Welcome to my first art and history blog post.

I’m going to focus on art, and history in this post, and give a quick summary of art and history.

Believe it or not, art history has been around a long time now.

Many thousands of years ago, people used to document their lives using drawing (like the one below), writings, storytelling (like most people of Western Africa) or merge the two with religion. 

In fact, many thousands of years ago, art was very revered for telling the truth on many subjects of religious history, and that was the main subject for people to make art.

Yes!

Even more than hitting a girl with a club or killing an animal with a spear as it is told in many Palaeolithic cave paintings. 

Content like the Palaeolithic painting only tells part of the truth though.

For many years now you have to dig to find the truth out.

Because back then, people would document their everyday doings using these different art forms. It was like a journal. One that we can all now see.

I loved uncovering historical truths, that is why I studied Art history with my degree. My love for illustration came way before this though.

Now let’s begin.

Art

Where do you think it all began? Egypt or Caveman paintings?

Many of us know about drawings on the walls in the tombs in Egypt, but even more than that, and what has been branded mostly is the caveman drawings in tombs.

Well of course! Some of you say.

No Way! Others say.

The Egyptian wall tells a story with a whole lot of hieroglyphs and sculptures / illustrations. The other has many line drawings.

But do we really know the truth of what these stories are depicting? 

And were they the beginning?

I believe that there will be two popular pulls to the answers that is now in your head.

If you don’t have any particular belief, or are an atheist or agnostic, you probably believe in the caveman theory. Maybe.

Another group of people that believe in the Bible, don’t believe in that at all, because that would make evolution a correct view and they believe in creation.

Question!

What do you think about these thoughts below:

These questions hold many answers and can be debated and discussed for several hours I am sure. I bet you never thought of these questions. They may change your view on everything!

• Check out the Egyptian wall above, do you think these people depicted are Egyptian? Or are they slaves and non Egyptian?
• What about the caveman drawing above? Do you think that was drawn by everybody’s ancestor? Or was it just one group of people?
• Did those cavemen look like Flintstone? Did people like him evolve and come from a monkey? If so, what about the other people existed in the world? Did they evolve too?

There is deep in depth truth in each question.

Now I’ve got you thinking.

The hieroglyphs, the caveman drawings, the Flintstones and anything else you can think of. Even my paintings and illustrations have deep in depth truth in every line of each character.

Everyone has a message to spread.

Even cartoons have deep in depth truth in every line that was drawn by the artist. Lets take a look at some popular cartoons.

The Smurfs

This is Smurfette, she was the only female Smurf and I loved to draw her when I was a child. I don’t think I showed anyone, but I drew her with plaits in her hair instead of blonde hair.

The Smurfs were drawn using a particular style incorporating ancient traditions.

But I didn’t know that then, and plus, I was told so many times that art would get me nowhere, so later I tore up my Smurfette.

This was a part of the ‘finding myself’ process.

When I was in class, I focused on drawing so accurately, much like the image I was looking on. Looking back at those times, I tried so much to be a realist in my sketches because that is what everybody values as a good artist.

That was not my style though.

I was always good at exaggerating images and situations. So that’s probably why I eventually chose painting and expressionism. But the thing is, I was even better at printmaking, which is where the natural illustrator in me comes out, but I chose to ignore that for a long time because I loved to paint.

I did everything I could to ignore my natural talent.

I sang karaoke. I’m alright, but I am no Ariana Grande.

I joined drama clubs, I joined socialising clubs.

I just treated the art and the history I learned as a hobby.

Let’s talk about some history I learned and how it’s different from what I learned in school.

History

At first in history class, I was the teachers pet. I loved learning about ‘black’ history. But for me it was also the social aspect.

I thought my teacher was quirky and very particular and my classmates were all so different, and that added to my love for what I learnt. 

Four years later, I grew astronomically because of a really bad accident I was in and I plummeted into a different part of life.

My mind was not more advanced. I was still immature for a long time.

But I was introduced to a crazy amount of history, and I would gormandize it whenever I could, even all in my one entire day. 

I did it and I was hooked.

There was no future in art.

I needed to learn more.

I devoured that knowledge at a rate that was astonishing. So much so, that I just kept on learning and exposing all kinds of truth in history. 

I also built upon my art skills too up till this point, but I had built upon my art much earlier than history though, and I didn’t know how to move on in art.

But art was the beginning of my day when I was a teenager.

There were times I would wake up early just to draw my friends sleeping when I was a teenager, just to capture them or something around in a sketch or turn it into a caricature somehow. 

My love for history took over at some point as I got older, as many told me there was no future in this sector. 

But can you believe I pursued a degree in art instead of history?!

And after graduating I sought out positions that merged both, like working at a museum.

But that proved futile.

So after much searching and many specialities, I am now hoping to bring out my unspent passion for both.

Conclusion

• Palaeolithic cave paintings and Egyptian walls were not the beginning of it all, but they were just well branded and are now popular to see.
• Truth tellers mostly wrote to document what happened in their lives, this included journalling.
• Religious history share more about their link with tradition and mythology
• There is an overwhelming future in art, it just looks different from what you are envisioning, and it has a lot to do with social change and the digital age as is noted here in the Artist’s Editorial’s blog post.

We are going to dive into Egyptian art. It will tell a story you never thought existed. Then, we will dive into modern Egyptian art and how it benefits their society.

What stories do you want to unearth?