What makes art realistic

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Psychological disciplines. Ben Davis March 30, What do you think makes an art piece realistic? What makes an artwork successful? Does art have to be realistic to be good? What are the three views of art? Is appreciation really necessary?

What art form can most relate to and appreciate? Where do artists source their subjects? What is an art appreciation? Thus today, the term realism can be used correctly in several instances to describe both technique, style, and content as well as the 19th century movement from whence the term originated.

Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Artworks Artists Collections. Artworks Artists Collections Buy art online. Realism Art: Origins in 19th Century France Realism as an artistic movement first began in France in the early s after the revolution. One Comment Pingback: at Leave a Reply Cancel reply Your email address will not be published. If you are able to paint with accurate values, then your painting will have a quality of realism regardless of how accurate your edges, colors, shapes and other elements are.

Just look at some of the beautiful paintings by Sir Arthur Streeton like the one below. Notice how realistic it appears, without actually having all that much-refined detail. Streeton's paintings have an almost effortless feel to them. He was able to paint in such a relaxed style whilst retaining such a quality of realism due to his incredibly accurate values.

The value relationships are what you should really be trying to capture, especially if you are compressing the value range in any way painting in a high or low key.

So instead of looking at a color and asking yourself You might also be interested in my Painting Academy course. It goes into much more detail on the fundamentals of art. Edge refers to the transition from one shape to another. This edge could be hard , soft or lost.

A lost edge is one where the edge is so soft that you can barely see it. This usually occurs when there are two shapes next to each other which have the same color. Lost edges do not give you much information about the form of a subject. There is a hard edge to indicate the transition from the dark background to the light building. There is a soft edge to indicate the change in the plane of the building wall. There is a lost edge where the ledge protrudes from the side of the building.

Notice how the hard edge provides you with the most information about the subject, the soft edge provides you with some information and the lost edge provides you with basically no information. Edges are incredibly powerful as they can tell you so much about the subject without having to use much detail. For example, a soft edge might indicate that there is not much visibility. A hard edge might indicate that there is a strong light source pointing directly at the subject or that there is a significant transition from one shape to another.

A common problem I see with beginner painters is that they only use hard edges. This can give a painting a very unnatural appearance, even if you get everything else right.

I am a huge fan of simplification in painting. I think the decision to ignore or leave out detail is much harder than to just include every detail you see. My suggestion is to identify the few things which most interest you about the subject you are painting. Be extremely specific. It could be the way the light is bouncing off the grass or an interesting shape arrangement.

Usually, there will only be things which really interest you about a subject. It is not as important that you render the other elements with complete accuracy as these areas will be out of focus.

If you cannot identify anything in particular which interests you about the subject, then maybe it is time to choose a different subject to paint. In my painting below all I really wanted to capture was the subtle gradation from saturated yellows in the foreground to dull purples and blues in the background, whilst painting within a narrow value range. So I focused on that. I did not try to render every strand of grass or perfectly match the blue of the sky.

Visible brushwork is one of the most interesting aspects of traditional painting in my opinion. But so many beginners completely ignore it and in some cases try to relentlessly blend and smooth all the beautiful brushwork. Visible brushwork is what gives a painting that painterly feel. The painting below by John Singer Sargent is a fantastic demonstration of brushwork. From afar, the painting looks incredibly realistic. But as you look closer at the painting, you can see these surprisingly bold strokes of color and clearly visible brushwork.

The painting is certainly not all blended and refined like what many artists think creates realism. Unfortunately, our eyes will often play little tricks on us and what we think we see is not actually what is there. This is most apparent in color and value. The answer may surprise you. You most likely answered that square A is darker than square B.

But in fact, they are both the exact same color see the image below. If you are seeing square A as being darker than square B, then what is happening is, your mind is making an adjustment for the apparent shadow created by the green object.

I won't go into more detail on this here as it is a tricky topic I discuss this topic more in the Painting Academy. The point is that what you see is not always what is there. Also, what you see may be influenced by any preconceived ideas you have about a subject.

For example, you might be inclined to paint a tree with a little bit more green than is actually there or the sky with a little bit more blue, merely because of your preconceived ideas about these subjects.