In the age of social media, where do you draw the line between reality and fabrication? Nathan Smith, represented by AAARep, was recently commissioned by the Financial Times to illustrate this very relevant concept. His illustration depicts three masks exhibiting contrasting emotional expressions and a shadowy, manipulative figure in the background pulling the mask strings. Nathan sculpted and rendered this image in ZBrush using a simple color palette. His artwork accompanies the Financial Times article entitled “The Age of the Hoax,” which discusses self-invention in the digital age and how life stories are frequently exaggerated online. Social media influencers in particular inhabit a realm somewhere between fantasy and reality, often wearing these figurative masks to distort the image they portray to the world.

Nathan is an internationally-published British artist and illustrator who has worked in the creative industry for nearly 30 years. Before pursuing a career in fine art and illustration, he trained and worked as a theater designer and scenic artist in London. Much of his work, including his illustration shown here, still emulates the theatrical world. Quirky and playful, Nathan’s 3D digital illustrations, abstract characters and mechanical fantasy creations often evoke the fantastical and futuristic.