By Osa Mbonu

The power and vast possibilities of the social media has once again played out through the world of visual arts, and the scene of the great event is Nigeria.

Yusuf Waduba at work.(inset) Portrait of Kevin Hart by Yusuf

The spectacular event began when a 26-year-old Eli Waduba Yusuf, drew a portrait of one of his heroes, Kevin Hart, and tweeted it to him.  Yusuf was not quite sure that his tweet could reach Hart and drew his attention to the work.

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Yusuf said it was like a dream when United States comedian and actor Kevin Hart directly contacted him about the portrait. Yusuf is described as a hyper-realism artist from Nigeria who had spent two weeks drawing a detailed pencil image of Hart that looks like a black and white photo.

This is Yusuf’s original tweet:

My name is Eli Waduba Yusuf. Am a Nigerian, based in kaduna. Am a hyperrealism PENCIL Artist, I hope to become like @Harinzeyart. Please Retweet, let @KevinHart4real see it, thank you.

4:17 PM – Feb 25, 2019

According to BBC report, “Yusuf tweeted out his masterpiece, tagging Hart in the hope that the actor might see the finished product. Others also saw the work and began tweeting Hart about the talented young artist. Eventually, the artwork came to the actor’s attention and he responded to one user: ‘Talent out of this world… Wooooooooow.’ Hart then went further and tweeted Yusuf directly.”

By this combination of the act of social media and talent, Yusuf has not only been brought to limelight, but also landed new jobs, because hart has promised to buy the portrait and also commission Yusuf to draw portraits of a few of his celebrity friends. This is how Hart tweeted his reply:

@KevinHart4real

I see it and I want to purchase it…I also want to support you and your amazing talent by giving you a fee to do a pencil drawing of 3 of my celebrity friends that I can gift it to. DM your info and let’s get to work!

Report says that “the reaction to Hart’s reply had more than 310k likes in the first 24 hours with people tweeting their congratulations to Yusuf and wishing him well.

How does Yusuf feel about this turn of event? “I still can’t believe it; it feels like a dream. It’s been so overwhelming. Kevin Hart has just blew my mind. A lot has changed – a few days ago I was just a local artist who loved drawing and would have loved the world to see my work, but I didn’t know it would happen so fast. Here I am having an interview with the BBC – please someone should wake me up!”

Yusuf’s style, hyper-realism, is a form of art that looks very realistic. The works of a hyper-realist look like photographs. However, the high-resolution element takes the art beyond photorealism. “The art tends to come in the form of paintings or sculptures. But other mediums such as pencil can be used to create the works.”

Yusuf is inspired to work in the hyper-realism genre by the works of Arinze Stanley. “His work showed me the possibilities of art, so I decided that whatever I see I must replicate and do even better,” said Yusuf. “I made sure that every new work I do is better than the previous one.”

Born July 6, 1979 as Kevin Darnell Hart, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States, Hart is an American comedian, actor and producer. He began his career by winning several amateur comedy competitions at clubs throughout New England, culminating in his first real break in 2001 when he was cast by Judd Apatow for a recurring role on the TV series Undeclared. The series lasted only one season, but he soon landed other roles in films such as Paper Soldiers (2002), Scary Movie 3 (2003), Soul Plane (2004), In the Mix (2005), and Little Fockers (2010).

Hart’s comedic reputation continued to grow with the release of his first stand-up album, I’m a Grown Little Man (2008), and performances in the films Think Like a Man (2012), Grudge Match (2013), Ride Along (2014) and its sequel Ride Along 2 (2016), About Last Night (2014), Get Hard (2015), Central Intelligence (2016), The Secret Life of Pets (2016), Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie (2017), Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017), and Night School (2018). He also released four more comedy albums, Seriously Funny in 2010, Laugh at My Pain in 2011, Let Me Explain in 2013, and What Now? in 2016.

In 2015, Time Magazine named Hart one of the 100 most influential people in the world on the annual Time 100 list. He starred as himself in the lead role of Real Husbands of Hollywood