Kumar Burra started off by painting landscapes like many of his counterparts back in school. He was a back bencher. “You know, the hills, the sun and the clouds,” he reminisces. Coming a long way from there, this 30-year-old, is one of the few artists in the city who does hyper-realistic pencil sketches today.
Hyper-realistic art pieces resemble a high-resolution photograph, but, “For a photograph, the artist uses a tool – camera. Though they need to be technically sound, the camera is doing the job. In a hyper-realistic art piece, every single line is created by the artist,” explains Kumar Burra, who hails from Kakinada. He moved to Hyderabad in 2008.
“I was pursuing B.Com but discontinued for personal reasons and moved to animation. I started painting out of personal interest,” he recalls.
He sketched Allu Arjun and that’s when he started to create a buzz in the art community. “I knew the admin of Allu Arjun’s fan page on Fb and he posted my sketch. People said the piece looked real. That’s when I understood that I had talent. I started browsing and got attracted to hyper-realistic drawings,” shares Kumar, who taught himself techniques just by following international artists on Facebook. He went on to sketch Pawan Kalyan and Tamil actor Karthik Sivakumar and the progress is clearly visible.
But two pieces of work stand out in his collection – water dripping down his wife’s face and David from The Holy Bible. “I photographed my wife and wanted to try sketching it,” says Kumar, who is also a photographer. His work in progress is also appreciable – the well-defined face of a shepherd he clicked a while ago. “People interest me. So does black and white photography,” he tells us. This also explains why he has been working only with pencil.
There are few hyper realistic artists – Anjaneyulu Gundu, another artist from Hyderabad, but he uses oil paints.
Another well-known hyper-realistic artist who works with pencil from South India is Raja Ravi Varma’s grand son, Jay Varma. Kumar says he wants to stick to pencil and carve a niche for himself. “I want to stick to pencil because there are hardly any. Even if I add colour, it will be abstract, accentuating only certain aspects of the piece,” shares Kumar.
Is there a market for this kind of art in the city? Kumar says, “People still wonder why they need to spend so much more money when they can get photographs for a lesser price. For this perception to change, it will take time.”
He is already in talks with art galleries in the city to put up his first show.
“It takes a while for one piece to get done. David took almost 200 hours because I wanted to bring the marble finish. So it will be a while before I put up a show,” shares the artist.