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Comment by mockingbirdy | Hacker News Reader

See my comment above [1]. 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). But I think even then you may not consider it genius because genius in the area of arts is highly subjective and you may not want to give him this status. Because it's so highly subjective, what you consider genius says more about you than about him.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17549741

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The genius in Picasso wasn't being able to technically draw Picasso-like scenes (anybody can, and besides Picasso could draw perfectly realistically as well whenever he wanted).

His genius was coming up with them -- the composition, the choice of colors, the tone, the framing, what he wanted to evoke etc.

The mere technical part of those drawings he could just assign to any first year arts degree student (and tons of auto-didact) to get right as well.

Someone using Picasso-like source material to create Picasso-like images technically would be nothing impressive.

In fact tons of street artists do just that -- copy paintings by Picasso or other masters, or draw something in their style, and nobody is much impressed. They sell their canvases on the street (e.g. in Monmarte) for like $20 or so.

> 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.

If he could create those other creative photos, then yes, I'd say he is a genius. The process of creating these creative photos would be remarkable, not the copying to a canvas or a bigger paper.

As it is, there's nothing notable in copying pictures with a simple method than anyone can follow very easily.

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