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Comment by golergka | Hacker News Reader

On a related note, I'm a bit annoyed by the attention people pay to rather boring realistic art. I'm actually conflicted about it, because on the other hand, a teenager investing his time and effert into a skill like this is awesome, and I do hope that he pursuits art later in life. But the pictures themselves...

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To the untrained eye, this looks much more challenging than something more abstract. I am untrained myself, and I'd appreciate an explanation of why this isn't technically interesting. It's not like every art school grad can do this.

It appears Kareem Waris Olamilekan is working freehand. Very impressive. Drawing (drafting) with charcoal is challenging. Even when you're "just" copying.

The mind reels at what this young artist would do with better tools, materials, mentorship.

Even the master's had their tricks to achieve realism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Vermeer#Theories_of_m...

> To the untrained eye, this looks much more challenging than something more abstract.

Judging art by the challenge to the artist's skill to create it is exactly the 19nth century thinking that I'm talking about. We already have cameras and photoshop and 3d modelling software - if something can be created by a tool, I don't see any value in creating it by hand, except for the skill training in itself.

That's to be expected. We're amazed by the realism of the pictures of pre-photography times, although nowadays anyone can achieve even better results with some simple copy methods and a photo.

Kind of sad to see in every art subreddit just "human-photocopied" pictures being upvoted (extra points if you digitally color-picked all shades of color from the photography, besides the usual tracing of every line) instead of real, creative art...

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