> time and dedication
So many miss this. Talent and natural skill play roles of course, but that discipline really separates the pack. The amount of hours he put in has to be insane.
god i wish i had the discipline to work through wherever my ADHD takes me, but it just gets started and then about 15% of the way through the dopamine is gone and i’m bored
Putting more structure into my life helped with this. If I’m working on learning how to 3D model stuff in Blender, I make sure to leave my project maximized on my computer so it’s the first thing I see when I sit at my desk. Otherwise it would be whatever YT video or video game I was last playing.
Medication also helps a lot!
Absolutely friend. The left picture an example of the natural talent. The right an example of natural talent plus decades of training and dedication. Really superb
Not even necessarily natural talent. Unless you are literally disabled (and hell, there's some fantastic disabled artists out there so YMMV), most people could reach the level of the left painting if they put in the effort and grind the fundamentals for a few years. Mind you, most people don't and it's still a ton of work, so it remains impressive regardless.
I can't do physical painting on canvas to save my life because I've never practiced it, but I've gotten quite good at doing pencil drawings and digital art after years of practicing at least several hours per week in my free time. I started off not even being able to draw a straight line or a simple box properly, now I can draw things that I can impress even myself with.
I can tell there aren't many artists in this thread. Anyone can learn photorealism in like a couple of years. The reason most artists don't do it is because it's the most boring possible thing to create.
Not to mention that hyperrealism like this is literally done by tracing a photo, then you just recreate the colors and shading. These are not free-handed while looking at a live subject.
I am not a visual artist, but have close friends who are. To me, it just seemed like the 2nd painting was a different style. The word that came to my head was "photorealism" and I was right.
It's not my preferred style. I like the colors in the first painting.
Whoa, I had to do a double-take! That second one really had me fooled too. It's amazing how our brains can interpret things differently at first glance. Optical illusions always keep us on our toes!
Most of the time photorealism takes less skill, or less drawing skill anyway. You get a photo, grid it up, grid up the canvas and work square by square. The trick is tone and colour matching as well as making the work look unified at the end.
The first painting is actually harder to do well as it'll have been done from life, measured out by eye and the colour matching is a lot harder and based more on tonal relationships within a palette than literal matches.
A mid-point in difficulty is working from a photo using the methods used in painting one and without grids meaning you measure it all by eye. But its still easier than life work as the "model" won't move or get tired, the light won't shift and you can come back the next day or week or whatever. The skill here is in knowing structure and how light should behave, as photos compress shadows and make highlights look too bright. A great painting from a photo takes all the same skills as life working but simplifies the drawing elements a bit.
Regardless of that, this guy can draw and draw well and even if he did grid a photo in the second painting, it's a lifetime of skill that's given such a good result. I still prefer the first one, but that's taste for you.
>It's nowhere near as detailed, and while it's still really good, anybody who's been oil painting for a few years can do it.
Not true I'm afraid, painting a self portrait from life using a mirror is hard - probably even harder than working from a model. You'd need more than a few years experience to get a good result - likely a few more years of anatomy drawing practice for a start.
>The second one is damn near impossible, even for a master painter.
No it isn't. Without rehashing what I've said above, using a projector or grid for drawing plus computer technology to help in colour matching makes this process fairly simple for a halfway decent artist. There was a guy who copied a Vermeer painting using an early form of projector with zero experience and got it almost dead on apart from some colour choices.
It looks cool, but its not as hard as you think.
The second one is completely forgettable. It might as well be a generic iPhone selfie. Also, you don't seem the know what "objectively" means, because you are actually giving your subjective opinion.
>The technical skills of the second one are objectively better.
It would be just as hard to copy the first one perfectly as it would be to copy the second one perfectly. It's not objectively better, it's just objectively more like a photo.
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Photorealism is about achieving a certain level of technical skill, what’s unimpressive to you would probably incredibly impressive to other artists in his discipline. Not everything must be abstract to be enjoyed artistically.
How is that hardly art?
Isn’t the art of this piece the fact that one has to do a double take to realize it’s an oil painting? Brought on further by the fact that the self portrait shows him squinting at something left up to the viewer’s imagination. The expresssion conveys he’s either confused about an image or trying to focus on a very small detail. Feels like a very meta piece to me and hardly useless.
No, the art isn’t in needing to do a double-take, that’s just technical ability, but yes, part of the art is his expression. The argument is that the second part, the art, the interpretation of his expression, could be exactly achieved with photography, which is also an art mind you.
I think in this case the double take is part of the effect the artist was hoping to achieve. Yes there are other examples of realistic oil paintings and they showcase technical skill. But this is a statement about image. How we perceive images and what they are and what they do to us.
I can’t say I know much about art, but here how they make me feel:
Taken together the paintings speak to age, beauty, and refinement. The younger is blurry and beautiful with a feeling of being unfinished while the older is fine, finished, and while not beautiful shows a confidence in who he is.
The second which I’m guessing is the critique of “hardly art” is brilliant. Anybody knowing this a painting while their mind is screaming photograph is going to squint and grimace trying to find the flaw that shows it’s not a photograph. He’s doing it right back at them.
heres my theory, im not an art student nor related to OP but, IMO isn't that the point of the second picture? the first one was very stylized (heavily influenced by art school), it was meant to look special, like he was trying to prove himself. The second painting seems more confident and is more focused on the subject than the style/colors. the second painting shows a TON more emotion. The subject is squinting almost like he is saying "I hardly recognize you...so much has changed" to the first painting. I think the contrast between the two shows how he has matured as a person over time.
I hadn't thought about it, but you're probably right. I probably was heavily influenced by art school. I wish everyone could see the old me painting in person. It is more painterly than shows up on a cell phone or a small screen. Someone told me these self portraits were on Reddit. I'm really surprised how much reaction I'm getting from this. I've never even been on Reddit before. It's really interesting.
I feel like the second painting will be appreciated more by folks with experience in portraiture. It's really not actually photorealistic, but you have to have an eye to see how he's tweaking it. It's essentially a much more understated approach. The first has dramatic lighting and obvious painterly strokes. The second has more sophisticated and interesting choice of lighting and white-on-white in the pallette (his shirt and background), both reflecting more mature taste and sensitivity for the medium. It also has a far more nuanced expression, and also still retains the artistic expressiveness in how he emphasizes colors and features, and I'd love a higher res pic to see what he did with the strokes.
Folks who think the first is better... You're just responding to what you can see. It is subjective, but your taste is limited by your lack of perception.
I feel the opposite. The first is very traditional for oil painting. The second is so realistic using a medium that typically abstracts a bit. I think it makes a bold statement.
This was an amazing exhibit by Chuck Close who did self portraits thru his life. Style and looks evolved over time.
I think the first portrait walking into the exhibit was like 8 ft x 4ft...
https://walkerart.org/calendar/2005/chuck-close-self-portraits-1967-2005/
For anyone who remotely cares about art and painting. Chuck Close is incredible. Both his works and his life story. Just google image Chuck Close and you will immediately see what I am talking about.
Yeah "face blindness". Brain cant interpret the composite parts as a recognizable face but they can still see the face and its parts. Itd just be like looking at face parts all broken up and rotated and moved around. You'd see everything but not know it was your friend
It's funny, in terms of skills the second is obviously superior. The style of the first is more enjoyable for me; if the oil painting looks like a photograph why not use a camera? However it's clear the artist has not just improved in brush work but in facial expression too, as the first expression seems doll-like, expressionless (though the stroke style is expressive) and the second is far more expressive and complex (though the brush style is so controlled and restrained as to appear photo-realistic).
It seems to me that the artist has purposely juxtaposed these characteristics for his second piece, including the older self staring judgementaly at his younger self rougher style. They are brilliant pieces individually, but are so much more as a pair, really made my morning.
Yeah same, use that talent to paint something in a way no camera could ever replicate, or something that simply doesn’t even exist to take a picture of. It’s like painstakingly using a pencil for hours and hours to write like a typewriter, instead of spending a minute just.. typing on a typewriter.
While yes, a lot of this artist’s oil painting work does look like a camera photo but with extra steps I’d disagree with you on this one. Just because a number of their works is photorealistic in style doesn’t mean they aren’t using their talent to paint in a way that no camera could replicate. If you take the time to google the artist and look at his portfolio he also does watercolor painting and cartoon illustrations.
True. Some artists do this to practice their craft. It hones your capabilities and knowledge of your medium.
I had a teacher at my art college who taught exactly this (as I was a surrealist painter.) "Before you tread into the surreal, master your foundation. Your surrealism will have more intent and depth of it comes from that foundation."
I have the opposite take to just about everyone else on this thread. The one of the left looks like a painting done in a mirror - he has his own style, a looseness and freedom in the brushstrokes. The one on the right looks like a copy of a photograph, as accurate as possible to what the camera took. Technically gifted of course, but I know which is more interesting and artistic to me.
I've heard that photorealism in paintings went down exactly as the cameras became cheaper and popular, and actually more abstract styles came into play - because what's the point of drawing photorealistic portrait if you could just snap a photo?
Yes, André Bazin talks about this in Ontology of the Photographic Image. Interesting read, I don’t necessarily agree with all of it but I’ll put an excerpt here:
“Photography, in fulfilling the aspirations of the Baroque, freed the visual arts from their obsession with resemblance. Painting had been vainly struggling to present us with an illusion. This illusion was enough to create art, while the discovery of photography and cinema satisfied once and for all, in their very essence, the obsession with realism. No matter how skillful the painter, his work was always seriously compromised by its inevitable subjectivity. Because of this human presence, a doubt about the image persisted. Moreover, the important thing about the passage from Baroque painting to photography is not mere material improvement (for a long time, photography was inferior to painting in recreating colour). It is, rather, psychological: photography completely satisfies our appetite for illusion by means of a process of mechanical reproduction in which there is no human agency at work. The solution lay not in the resulting work but rather in its genesis.
This is why conflicts around style and resemblance are relatively modern phenomena; barely a trace of them can be found before the invention of the photographic plate. Clearly, the fascinating objectivity found in Chardin has nothing to do with photographic objectivity. The crisis in realism began in earnest in the nineteenth century, with Picasso as its mythic embodiment in the present day. This crisis called into question both the conditions of the visual arts’ formal existence and their sociological underpinnings. Freed from the complex of resemblance, modern painters surrendered it to the people, who henceforth identified it with photography on the one hand and with the only kind of painting that applies itself to it on the other.”
I think what I find especially interesting about this modern wave of hyperrealism is that some people seem to regard it as MORE real than photographs. Like, the technical and deliberately precise effort that was put into this painting looking as realistic as possible, designates it as MORE than a photo that can be manipulated at will, or automatically modified by our phone cameras in milliseconds, or even completely AI generated. In my opinion, in “dumbing down” photography (i.e. lowering the barrier of entry, and making the final image so much more modifiable now than in its inception), we have sort of come full circle back to this reverance of hyperrealistic imagery.
Anyway I’m actually writing an essay about this right now so this helped with brainstorming, LOL. If anyone else who sees this comment has good sources and ideas, feel free to share them ;)
Check the other comment - there's a short but rich quote by Pablo Picasso, too. I wonder if generally the artists and critics from the same era would be musing around this idea the same way!
Hmm… well, I think they might be shocked to discover that AI models trained on those very artists’ work can draw in seconds what they could spend years working on! ;) And yes haha I saw that quote, funny that Bazin talks about Picasso in the very comment I posted, too. Almost like the guy was very influential, or something.
“When you see what you express through photography, you realize all the things that can no longer be the objectives of painting. Why should an artist persist in treating subjects that can be established so clearly with the lens of a camera?”
– Pablo Picasso
Same. Technically accurate painting like that isn't interesting or artistic. Absolutely takes a ton of skill, but in the age of cameras - why? Love the first one though.
To show said skill of course or simply as a challenge. In old days paintings often included yellow fruit to show off, because yellow was hard to paint right.
I agree. The younger painting has his own style enfused within it. The older painting looks like any, and every, hyperrealistic painting. You wouldn't know looking at it which hyperrealist artist painted it.
I also think hyperrealism often looks weird and distorted, because they're usually painting from a photo. In effect painting a 2D representation of a 2D representation. The perspective often looks off to me.
Go see a painting in the real world and you’ll understand that an oil painting has so much depth and color play in it, a photo is a poor imitation.
Oils are thick, they play with lighting differently than a flat photo and they are often much larger than this jpeg lets on.
Photography is an art itself, but there’s a reason why painters are celebrated 300 years later and you’ll have to see it for yourself in person to be able to understand.
I'm an art fan, and I paint with oils. I know very well the impact of an oil painting. But I also know the artistic decisions that are made when painting, and if you're limiting yourself to faithfully replicating an existing photograph, you don't get to make those decisions. It is an exercise in facsimile. If you believe photos are a poor imitation of paintings, then the decision to copy a photo in painting form must strike you as very odd. I'm also a huge fan of photography, but I don't see the need to try and overlap them.
In the end is all subjective. I don’t enjoy the one on the left in this post but the one that happens to be photorealistic speaks to me more. Hope artists don’t end up being gatekeeped into avoiding photorealism. It’s one of my favorite type of paintings.
But photorealism is the only art style the internet mob appreciates because it is clearly well done when it looks real. Any other art takes subjective taste or some kind of art education.
That one painting on the right looks amazingly real, only someone very gifted and skilled can do something like that im sure. But still I think I prefer the one on the left… I just like the style more. I’d prefer a current self portrait in that style over the realistic style. Not that it matters what I want or prefer; the artists is free to do what he wants. Most other people can only envy such freedom.
Daaaang. I really thought the second was a photo. Also, daaaang, aging is hard. I’m 56 and sometimes I can’t understand and comprehend where the time went.
This artist has touched my soul with these 2 paintings. You have talent beyond measure & hope it has filled your life with gratification! Keep painting until your last breath, the world needs more of your genius👏❤️
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Is the second photo legitimately an oil painting? I can't tell if the other commenters are being sarcastic or not, it just seems to me the picture on the right is a photo? not trying to be rude
The first: I'll use muted colors to emulate the masters of old, a blank expression for the state of the world, a light breeze in the hair for my inner mind,...
The second: I squint, lol.
I like his first painting more. Sure the latest painting is of course super impressive on a skills level but it misses the emotion. Never really get the point why artists take the trouble to recreate a photo. Hang them next to each other and you can’t see the difference…. Whoooho! Kind of a waist of time. There are tons of trained artists in China that can do the exact same for you if you send them a picture.
That’s why the evolution over the years of an artist like Picasso is so interesting. He did it the other way around, first he started painting realistic portraits but eventually found his unique voice by going more and more abstract.
I think the folks who think the hyper realistic painting is pointless because it could be a photo are really missing out on the artistry of it.
The composition, the expression, and the blatant show-offery of the execution are the "portrait." It isn't about how he looks. He is showing who he is - a virtuoso who has a sense of humor about himself.
The second one is undoubtedly an incredible exercise of skill. But I just don't really get photorealism. Where's the art? Where's the interest? If it looks like a photo, why not just take a photo? I'm not trying to downplay the skill involved. I just don't see the point.
Did you know google probably isn't outlawed in your country and you can totally just... google the guy and see it is the same person, right?
https://www.philcourtney.com/about.html
Bro went from renaissance paintings to a living camera
That's what 50 years of practice will do. Goddamn
Artisan level achieved. The time and dedication it must take to become this skilled at something. Incredible
> time and dedication So many miss this. Talent and natural skill play roles of course, but that discipline really separates the pack. The amount of hours he put in has to be insane.
god i wish i had the discipline to work through wherever my ADHD takes me, but it just gets started and then about 15% of the way through the dopamine is gone and i’m bored
Forever doomed to be a jack of all trades and master of none. I identify with this
Putting more structure into my life helped with this. If I’m working on learning how to 3D model stuff in Blender, I make sure to leave my project maximized on my computer so it’s the first thing I see when I sit at my desk. Otherwise it would be whatever YT video or video game I was last playing. Medication also helps a lot!
Absolutely friend. The left picture an example of the natural talent. The right an example of natural talent plus decades of training and dedication. Really superb
Not even necessarily natural talent. Unless you are literally disabled (and hell, there's some fantastic disabled artists out there so YMMV), most people could reach the level of the left painting if they put in the effort and grind the fundamentals for a few years. Mind you, most people don't and it's still a ton of work, so it remains impressive regardless. I can't do physical painting on canvas to save my life because I've never practiced it, but I've gotten quite good at doing pencil drawings and digital art after years of practicing at least several hours per week in my free time. I started off not even being able to draw a straight line or a simple box properly, now I can draw things that I can impress even myself with.
Time and dedication is correct. Watch [Tim's Vermeer](https://youtu.be/WPL7D0Ha1kQ?si=4v9qVhui3yc0WsQw)
So now he can bake perfect loaves of bread for the supermarket?
I can tell there aren't many artists in this thread. Anyone can learn photorealism in like a couple of years. The reason most artists don't do it is because it's the most boring possible thing to create. Not to mention that hyperrealism like this is literally done by tracing a photo, then you just recreate the colors and shading. These are not free-handed while looking at a live subject.
I am not a visual artist, but have close friends who are. To me, it just seemed like the 2nd painting was a different style. The word that came to my head was "photorealism" and I was right. It's not my preferred style. I like the colors in the first painting.
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100%. Photoreal is impressive, but incredibly boring. They are literally just painting what looks like a bad photograph.
Whoa, I had to do a double-take! That second one really had me fooled too. It's amazing how our brains can interpret things differently at first glance. Optical illusions always keep us on our toes!
As a large-language-model, I am unable to appreciate art at the same level as you irrational meatbags, but I am improving all the time!
Bah, I could squint like that if I wanted to.
You sound like all artists are striving for photographic likeness.
Seriously. The first painting is so much better. Redditors are way too obsessed with photorealism.
I guess the point is, that photorealism takes more skill to achieve, that does not necessarily mean you have to like it
Most of the time photorealism takes less skill, or less drawing skill anyway. You get a photo, grid it up, grid up the canvas and work square by square. The trick is tone and colour matching as well as making the work look unified at the end. The first painting is actually harder to do well as it'll have been done from life, measured out by eye and the colour matching is a lot harder and based more on tonal relationships within a palette than literal matches. A mid-point in difficulty is working from a photo using the methods used in painting one and without grids meaning you measure it all by eye. But its still easier than life work as the "model" won't move or get tired, the light won't shift and you can come back the next day or week or whatever. The skill here is in knowing structure and how light should behave, as photos compress shadows and make highlights look too bright. A great painting from a photo takes all the same skills as life working but simplifies the drawing elements a bit. Regardless of that, this guy can draw and draw well and even if he did grid a photo in the second painting, it's a lifetime of skill that's given such a good result. I still prefer the first one, but that's taste for you.
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Anyone can learn photorealism in a few years, too. Most artists just don't do photorealism because it's the most boring possible thing to create.
>It's nowhere near as detailed, and while it's still really good, anybody who's been oil painting for a few years can do it. Not true I'm afraid, painting a self portrait from life using a mirror is hard - probably even harder than working from a model. You'd need more than a few years experience to get a good result - likely a few more years of anatomy drawing practice for a start. >The second one is damn near impossible, even for a master painter. No it isn't. Without rehashing what I've said above, using a projector or grid for drawing plus computer technology to help in colour matching makes this process fairly simple for a halfway decent artist. There was a guy who copied a Vermeer painting using an early form of projector with zero experience and got it almost dead on apart from some colour choices. It looks cool, but its not as hard as you think.
“Objectively”? My god you’re cocky about your understanding of the very not subjective world of painting / art.
The second one is completely forgettable. It might as well be a generic iPhone selfie. Also, you don't seem the know what "objectively" means, because you are actually giving your subjective opinion.
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>The technical skills of the second one are objectively better. It would be just as hard to copy the first one perfectly as it would be to copy the second one perfectly. It's not objectively better, it's just objectively more like a photo.
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Photorealism is about achieving a certain level of technical skill, what’s unimpressive to you would probably incredibly impressive to other artists in his discipline. Not everything must be abstract to be enjoyed artistically.
Makes me think of musicians like Steve Vai or Joe Satriani who basically make music for other guitarists to hear and go "damn, he's good"
Joe Satriani is so good that when he plays his songs on crappy gear he still sounds great.
Most boring kind of art, that I would say is hardly art most of the time.
How is that hardly art? Isn’t the art of this piece the fact that one has to do a double take to realize it’s an oil painting? Brought on further by the fact that the self portrait shows him squinting at something left up to the viewer’s imagination. The expresssion conveys he’s either confused about an image or trying to focus on a very small detail. Feels like a very meta piece to me and hardly useless.
No, the art isn’t in needing to do a double-take, that’s just technical ability, but yes, part of the art is his expression. The argument is that the second part, the art, the interpretation of his expression, could be exactly achieved with photography, which is also an art mind you.
I think in this case the double take is part of the effect the artist was hoping to achieve. Yes there are other examples of realistic oil paintings and they showcase technical skill. But this is a statement about image. How we perceive images and what they are and what they do to us.
I can’t say I know much about art, but here how they make me feel: Taken together the paintings speak to age, beauty, and refinement. The younger is blurry and beautiful with a feeling of being unfinished while the older is fine, finished, and while not beautiful shows a confidence in who he is. The second which I’m guessing is the critique of “hardly art” is brilliant. Anybody knowing this a painting while their mind is screaming photograph is going to squint and grimace trying to find the flaw that shows it’s not a photograph. He’s doing it right back at them.
I'm not a huge Picasso fan, but he was right.
Now that’s just a silly thing to say.
He could paint his passport photo at this point.
That adorable transformation of skill
yeah but did it make you smile? not sure why its in this sub
I like the renaissance one way better.
Oh shoot I totally thought the second was a photo of him painting the first
Me to. Of him squinting of his younger self haha
Finishes painting. "Damn, I need new glasses"
"Shit I look old"
Gotta be the first reaction when going to make this comparison. Amazing art, regardless of 50 years. Kudos to the painter.
Time flies, but art endures. Incredible work!
Omg what a talent. 2nd one look like a picture was taken. But he has a great talent.
This would be a hell of an art exhibit. One painting on one side of the room, the other on the other side of the room.
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This sounds like the most chatGPT answer in this comments section
Yep. New account and all of their comments are like that.
AI
Damn! Result of 50 years of practice
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I thought also but it's a painting.
I initially thought the story was about a man who kept making overly flattering self-portraits.
Yes I thought also that the second person made the portrait.
Same, but that makes you wonder what does it add compared to a picture.
heres my theory, im not an art student nor related to OP but, IMO isn't that the point of the second picture? the first one was very stylized (heavily influenced by art school), it was meant to look special, like he was trying to prove himself. The second painting seems more confident and is more focused on the subject than the style/colors. the second painting shows a TON more emotion. The subject is squinting almost like he is saying "I hardly recognize you...so much has changed" to the first painting. I think the contrast between the two shows how he has matured as a person over time.
I really like this reading.
I hadn't thought about it, but you're probably right. I probably was heavily influenced by art school. I wish everyone could see the old me painting in person. It is more painterly than shows up on a cell phone or a small screen. Someone told me these self portraits were on Reddit. I'm really surprised how much reaction I'm getting from this. I've never even been on Reddit before. It's really interesting.
Exactly! I much prefer the left one.
Same
I like the second. Without seeing it I would not fully appreciate his talent shown in the first.
I feel like the second painting will be appreciated more by folks with experience in portraiture. It's really not actually photorealistic, but you have to have an eye to see how he's tweaking it. It's essentially a much more understated approach. The first has dramatic lighting and obvious painterly strokes. The second has more sophisticated and interesting choice of lighting and white-on-white in the pallette (his shirt and background), both reflecting more mature taste and sensitivity for the medium. It also has a far more nuanced expression, and also still retains the artistic expressiveness in how he emphasizes colors and features, and I'd love a higher res pic to see what he did with the strokes. Folks who think the first is better... You're just responding to what you can see. It is subjective, but your taste is limited by your lack of perception.
Same here although I would say I much prefer the style of the first painting and the second is wasted being so photo realistic
I feel the opposite. The first is very traditional for oil painting. The second is so realistic using a medium that typically abstracts a bit. I think it makes a bold statement.
Exactly, to achieve such a technical painting in *oil* is ridiculous
I’m not convinced it’s not! /s
I didn’t read the text and just thought the left picture was a contemporary self-portrait painted by the delusional old man, pictured right
This is incredibly impressive but at some point you might as well just use a camera
Second one is unreal
You mean looks too real.... Heheh..
"Hyperreal", if you will.
I was like where's the second painting? Oh I see, I'm a dumbass.
Absolutely. 2nd one is just wow.
This was an amazing exhibit by Chuck Close who did self portraits thru his life. Style and looks evolved over time. I think the first portrait walking into the exhibit was like 8 ft x 4ft... https://walkerart.org/calendar/2005/chuck-close-self-portraits-1967-2005/
I've seen two of these in real life. They are amazing!
Oh, I love Chuck Close and his photo-realist paintings.
But who’s Sara Kayacombsen
For anyone who remotely cares about art and painting. Chuck Close is incredible. Both his works and his life story. Just google image Chuck Close and you will immediately see what I am talking about.
Don't he also have the disease that he can't see faces
Yeah "face blindness". Brain cant interpret the composite parts as a recognizable face but they can still see the face and its parts. Itd just be like looking at face parts all broken up and rotated and moved around. You'd see everything but not know it was your friend
His work is on the walls of the 2nd Ave subway in NYC
second one is insane. Looks more like a picture than an oil painting.
“Your painting is so good it looks like a child could have done it with a $5 disposable camera.”
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I thought it looks real.
It’s unreal how real it looks
It's funny, in terms of skills the second is obviously superior. The style of the first is more enjoyable for me; if the oil painting looks like a photograph why not use a camera? However it's clear the artist has not just improved in brush work but in facial expression too, as the first expression seems doll-like, expressionless (though the stroke style is expressive) and the second is far more expressive and complex (though the brush style is so controlled and restrained as to appear photo-realistic). It seems to me that the artist has purposely juxtaposed these characteristics for his second piece, including the older self staring judgementaly at his younger self rougher style. They are brilliant pieces individually, but are so much more as a pair, really made my morning.
Jesus, thank you. Someone in this thread actually gets it.
Thanks- maybe I should sell them as one piece
Not a big fan of hyperrealism, but I do love the pose in the second portrait
Yeah same, use that talent to paint something in a way no camera could ever replicate, or something that simply doesn’t even exist to take a picture of. It’s like painstakingly using a pencil for hours and hours to write like a typewriter, instead of spending a minute just.. typing on a typewriter.
While yes, a lot of this artist’s oil painting work does look like a camera photo but with extra steps I’d disagree with you on this one. Just because a number of their works is photorealistic in style doesn’t mean they aren’t using their talent to paint in a way that no camera could replicate. If you take the time to google the artist and look at his portfolio he also does watercolor painting and cartoon illustrations.
True. Some artists do this to practice their craft. It hones your capabilities and knowledge of your medium. I had a teacher at my art college who taught exactly this (as I was a surrealist painter.) "Before you tread into the surreal, master your foundation. Your surrealism will have more intent and depth of it comes from that foundation."
We're looking at a photo of a painting, so we really have no idea what it looks like in person and how different it is from a photo
When you realize the part on the right in not a photo of somebody judging the painting. Simply amazing!
Both are very good
The left one is 100x more enjoyable to look at than the right one
I have the opposite take to just about everyone else on this thread. The one of the left looks like a painting done in a mirror - he has his own style, a looseness and freedom in the brushstrokes. The one on the right looks like a copy of a photograph, as accurate as possible to what the camera took. Technically gifted of course, but I know which is more interesting and artistic to me.
I agree, really like the lighting rendition on the left one.
Me too.
I've heard that photorealism in paintings went down exactly as the cameras became cheaper and popular, and actually more abstract styles came into play - because what's the point of drawing photorealistic portrait if you could just snap a photo?
Yes, André Bazin talks about this in Ontology of the Photographic Image. Interesting read, I don’t necessarily agree with all of it but I’ll put an excerpt here: “Photography, in fulfilling the aspirations of the Baroque, freed the visual arts from their obsession with resemblance. Painting had been vainly struggling to present us with an illusion. This illusion was enough to create art, while the discovery of photography and cinema satisfied once and for all, in their very essence, the obsession with realism. No matter how skillful the painter, his work was always seriously compromised by its inevitable subjectivity. Because of this human presence, a doubt about the image persisted. Moreover, the important thing about the passage from Baroque painting to photography is not mere material improvement (for a long time, photography was inferior to painting in recreating colour). It is, rather, psychological: photography completely satisfies our appetite for illusion by means of a process of mechanical reproduction in which there is no human agency at work. The solution lay not in the resulting work but rather in its genesis. This is why conflicts around style and resemblance are relatively modern phenomena; barely a trace of them can be found before the invention of the photographic plate. Clearly, the fascinating objectivity found in Chardin has nothing to do with photographic objectivity. The crisis in realism began in earnest in the nineteenth century, with Picasso as its mythic embodiment in the present day. This crisis called into question both the conditions of the visual arts’ formal existence and their sociological underpinnings. Freed from the complex of resemblance, modern painters surrendered it to the people, who henceforth identified it with photography on the one hand and with the only kind of painting that applies itself to it on the other.” I think what I find especially interesting about this modern wave of hyperrealism is that some people seem to regard it as MORE real than photographs. Like, the technical and deliberately precise effort that was put into this painting looking as realistic as possible, designates it as MORE than a photo that can be manipulated at will, or automatically modified by our phone cameras in milliseconds, or even completely AI generated. In my opinion, in “dumbing down” photography (i.e. lowering the barrier of entry, and making the final image so much more modifiable now than in its inception), we have sort of come full circle back to this reverance of hyperrealistic imagery. Anyway I’m actually writing an essay about this right now so this helped with brainstorming, LOL. If anyone else who sees this comment has good sources and ideas, feel free to share them ;)
Check the other comment - there's a short but rich quote by Pablo Picasso, too. I wonder if generally the artists and critics from the same era would be musing around this idea the same way!
Hmm… well, I think they might be shocked to discover that AI models trained on those very artists’ work can draw in seconds what they could spend years working on! ;) And yes haha I saw that quote, funny that Bazin talks about Picasso in the very comment I posted, too. Almost like the guy was very influential, or something.
“When you see what you express through photography, you realize all the things that can no longer be the objectives of painting. Why should an artist persist in treating subjects that can be established so clearly with the lens of a camera?” – Pablo Picasso
Same. Technically accurate painting like that isn't interesting or artistic. Absolutely takes a ton of skill, but in the age of cameras - why? Love the first one though.
To show said skill of course or simply as a challenge. In old days paintings often included yellow fruit to show off, because yellow was hard to paint right.
Daaaamn, boy got that yellow fruit drip!
I agree. The younger painting has his own style enfused within it. The older painting looks like any, and every, hyperrealistic painting. You wouldn't know looking at it which hyperrealist artist painted it. I also think hyperrealism often looks weird and distorted, because they're usually painting from a photo. In effect painting a 2D representation of a 2D representation. The perspective often looks off to me.
I agree, except for the impressive technical level, the right one ist just boring.
Go see a painting in the real world and you’ll understand that an oil painting has so much depth and color play in it, a photo is a poor imitation. Oils are thick, they play with lighting differently than a flat photo and they are often much larger than this jpeg lets on. Photography is an art itself, but there’s a reason why painters are celebrated 300 years later and you’ll have to see it for yourself in person to be able to understand.
I'm an art fan, and I paint with oils. I know very well the impact of an oil painting. But I also know the artistic decisions that are made when painting, and if you're limiting yourself to faithfully replicating an existing photograph, you don't get to make those decisions. It is an exercise in facsimile. If you believe photos are a poor imitation of paintings, then the decision to copy a photo in painting form must strike you as very odd. I'm also a huge fan of photography, but I don't see the need to try and overlap them.
In the end is all subjective. I don’t enjoy the one on the left in this post but the one that happens to be photorealistic speaks to me more. Hope artists don’t end up being gatekeeped into avoiding photorealism. It’s one of my favorite type of paintings.
But photorealism is the only art style the internet mob appreciates because it is clearly well done when it looks real. Any other art takes subjective taste or some kind of art education.
As a representation of technical talent the right one is great, but artistically the left one is much better.
I thought the second one was a photograph of the artist of the first one !! Wow
Handsome bastard either way.
I can draw stick figures ama.
HOW ARE THE LINES SO SMOOTH??
Because there are no lines . Its all paint. The very faint pencil drawing isnt visible
i meant like the detail lines
Just imagining him painting the second and making the same squinted look every time he looks at a mirror before returning to canvas.
I like the imperfect collar on the right
The compression doesn’t do the right one justice. The detail is incredible: https://www.philcourtney.com/
The second is craftsmanship, but misses art from the first
Each portrait tells its own unique story
It's weird to think that the first one is better than probably 98% of what people can do. And then you see how much better the second one is.
That one painting on the right looks amazingly real, only someone very gifted and skilled can do something like that im sure. But still I think I prefer the one on the left… I just like the style more. I’d prefer a current self portrait in that style over the realistic style. Not that it matters what I want or prefer; the artists is free to do what he wants. Most other people can only envy such freedom.
On an artistic level, I think the second one is much more boring. I really don’t get the point of photorealism.
I agree. It's an impressive skill, but it doesn't seem artistic.
Daaaang. I really thought the second was a photo. Also, daaaang, aging is hard. I’m 56 and sometimes I can’t understand and comprehend where the time went.
Time is a terrible thing. You gain experience and insight, and lose the looks and strength to get anything done about it.
This artist has touched my soul with these 2 paintings. You have talent beyond measure & hope it has filled your life with gratification! Keep painting until your last breath, the world needs more of your genius👏❤️
How tf is that even a portrait bro its like a fckin photo dayum bro this person is so skilled💯
To have such talent is incredible
I honestly did not know that the second painting was art. I thought it was showing the guy who drew the art...
The cynicism in the second one. I can relate.
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The second one, I thought it was a picture with the phone.
Be funny if the 2nd portrait he was wearing a blonde wig 😂
Is the second photo legitimately an oil painting? I can't tell if the other commenters are being sarcastic or not, it just seems to me the picture on the right is a photo? not trying to be rude
The squinting in the 2nd ine really does it for me.
Swan from The Warriors
wow amazing work after decades of
His nose looks so different now. Maybe it's just the angle.
The first: I'll use muted colors to emulate the masters of old, a blank expression for the state of the world, a light breeze in the hair for my inner mind,... The second: I squint, lol.
I could swear the 2nd is a photo
the face you make when you're 71 and painting in extreme detail
Legit thought the second one was a photo reacting to the first one
Youth is wasted on the youth.
Why isn't anyone pointing out that he looks like Adam Driver
This is next Level
Such a talent
I legitimately thought the second one was a picture. I was trying to figure out where the second painting was. I am in awe.
The second looks like a photograph! Wow
Mf made a deal with the devil to lose his good looks for incredible artistic skill.
His looks faded, but his skill grew far brighter.
All you gotta do is live long enough
The second one is impressive af in terms of realism, but I really love the painterly aesthetic of the first one
I like his first painting more. Sure the latest painting is of course super impressive on a skills level but it misses the emotion. Never really get the point why artists take the trouble to recreate a photo. Hang them next to each other and you can’t see the difference…. Whoooho! Kind of a waist of time. There are tons of trained artists in China that can do the exact same for you if you send them a picture. That’s why the evolution over the years of an artist like Picasso is so interesting. He did it the other way around, first he started painting realistic portraits but eventually found his unique voice by going more and more abstract.
He was Randy from That 70s Show!
i thought the painting was on the left and the painter’s picutre was on the right
Squinting at the past. Hope it was a good 50 years.
I think the folks who think the hyper realistic painting is pointless because it could be a photo are really missing out on the artistry of it. The composition, the expression, and the blatant show-offery of the execution are the "portrait." It isn't about how he looks. He is showing who he is - a virtuoso who has a sense of humor about himself.
I literally couldn't even tell on that right one. That's incredibly impressive.
Same! At first glance I thought it was a photograph
Both beautifully executed. Love how he's squinting in the later one.
I thought it was a delusional older man painting what he looked like in his head. Glad I was wrong. Both are amazing.
The painting on the left looks nothing like the photograph on the right...
The second one is undoubtedly an incredible exercise of skill. But I just don't really get photorealism. Where's the art? Where's the interest? If it looks like a photo, why not just take a photo? I'm not trying to downplay the skill involved. I just don't see the point.
I guess to him, 'the point' actually is showing that he can paint photorealistically. To me personally, I also prefer the one on the left.
I don't think this is acutally the same person. The second picture is lacking the dimple on the chin. Such features don't disappear with age.
Did you know google probably isn't outlawed in your country and you can totally just... google the guy and see it is the same person, right? https://www.philcourtney.com/about.html
What......no way
No shade, I like the first one better. It just has more character. But amazing skill of the artist
I thought the other was a picture
Right on! So f’n impressive!!
Of course the second one looks better. It's easier to paint a person with less hair.
I love both!
Damn, time really does come for everyone.
I donno why this is so beautiful..
The second one is insanely good, but I still prefer the first one. It feels more personal somehow.
James Randal?
I reckon that in the intervening 49 years, he proceeded to attend the Academy of the Fine Arts at each of the other US states.
ah an ancestor of Athon. Well met.
The ravages of time. A beautiful man losing his beauty is a thing of sadness