A young Nigerian man with extraordinary gift at drawing has gotten people stunned with his impossible artistry.
Arinze Stanley
Arinze Stanley is a talented young Nigerian artist whose works
often leave people scratching their heads and asking themselves if
they’re looking at a pencil drawing or a high-definition black and white
photograph. Yes, his drawing skills are that good!
Arinze’s interest in art, and drawing in particular, was sparked at
a young age, primarily by the fact that he was always surrounded by
paper. His family ran a paper company, so he would often kill time by
grabbing a piece of paper and trying his hand at drawing.
Arinze's amazing work
But he only started exploring hyper-realism in 2012, and became a
professional artist a year later. He has never taken any professional
art classes, and claims that the level of detail he is able to produce
is solely the result of years of practice. Looking at his fantastic
artworks, it’s safe to say that he has come a long way in very little
time.
“I’ve got a slogan I work with and that’s ‘Practice, Patience, and Persistence’,” Arinze Stanley said in an interview with Ruqayya. “They
have actually guided me throughout the years and still guiding me till
now. Constant practice, I think, made me better at what I do but It
would not have been possible without persistence and patience, as I take
over 200 hours to complete a drawing and I only have time to work
during the night due to my busy schedule at work during the day.”
But it’s not just drawing that Stanley puts a great deal of time into. According to All Africa,
“when he’s drawing hair in a portrait, he studies the kind of hair he’s
using as reference, the volume of hair, the size of the strands of hair
depending on the kind of hair,” in order to come up with the best way to replicate it on paper.
Arinze says that he takes inspiration for his artworks from
everything around him, and takes reference photos himself using a Canon
Rebel T5 camera, but focuses primarily on portraits. He confesses that
he often ends up staring at people’s faces unconsciously, and adds that
being a portrait artist has made him appreciate the varieties of human
facial structures and details.
Stanley’s favorite artist is fellow countryman Kelvin Okafor, whose
works we’ve featured on OC a few years ago. The young artist also cites
Okafor as the one who really got him interested in hyper-realistic
drawing. It was after seeing some of his amazing artworks online that he
started making photorealistic charcoal and graphite drawings of his
own.
With his latest artworks, Arinze Stanley joins the ranks of other
hyper-realism greats, like Paul Cadden, Franco Clun, Douglas McDougall
or Dirk Dzimirsky
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