others; most digital artists use Photoshop or other programmes on their computers, but I only do my work on the iPad, where it's extremely difficult to find an app that's good enough to work with - not to mention the details you can hardly define on such a gadget," the 31 year-old pharmacist by profession, artist by heart gushes. 

With Instagram being the best platform to circulate one's pictures, Lotfy easily made his way on top of the social media ladder when he scored a repost by Ricky Martin and interactions from celebrities like Kylie Minogue and So You Think You Can Dance's Switch. "One day I looked at my Instagram and I found so many notifications, things started to seem unusual, I could barely keep up! Then a friend showed me a Facebook post where Ricky Martin had shared my portrait of him and I was in both surprised and happy at the same time," he continues.

With time, Lotfy started to gain more and more fans and people who wanted cartoon portraits by him. "Every time I take a look at someone's profile, I see they've used the portraits I've made for them as a display image. I couldn't believe how viral this was getting," he describes his feeling towards being exposed to the public. "It started to feel like I'm in a world of cartoons and everything around me is transforming."