Art Blog

Is that a drawing? Hyperrealistic art that look like photographs

Hyperrealism evokes the illusion of photography. Artists who create hyperrealistic art are precision-oriented in their practice, creating artworks that make you do a double take. Art.co.za found some South African and African artists who have mastered their skill.

Ruan Huisamen

Self-taught artist Ruan Huisamen's charcoal portraits show a mastering of the human form. He creates his works by starting with the traditional grid-form, dividing large drawings into smaller workable grids. "Each individual piece reacts to one another, combining to create the illusion of depth and the three-dimensionality of form," says Huisamen.

Asha Zero

Cape Town-based artist Asha Zero's works resemble collage of printed and pasted fragments of magazine pages and photograph but in reality each individual element is hand-rendered to create intricate paintings. Asha Zero deconstructs traditional notions of identity and representation, dominated today by contemporary media, branding, marketing and advertising.

Jono Dry

Jono Dry's unique photorealistic-surrealist works are created on a large scale, using graphite on paper or board. His representations of the unreal create a tension between appearance and reality.

Chiamonwu Ifeyinwa Joy

Nigerian artist Chiamonwu Ifeyinwa Joy draws the realistic charcoal drawings inspired by her Igbo culture and the traditions that are part of it.