Art Exhibition: "HYBRID THEORY" by Adesoji Adesina and Uthman Wahaab

Hey there, blog readers!

How has your week been? What's up with all the traffic in Lagos nowadays?? OhMyFreakingGoodness! Luckily, this has given ,e time to practise for gesture drawing, so it's not all that bad.

I wanted to annouce an art exhibition, by one of my colleagues, Uthman Wahab. He's exhibiting with another artist.

Here's the official blurb for it.

Signature-Beyond Gallery presents "Hybrid Theory", an exhibition of a body of work by artists Adesoji Adesina and Uthman Wahaab.

Opening: Thursday 25th September. 7 pm - 9 pm.

Viewing: Thursday 25th - Friday 10th October. 9 am - 6pm.
Gallery also opens on Sundays from 12noon - 6 pm.

I've seen some of the paintings and if you love Sci-fi, Drawing, Linkin Park and mixed media, this one's for you! Admission is totally free btw, so just dress presentable.

See you there!

The Art of the Conté Drawing

Hello m'lovies.

How have you been? I'm going to start a  products review series of posts, as I think it's important we know what we use. Knowledge is power, or so I've been told (lol).

Conté is a type of drawing chalk, packaged in France in the 1700s by a man called Joseph Conte but artists have been using it since the time of the Renaissance (Michaelangelo, Da Vinci and co all used it to draw). For me, it's a lot better than a Graphite pencil, it has nice colours and is smooth to use. They are a lot like pastels but harder and because the name "Conté" is trademarked.a lot of companies call them "compressed pastel". It has just gotten popular here in Nigeria though.

Thomas Wilmer Dewing, before 1926

Michaelangelo, 1550s

Susan Lyon, 2014

I reviewed a few brands I got recently in Lagos. They are the General's compressed pastel sticks, Conté a Paris (the original brand) and Rembrandt Carre Crayons.

swatches of the colours and brands I have

From top to bottom: Rembrandt, Conte a Paris and General's

I did these quick studies of paintings, to show you what they could do. Nice, no?

Finally, here is my own original work, I spotted this dignified elderly gentleman at National Arts Theatre and insisted on doing a drawing of him, using red Conté.

I really like them and I would urge you to try them out, and you can also mix them with charcoal too. So go have fun!

What's in a stick of charcoal, really?

I am so, so sorry for disappearing on y'all. So much has happened since we last talked, and I will be sharing it with you from now on.

Blogging is hard work. Almost as hard as Astro Nuclear Physics. Truly. You've never read up on it, so don't argue with me. I've never read up on it either.

Sooooo.....

Charcoal. Wonderful to cook Jollof rice on. Excellent to grill Suya to the right taste level. Even better to draw with.

KwangHo Shin

Alex Tzavaras

Kelvin Okafor

Kathe Kollwitz

These are lovely examples of the beauty and flow and life of charcoal (seriously I prefer them to most oil paintings). I got some recently and decided to put them to the test.

Inscribe charcoal sticks and some random Chinese set

 

 

 

 

 

 

Derwent charcoal pencils

I got the Inscribe set and Derwent pencils from AB Artworld and the Chinese sticks from some art store, all stores are located in Ojuelegba.

I have shown how dark each gets, and how soft each brand is. IMHO, none is bad (THAT IS THE BEAUTY OF CHARCOAL, PEOPLE!), they just make different marks, it's upto you to use it as you feel. I will say that pencils give you more control when drawing and are less messy but sticks give you that wonderful flow of movement.

Now, if you will all excuse me, I'll go back to cooking jollof, errrr.....I mean drawing, with Charcoal.

Laters.