- The South African art competition is for young artists below the age of 18
GOSEGO MOTSUMI
Motswana fine artist, Art in Martin Sefako, gained recognition and an opportunity with Edgars Art Competition in South Africa thanks to his hyper-realistic drawings and videos of notable figures, Ayra Starr, DJ Zinhle, Kairo Forbes and Nasty C. The videos of the A0 sized drawings garnered 8 million views online, increasing his social media reach massively and attracted a lot of audience and new clients in South Africa.
“That is how I got the Edgars Art Competition gig,” he said in an interview.
“I was approached on Tik Tok by a South African Marketing Agency called Avatar about the gig despite the many artists that wanted it and I charged them my booking fee as the chosen artist.”
Art competition
Retail store, Edgars was running an art competition on the 25 August, 2023 for young artists below 18 years in South Africa and they selected Sefako to host art Masterclasses in their stores for children who joined the competition. He was flown to three destinations; Durban, Joburg and Pretoria for the classes and they were all a success.
He shared: “It was an amazing experience meeting mini Picasso’s as it reminded me of my younger self and it was inspiring to motivate them with my life as an artist in general. Another joy was getting to tour SA and its beautiful cityscapes.”
Fiercely passionate
Fiercely passionate about art, Sefako has over the years continued to forge a reputation with his hyper-realistic drawings that mix realism with painstaking attention to detail. The fine artist is willing to spend whatever length of time it takes to create hyper-realistic pencil drawings that share the same amount of detail as high-resolution photography.
He said: “I believe I was selected on God’s purpose because he leads my art journey. The drawing videos played a major role as they gave viewers an insight into my art process and I am happy the reception is beautiful because art is for the people.”
Sefako’s work focuses on portraits in pursuit of achieving hyper-realistic pencil drawings in which faces loom large as his favourite subject. He says this is because every person has their own story and capturing the person and their emotions in a drawing is a wonderful experience to be a part of. Apart from faces, other human forms and figures add to his repertoire.