Renderings Created with Only a Pencil
core77.com
core77.com
Amazes me how some people can be so daft to say such things to someone, maybe a way to feel superior or some messed up psychological aspect.
As a father who tries to raise three healthy children, though, I also marvel that such a shallow comment could have such an adverse affect on someone. I do realize that the man is a savant, thus already four or five standard deviations away, but perhaps our society should reconsider the early childhood learning strategies that produce such insensitivities. Maybe we should return to letting children insult one another and not intervene - thus enabling the children to learn to deal with such comments. It won't completely solve the problem for people like the man here, but it would certainly help.
> Don’t we all say stupid and shallow things every day?
The article dances around the topic (might be cultural differences), but OCD and depression are related[0]. So Kohei Omori might have been in a phase of depression, triggered by an online individual that stated his work is meaningless. That's nothing a childhood can prepare for. It‘s a disease.
With that said, as a general rule, creators, commenters and bystanders should keep in mind the difference between the time and effort that goes into making something, and the ten seconds that it takes to say something dumb about it. They are not the same.
By not intervening you show to the kid this is an acceptable and normal situation, and fuel frustration and a sentiment of injustice.
Some of us are wired differently, and some of us are bullied to death. I'm both. Everyone can't create calluses against these kinds of shallow comments by playfighting, esp. if it turns bullying at life-threatening levels, and nobody intervenes, because they let children to be children.
As a result I grew very asymmetrically from get go. I got very ahead in maturity without the defenses I needed to front and process criticism. I left painting because everything I did was shot down (but I have won two awards for my age groups earlier), I had severe dance phobia for 20+ years because somebody mocked how I dance, and I left writing philosophical pieces because my English teacher mocked me.
Yes, I now dance, and write philosophical things (but not publish them), an old friend who was an art student said I can certainly draw, but I feel no enthusiasm now. The only thing I were unable to get me from me was computers, and I now have a Ph.D. (oh, my math teachers called me a failure, dozens of times, hah!).
So, no, we shouldn't raise people with "emotional battery induced numbness", but shall teach them to deal with harassing people by making them understand the mechanics. It's harder, but it doesn't make you collect these comments in an emotional waste basket and dump on an unsuspecting person who unintentionally triggered you on a bad day. Instead, you process and get rid of them, and it makes you genuinely happy without an overfilled emotional trash compactor inside.
How can you know?
That said, there should still be intervention; verbal abuse (which is what it's called when adults do it to one another) should not be normalised, and "deal with it" / "grow thick skin" isn't it either. Because they will take that "thick skin" with them in e.g. an adult relationship and use that normalised verbal abuse on their partner, kids, people they work with, people they interact with on the daily, who did not have that same (abusive) upbringing and thus are harmed by the abuse.
TL;DR, kids will be kids, but don't raise them thinking verbal abuse is OK and that it's the victim's fault for not having thicker skin. "enable the children to learn to deal with such comments" sounds like victim blaming to me.
It's a shame the artist decided to stop making art but it's not even explicitly stated in the article that he was affected by negative online attention. He may not have read the comments or he may have stopped because of his illness regardless of the comments.
As someone who spends most of their non-working hours practicing the art of hyper-realistic charcoal drawings, I don't take a photo because that'd rob me of the pleasure and joy of sitting down for several weeks of evenings and conjuring up imagery that's difficult or impossible to do with a camera.
For me, the point of creating such a drawing isn't to have a drawing, but the process. Using only my eyes, hands, a piece of burnt wood, and paper, I can capture something incredible - something that's not obviously going to work until it's completely done.
He uses Mitsubishi Uni pencils. His recommendation of sharpening the pencils "[Make the exposed pencil lead long] By making it sharp and long, the sharp will continue and it is easy to re-sharpen"
His YouTube video [1] shows his collection of pencils (the various grades) and the meticulous attention to pencil sharpening - which seems to be in two stages, the first is using a normal mechanical pencil sharpener and then the second stage is handcrafting the length of the lead.
For this kind of work with graphite the sharp point holds for quite a while. Color pencil artists tend to sharpen a lot more, and use automatic pencil sharpeners. And a lot of pencils.
I prefer to sharpen a few pencils in batches. Especially when using charcoal pencils, things become messy real fast.
Reminds me of one of my favorite artists I’ve ever seen at a museum, Vija Celmins. Her ocean drawings are remarkable: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/vija-celmins-2731/explor...
The problem is people are always asking him to "draw Mickey and Minnie and a big love heart with my wife's name in it" and it is close to impossible for him. He almost completely lacks the ability to draw anything novel. If you give him pics of Mickey and Minnie he can combine them and copy them perfectly.
[1] he has an enormous scar from ear-to-ear from where apparently they had to do work on his skull as a small child because his brain outgrew it. He's not clear on the details as he was adopted at birth, his mother was an addict.
This is nuts!
You can see in a few pictures the existence of a grid. It was originally used to transfer/scale drawings, but is also used as a substitute for untrained eyes who would struggle to get fair proportion otherwise.
Then the rendering itself relies on pencils that are sharpened quite thinly: the thin lead will be less sensible to the paper grain, and provide a smoother result. If you want more texture, used a duller lead. An even softer texture, use a brush or a stomp.
Generally, you'll want to draw quite big, so as to have enough room to articulate the details.
Finally, the key difficulty, "trick" even, for hyperrealism, and for fine-arts in general, is patience: good results are often produced with plenty of time.
I'd ask 'why,' but I know the answer already. Much respect to the artist.
I can't believe these renderings were created /with a fucking pencil/
Did he? https://i.imgur.com/COKNqo7.png
His work is very impressive in some cases and extremely impressive elsewhere. But I think the curving on the can might be one of the weakest aspects of his art. In particular he seems to make a classic example of drawing a sphere/cylinder like this:
→ ⦇
Where the arrow symbolizes the camera and the tangent of the silhouette never comes close to parallel to the viewing angle - the horizon is sharp.
I could be wrong of course but I've seen (beginner!) tutorials teaching how to avoid exactly that.
I remember when I was young, and when looking at art I had this depressive feeling I could never make something so beautiful. I have just now repeated this experience.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_with_Reflecting_Sphere
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Spheres_II
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Still_Life_with_Spherical_Mirr...
Why isn't the artist visible in the reflections in #6? When Escher drew "hand with reflecting sphere" he drew every detail, including himself.
What is reflected? Is that a Japanese toilet, or ... a go-kart with a bucket seat?
What does the Casio use bluetooth for? (I searched and found out, it just lets you change the time via an app. Turns out you can buy absurdly expensive premium Casios, although they look much the same as cheap ones.)
The skill is mostly in the technique and perseverance.
Note to avoid downvotes: nothing wrong with this, I also do hyperrealistic drawings.
A grid is visible in the background of the drawing. Such a grid is used to set up the initial outlines, by copying it from the reference photo with a grid drawn on top of it (typically done in Photoshop). Other artists use a projector to trace.
As another commenter mentioned, the depth of field removes any doubt that a photo is used as a reference.
Picking up and placing back the watch to see details would constantly change the lighting, especially in the details. It is impossible to get such a level of detail by "drawing from nature", even in studio conditions.
It's not a coincidence that paintings only became more realistic after the invention of photography.
It's true that you can change the settings via the app, but it also allows for automatic time adjustment, which is nice when you live somewhere where the time signal radio reception can be sketchy. (Australia)
You can also use the "find my phone" feature when it's nearby, which to my surprise I've actually done a few times.
Now here we are on the internet and by far the most popular art is glammed-up photorealistic renderings of everyday scenes. The less detectable the artist, the better.
That's a common viewpoint, but it's not quite true, for multiple reasons. A camera is a rather limited tool: it will transform colors, sometimes unpleasantly (value compression, color shifts), and can never quite capture reality as an artist would.
Then, while many paintings look lifelike, they still are absolutely out of reach of a camera. Landscapes in particular (e.g. [0]) are heavily staged: the light is invented, trees and mountains are moved around to fit various æsthetical choices, etc.
Or, consider how Bouguereau's, while life-like from a distance, are much less so from up-close (see [1]): the artist is among others playing with transparency and opacity of the paint to increase the feeling on depth and realism.
Art changed drastically during the 19th century, and photography played a role for sure, but IMO the decline of religion is probably a greater contributor.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Albert_Bierstadt_-_Among_...
[1]: https://www.muddycolors.com/2023/02/bouguereaus-the-oreads-a...
> Art changed drastically during the 19th century, and photography played a role for sure, but IMO the decline of religion is probably a greater contributor.
Industry jobs might be somewhat at risks, as businesses tend to optimize for profits, but even there, I'd wait and see what happens in the long run.
> I wonder how people will view the effects on art and sciences in 200 years.
Hopefully we would have had a Renaissance 2.0 since then!
Were Islam to keep on growing (I do personally think it's more on the decline), I think we could expect interesting outcomes, artistically speaking, as Muslims visual arts, because they tend to shy away from figuration, are somewhat orthogonal to Western's forms.
> Today, many people view both AI's effect on art and the rise of Islam in Europe very negatively.
Islam has always been culturally foreign to Europe, and the current economical & social situation have a bunch of weird, highly chaotic side-effects.
Most of the Muslims I've met were generous, heartwarming and thoughtful, perhaps more than the average person. I know it's not systematically true either, but I still have little reason to not have an essentially positive view of them.
I've also met people who told me (literally) that 99% Muslims were bloody awful, by sole virtue of being Muslims: the same reasoning we had a few decades ago, when Jews were targeted for sole virtue of being Jews, not because of their individual acts.
> I believe AI to merely affects art but superficially: by that I mean that it lower the cost of creation so drastically, that what it creates is essentially worthless. It can be pretty and enjoyable, but it's, at least for now, immaterial, and too dirt cheap to produce to bear any sensible intrinsic value.
> Were Islam to keep on growing (I do personally think it's more on the decline), I think we could expect interesting outcomes, artistically speaking, as Muslims visual arts, because they tend to shy away from figuration, are somewhat orthogonal to Western's forms.
> Most of the Muslims I've met were generous, heartwarming and thoughtful, perhaps more than the average person. I know it's not systematically true either, but I still have little reason to not have an essentially positive view of them.
> I've also met people who told me (literally) that 99% Muslims were bloody awful, by sole virtue of being Muslims: the same reasoning we had a few decades ago, when Jews were targeted for sole virtue of being Jews, not because of their individual acts.
Let's add to this the use of digital art, which drastically reduced production costs (can't resist: [0]). I wonder however, if, in the long run, AI won't end up boosting traditional arts, and encourage higher creativity and skills from human artists.
> Islam in Europe is growing
In numbers definitely, but I was thinking in terms of "spiritual intensity".
Consider e.g. how Muslims feast during Ramadan at night: I doubt this is remotely aligned with the original intents. Same thing goes for other groups: hateful Christian despite Jesus's "Love Thy Neighbor", Jews celebrating murder despite Hashem's command, etc.
Prophets usually encourage good measure, balance, not that kind of excessive behavior.
So it might be a local issue.
It's also a very common viewpoint but not true, as there are countless methods in which photographer can prepare for a photo. A quick argument: video is a stream of photographs. Do you think that movies can never capture reality as an artist would ;-)
Today's photography decline and digital method's popularity raise show - iny my opinion - that the trend is stable. Average person practices the most approachable form of art available to them. Shift from painting to photography happened not because it's subjectively better but objectively easier.
I meant, limited from an artistic point of view! But it's indeed a fantastic tool, and the ability to carry one in the pocket at all time is quite a blessing, even for artists! It also offers plenty of otherwise hard to reach possibilities: filming blooming flowers, microscopy, etc.
We’re talking about single photos here, not entire movies. Sure, if you make a 5-hours documentary about a subject you can capture everything you want, but that’s not comparable to a single photo or drawing.
Good writers can also capture aspects of reality in a way that’s impossible for photographers because "reality" goes well beyond what you see: thoughts, sentiments, sounds, smells, memory, feelings, etc.
"Photorealistic pencil drawings" is more clear description of the art.
Also, as per HN guidelines, OP simply submitted the title directly copy-pasted from the article, so complaining about it seems a bit misguided.
Still used frequently today and I think the original title is more apt