By Tobijulo Onifade

Fatola Israel is a final year Visual Art student at the University of Lagos (UNILAG) Nigeria. Fatola is a multi-talented in various aspects of Fine Art such as Landscape drawing, Portraiture, just to name a few as well as well-versed with various mediums such as Pencil, Colour pencils, Charcoal, and so on. He has a great portfolio to his name but I believe what makes him stand out is his hyperrealistic drawings.

Hyperrealism versus Photorealism
Photorealism is a technique/movement that aimed at producing works from photographs as realistic as possible so that the human eye will not be able to tell whether it was a work of art or the original image. Hyperrealism is an advancement of Photorealism in that yes photographs are used as a reference but it goes a step further by: according to Bob Lansroth “adding more to the works”. These include Narrative, Charm, and Emotion. Illusion also plays a part in this. So while Photorealism modelled after photographs, Hyperrealism focused on “creating a different pictorial design by incorporating an element that might not be there in reality” (Bob Lansroth, Hyperrealism in Art – Ultimately, Is it Art or Skill? 2015)

What makes Fatola’s works Hyper-realistic is the added element of Narrative, Charm, and Emotion. Looking at his works it is easy to see how beautiful and well executed they are, but there is something about it, something that draws you in. This led to me finding out more about him and discovering his blog/website. Each piece is inspired by the Human life and the different elements that make life, life, such as struggle, pain, activism, passion and more. His works are mostly an interpretation of his musings, other times he is inspired by other people. For instance, his work “Sober Reflections” is inspired by a quote by Nigerian artist Brymo while “Sounds from the other side” is inspired by the success of Wizkid and a Stevie Wonder quote.

I mentioned earlier on that Fatola is great with a different medium which is good, but with regards to what makes him stand out, his use of Graphite Pencils and Charcoal is definitely his best medium.

To see more of his art and read more about him, please visit his Art635 artist page