Comedian Kevin Hart inspires an internet feel-good story by buying portraits of a young Nigerian Artist.
Drawing portraits of high profile individuals and celebrities before proceeding to tag them on Twitter and Instagram in the hope they see it is a common marketing tool for upcoming artists.
But given the insane speed of social media interactions where an A-list celebrity can get millions of mentions, the chances of getting a response of any kind is pretty slim.
Unless of course, you’re lucky as Eli Waduba Yusuf, a Nigerian hyperrealism pencil artist. Waduba’s celebrity muse was Kevin Hart, arguably Hollywood’s hottest comedian at the moment. By itself, the hyper-realistic portrait of Hart proved striking enough to gain attention on Twitter but then things took an even better turn.
Getting a retweet or a like from a tagged celebrity is considered a huge success, but having your tweet quoted, getting an order for the portrait and being commissioned for three more, all in one fell swoop, is sensational stuff if you’re a 26-year old artist in the northern region of Nigeria.
Beyond getting handsomely rewarded (Waduba has confirmed to CNN he’s already in talks with Hart), his work has already received significant mileage as Hart’s tweet has been retweeted as many as 100,000 times. Waduba’s success is also a win for Nigeria’s growing community of hyperrealism artists who have not shied from showcasing their work on social media.
In 2016, in similar social media-inspired success, Oresegun Olumide, a hyperrealism oil painter saw his work go viral thanks to Facebook and received offers to exhibit them in the United Kingdom and the United States of America.