Perspectives: Lola Beltran Draws the Beat
How does artist Lola Beltran capture the spirit of a time and a place she's never visited? She listens to the music.
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Lola Beltran is not a Louisiana artist. In fact Lola, who was born and raised in Barcelona and currently lives in the UK, has never been to Louisiana. If choosing a Spanish artist to illustrate a New Orleans musician for the cover of a Louisiana magazine’s “Go Local” issue seems like an odd choice, stay with us.
When we started on a feature profile about New Orleans musical sensations Tank and the Bangas, we knew that we’d need something special to do justice to lead singer Tarriona “Tank” Ball’s stage-expanding persona. Lola Beltran is a designer and illustrator who creates for international clients in her native Spain and throughout Europe. Beltran expresses human emotion using a style that recalls the Golden Age of American comics, with overtones of pulp, vintage movie posters, Japanese manga, and sci-fi movie schlock thrown in. She took one look at a video of Tank and the Bangas performing and said she’d do it.
Prior to taking the project on, Lola admits that “New Orleans” conjured up images of little more than the French Quarter, seafood, and Hurricane Katrina. But as they have for much of America since they burst onto the national stage after winning NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert competition in February, the sight and sounds of Tank and the Bangas changed that.
“[The music] gave me the impression of a very vivid city,” Lola wrote in an email. “They continuously mention very proudly things about New Orleans that with no doubt makes me want to check it out in person. As a US pop culture lover I have always wanted to visit Louisiana, and especially New Orleans, which is on my ASAP bucket list now.”
To capture a person she hasn’t met, Lola trawls the Internet, homing in on characteristics that represent her subject’s persona. “I focused on her facial expressions and her volumetric hairs,” she wrote, “but giving her a touch of elegance in her clothing, as she always does.”
Beltran thinks her many years of fine arts training are what enables her to tap the melodramatic reaches of human nature. “So I am somehow more familiar with drawing human figures than if I had just studied graphic design or illustration. I spent many hours during five (eternal) years trying to get the likeness in people and things. Totally paid off.”
See more of Lola Beltran’s work on her Instagram page, @_lolabeltran, where she is a prolific poster, or at behance.net/lolabeltran. Read Alex Cook’s profile of Tarriona Ball in our June issue.