> He could just use other creative photos (that he could also create himself), copy them using his technique and you would consider him a genius (i.e. he can create a Picasso-like image with his own style and simply copies the photo he creates).
Yes, if he "just" creates Picasso-like work in his own style, and copies it using pencil, I might consider him a genius. But... so far we have only seen he can copy a photograph to pencil, and countless people have that ability. It's the simple step of creating Picasso-like work that we haven't seen from him, and I feel it's a bit more tricky to master.
Agreed. When it comes to hyper-realism, they draw a grid over the source material, and the canvas. It's not tracing, but it's a way of scaling and recreating the proportions of an image very accurately. You can see the grids in the below photos from him, and some others at the same studio.
Don't get me wrong, he's talented, and it's clear he has spent a lot of time practicing. The below video shows him sketching a life drawing of a woman, and I think it's better than most could achieve.
When I was a kid, I tried to do similar things. I remember recreating photographs with pencil. I did a lot of measurements. For example, my drawing would be 10:1 scale compared to the source. So I'd measure the distance between the pupils, and mark them on the paper. Then I'd measure the source material for the distance from the left and right pupils to the right corner of the mouth, scale the measurements accordingly, and mark a dot for that position. In the end, I would get something similar to his below drawing, where it looked pretty realistic, but a little wonky.
I was probably 13 at the time. Now, I'm a terrible artist. I probably spent hundreds of hours in life drawing classes in my late teens, and I was one of the worst people in my classes. If you give me a pencil and ask me to draw a person from my mind, or a person in front of me, I think I would do as good as the average person or worse. But, if you give me a photograph and time, I can do an accurate job at recreating it. I don't think it's much talent though, in my case it's more patience, and paying attention to small details.
In short, I think he's skilled at copying photographs, and shows a lot of technical promise at his age. That doesn't make him a genius artist though. Who knows though, maybe he'll get to that point.
Yes, if he "just" creates Picasso-like work in his own style, and copies it using pencil, I might consider him a genius. But... so far we have only seen he can copy a photograph to pencil, and countless people have that ability. It's the simple step of creating Picasso-like work that we haven't seen from him, and I feel it's a bit more tricky to master.