Is the standard for good or great art to make it look as realistic as possible to life?

Shanny8 2017-03-28 12:15:00 UTC #21

The standard for good/great art is just to have knowledge of what you need to do to achieve the effect that you want- and do it consistently until you find a comfort level with it.. I read/look at stuff that isnt as realistic, but has solid line/structure and fantastic colors; the creator/artist knows what they want to do and does it confidently.

Devika 2017-03-28 12:36:37 UTC #22

This is they key question here. Consider looking beyond the present, and especially beyond Europe/USA. Different cultures have had different definitions of what's desirable. As others have mentioned, there definitely are certain rules for what is pleasing to the eye. And yet there are so many different ways of applying these!

Also, there has always been a divide between "high" and "vulgar" art. What the elite enjoys has always been different from the taste and needs of the masses. Like Noh and Kabuki for instance - the former was the "high" art, the latter "vulgar"!

So, looking beyond our Eurocentric present at paintings of different times and places:

The Pharaohs received the greatest their culture had to offer (who was going to deny them?) - and those murals looked essentially the same over centuries! So this clearly was the preferred aesthetics of the Egyptian elite (because they paid for it). (more here)

Is it hyperrealism? Of course not! There's not a shred of 3D space in it! Is it fantastic? You bet it is.

Next, pre-columbian, a mural of a goddess in the Valley of Mexico:

This is sheer excellence. And still, it's nowhere near a photograph - that's precisely what makes it great! (Let's just ignore that this specific religion demanded human sacrifice.)

And for good measure I'm throwing in this 16th century monochrome sliding door painting by Kanou Eitoku:

I think it speaks for itself (and you know what point I'm trying to make by now).

A culture's aesthetic is influenced by so many different factors, such as materials available, what's necessary for survival, climate, social structures, what the rich people want to express or achieve, social and political circumstances, religion... So in fifty years hyperrealism might very well be sneered at as a symbol of the loss of creativity and the takeover of technology. Or it's hailed as the next level of art which was only achievable through mankind's technological evolution or whatever. Who knows.

So, TLDR: NO.

J.Lovelace 2017-03-28 14:29:15 UTC #23

To be honest I wanted to write more, but I am always anxioust hat someone will start picking on what I say, so I decided to throw that one line for now. I think I'm ready to add to it now that others voiced their opinions.

Since art is always subjective, I don't know about others, but personally I am not a fan of realistic art. Especially the one that is photorealistic. It's kind of boring to me. I see real people/landscapes every day, so I'd like to look at something more cartoony from time to time. I do think it is amazing that someone can pull it off, but on the other hand, it's a lot of work that takes hours, and you could have the same result with one single click of a camera button and a filter. But as long as someone feels happy doing it, and feels acomplished after finishing a piece, I won't stop them from doing what they like to draw.

In my journey with art and making comics, I understood that I don't have to give it my best. I can work at 70 - 80 percent of my ability and still entertain people and enjoy drawing myself. Of course there's times that I put some pressure on myself or I try to challenge myself, in which I want to give it my best. And then I go back to my "relax mode" and just draw however I like until I feel like doing another challenge.

Also, you asked about master artist. Have you heard of this?
"Jack of all trades, master of none is oftentimes better than master of one."
In this situation, I think a master artist is someone who can switch between styles freely, without any trouble, than being able to work with only one style that people may get bored of quickly. My friend has an unique style, in which he draws characters in a certain "shadowy" way, and at first I was amazed, but after a while it became very repetitive. He mastered it, no doubt but you probably know that feeling when you eat something that you enjoy, but after a month you get feed up with it.
Variety is the key.

shiftingverses 2017-03-28 20:40:26 UTC #24

I'll bite, although the answer is no.

There's many different schools of thinking when it comes to art. Most modern observers say that the technical skill of the artist is second to what the artist is able to make the viewer feel. In comic terms, a rough, scribbly stick figure can convey more emotion in pose and visual language than a uncannily rendered, Alex Ross level painting that just shows the same thing. As photographic advancement became common, and romantic movements flourished (around the 1800's), realistic art became less interesting to artists. The masters had already explored what could be done with representations of reality.

HAVING SAID THAT, a good technical artist (the kind needed for visual communication such as comic work or animation) would need to have a very good grasp of these realistic fundamentals. The general rule is that you can't start by subverting and experimenting unless you have a good idea what you're subverting and what you're experimenting on. Even many modern or abstract painters will be very talented at realism because it is the building blocks they must identify in order to deconstruct or abstract from.

LCT_m_a_d 2017-03-29 03:41:26 UTC #25

I always believed that art is about capturing an idea and turning it into a sharable experience. I can create an idea in my mind that's beautiful, clever, or groundbreaking. However, in this world, if I can't share it has no value, and will only ever be an idea. To me that is the true value of art. How to you share an experience with anyone and everyone?

tayo_rafferty 2017-03-29 19:12:38 UTC #26

There are objective standards in art but people choose to ignore them which is why a urinal can exist as "art" in a gallery. There are objective standards of quality in virtually every form of expression. Music, Film, Video Games, Comics the same goes for fine-art but, as I said, people choose to ignore these standards.

Mari 2017-03-30 18:57:14 UTC #27

I'm an university student who majors in 3D art & visualization (game / media graphic shit in laymans terms) and one of my classmates actually offered a great quote when one of our loaned programmers from the technical engineer program asked why we wanted the artstyle of our game project to be so unrealistic - "If you were to make the 3D- models as close to real as possible, why bother doing it in 3D at all?". You can apply this to traditional art as well.

sainity 2017-04-02 09:32:19 UTC #28

No there isn't, it just makes people feel safer when they believe things are simple.

tayo_rafferty 2017-04-02 09:47:38 UTC #29

@sainity Who said anything about simplicity? Art is far from simple but there are objective standards of quality. For example the objective quality of my work is far lower than a professional comic artist working today. No matter how you "feel" about my comics their objective quality is simply lower. Even if I improve as an artist that will not increase the objective quality of my current work. Ever.

I think the reverse of what you said is true:

I think people try to avoid or undermine the idea of objective quality in order to avoid answering questions like "Have I really made art?", "Am I as good as everyone says?," "Am I really capable of creating something great?" These questions become much harder to answer (on an emotional and/or egotistical level) the more you accept the idea of objective quality within all art-forms.

sainity 2017-04-02 15:24:25 UTC #30

This objective quality doesn't exist, it's just a invented term to make people think some art is of better quality. There is not right or wrong in art. Art is just human expressions.

lunaartemisasama 2017-04-02 15:52:08 UTC #31

Duchamp was a rockstar lol.

madis_art 2017-04-02 16:59:30 UTC #32

Personally, I don't think so. I think that you need to learn the basic rules of artwork--shading, lighting, proportion, all that stuff--so that you can break those rules when working in your own art style! Not everything has to be photo picture perfect.

LCT_m_a_d 2017-04-02 21:39:30 UTC #33

Well said, I think considering your target audience expectations and laying out a concrete culture for your ideas are highly underutilized practices. Sometimes we see others succeed but the practical stuff gets lost in success. It can give a bad impression that the bar is getting lowered.

tayo_rafferty 2017-04-07 11:34:02 UTC #34

You seem confused. First you said "objective quality doesn't exist" then "There is no right or wrong art." What does objective quality have to do with right or wrong?

I can say with complete confidence that when Leornado Da Vinci was my age the quality of his work was higher than mine, objectively. That does not detract from my work in any way. It doesn't make my work "wrong" nor have I ever implied or said that it would. You seem to have inferred that this is what I meant.

Every. Single. Form. Of. Art. Has. Objectivity. Some films are better made than others, this does not detract from their subjective value. Why should fine art or comics be any different? I think you are getting subjective value (the value that you personally find in artwork) confused with objective quality (which comes from an understanding and respect for the craft combined with skill and hard-work).

It's easy to make art. I could sit down and intentionally paint lines on a page with a story in mind and be done in 15 minutes but it is difficult and very taxing to create good art. Or to raise the quality of one's own art, that takes real commitment, thought, respect for the fundamentals and humility. Maybe that's why people want to ignore objective quality because it risks their ego.

We already know what happens if we ignore objective quality for too long, artist like van Gogh slip through the cracks (from what I understand his work wasn't respected when he was alive) and decades later you find yourself in an art gallery looking at a urinal and thinking "Am I crazy or is this just a urinal?"

sainity 2017-04-07 11:52:32 UTC #35

Clinging to semantic issues when your argument has no merit huh?I think you are the one that is confused here. You've been told so many times that there is objective quality in art that you've started to believe that yourself and you can't get rid of that mindset anymore. Do you mean by objective quality that one must copy the real world as accurately as possible?

PotooGryphon 2017-04-07 13:14:00 UTC #36

No, I wouldn't say that. There is plenty of appealing and super popular cartoony artwork as well, look at Disney, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, My Little Ponies.

No, I think the secret to good art, strictly in character design aspect, is form. Being able to build a foundation for the character's underline structure so it can be drawn in literally any pose and any energy/emotional level convincingly. Characters are actors after all, so if they don't sell their performance in how they're drawn it can break the illusion for the reader, much like a poor acting performance can sully a movie.

For background art, this can be tricky and depends on the series. If a series is leaning to the side of cartoony with their background the artist should commit and go all out toontowning that background (think Looney Toon style BGs). Halfway measures aren't always successful and can come off amateur. However, realist backgrounds are usually always impressive and stunting and look great in cartoony series as well as realistic series. Ghibli Studios is a fantastic example of cartoony characters on stunting backgrounds.

Masters know and understand the rules and principles of art, however they also know just when/where to bend, break, or throw the rules out too. That's why it's important to learn the rules so artists can know how to get creative with them.

Devika 2017-04-07 16:19:42 UTC #37

I'm not Mythos, but here's some examples of things I place under objective quality in drawings and paintings because I don't know anything about urinals and other installations tbh (I made a post earlier in the thread highlighting how even the lack of perspective doesn't make something less great, have a look!)

Can the artist draw what the artist intends to portray? for example, they want to draw someone lying on the ground in a scene in the comic. Can we tell it is a person lying on the ground? Or does it look like they're floating? Or does it not even look like a human at all? You can draw this however stylized you want, it can be a simple stick figure, a simplified cartoon or a full-on Rembrandt render - but does the artist's intention come across? Like iIn my post above, we can tell who the important people in the drawings are. Goal achieved.
Does the artist have the technical skill to portray what they want? For example, it's visible in linework. Does the artist's hand slip when inking? Do lines intended to be straight get bent or wobbly? Does thickness vary because the hand is unsteady? These are things that you can get better at with practice, just like sports! And you can tell, in art, when an artist has spent a lot of time refining their skill, just like how soccer players work their asses off getting better at shooting the ball right where they want it. Again example above, do you see how straight and incredibly precise those patterns are in the Mexican mural? That's insanely high objective quality. Not everyone can do that - only someone who practiced a lot. Now if you think those feather things look silly, that's subjective quality. ;D

My point is: Drawing is a skill that takes a lot of practice to get better at. It's hard to portray what you want, no matter what style you choose, be it naïve art or hyperrealism. Most humans also instinctively say certain pictures appeal more to them than others, just like how we can tell which ballet dancer spent ten years practicing versus two months. We can tell wobbly lines mean inexperienced hand muscles. We can tell a perspective looking wonky meaning the artist doesn't know how it works. That's objective quality. It does not mean everyone will think those are shitty! Because that's subjective quality! Some like what new artist draw, because they're not bound to certain ideas. Others don't! But the fact remains that line quality gets better with practice. And that is an objective quality. We humans admire that which takes practice or ingenuity to achieve!

Now about those so-called "rules". The greater sum of which pictures are more appealing to humanity as a whole (there are always exceptions ofc) have become so-called "rules", and most of them come from very basic brain functions that help(ed) us survive. Like we pay great attention to shapes, because that's what tells us if it's a bear in the bushes wanting to attack us. Or we're drawn to faces, because we need to be able to find the others quickly to tell them "DUDE, BEAR, RUN!" Or we're drawn to contrasting colors, because bright colors in nature either mean danger (like poisonous frogs) or food (fruits!). That we're drawn to the same things in a drawing is not strange, it's just how our brains are hard-wired.

Also: There's no right or wrong in art. That's incredibly elitist to think. If you're going for hyperrealism, sure, you'll have some "right" and "wrong" because you're not allowing any interpretation or re-imagining in there. But you'd be amazed at how much artists "cheat" and "bend the rules" in order to get their point across! Some extra shadow there, or an added highlight there that technically doesn't belong there but it just looks so much better with it so to the heck with the rules.

That's my two cents!

tayo_rafferty 2017-04-07 20:31:25 UTC #38

I was using semantics to show how confused you viewpoint is and all you were able to say back to me is essentially: "I know you are but what am I?"

You're utterly wrong. All I've ever heard from pretentious academics is "everything is art" or the ever tiresome "but what is art really?" as if that's even remotely profound in the 21st Century.

Did you read anything that I wrote?

If I had to simplify determining the objectively quality - let me just really stress this is a simplification - then the questions I would ask are:

Is there a conscious and deliberate intention to communicate something?
What is the artist trying to communicate?
How well have they communicated said thing(s)?
What techniques have been used?
What is the impact of the overall piece?
How well has it been rendered? (Don't make the mistake of thinking this has something to do with "realism."

I mean, how do you think it's possible to be graded on work within an educational system? How could you grade art? If there was no objective standard. Are you insane? Why are the masters remembered for centuries? The quality of their work (among many other things) endures. If I drew a picture of Jesus and put it on Deviantart tomorrow people would not be talking about it in 300 years from now because it objectively would be no better than most of the things of Deviantart nor would it stand out subjectively, I assume.

sainity 2017-04-08 07:54:29 UTC #39

You are actually proving my point with your childish accusations.

Yes, I did read what you had to say. Actually, most of your points explaining what objective quality was, was just using vague words and not actually giving any concrete examples why some art is objectively better: skill, hard-work, understanding and respecting craft, my objective quality is simply lower, higher quality, good art. Sounds like a confused explanation or damage control.

So now you explained it a little differently. How do you know what artist is trying to communicate by just looking at art? What if the point of art was to make people angry, disgusted, shocked or confused? You must ask the aritst themself and most of the times that's not possible. "How well has it been rendered", again using very vague adjectives to explain something. You do realize that well means something different to every single person.

You can't grade art, that's the point. Masters are remembered because of marketing, luck and probably trying something new. Not because of objective quality, not at all. I asked a couple of people about this and they agreed that art is completely subjective. I am done here though.

tayo_rafferty 2017-04-10 14:39:23 UTC #40

In what way is this vague? I did say "If I had to simplify determining objective quality." You're drawing a false equivalence between vagueness and brevity.

It something you have to learn through years of studying art. It takes time and dedication. There are many people who are able, I suppose your not one of them.

Oh, well if you asked a couple of people I suppose that defeats my entire argument.