Andrew Brown (2006) Figure. Ink, oil pastel and charcoal on paper.
Photorealism is one of many art genres. As such it is not, strictly speaking, realistic. It is a convention. Photo-reality is not optical reality, and optical reality is not reality.
A Most Difficult Artistic Challenge
Dissonance Between Intention and Effect
Attempting to draw a naked human realistically is inherently futile. Even a photograph is a representation. Photography has its own physical limitations. It always involves a cut. Like any form of representation, a photograph captures only a small fraction of its subject as a context-bound, richly-interconnected thing in itself.
An artist can certainly aspire to a kind of photorealism. Verisimilitude and the crafty demonstration of motor skill can be a crowd pleaser. However, a finely rendered piece can often fall flat if it merely copies. The observer can be left with little interpretive work to do and rather than feeling transported to some higher plain, or otherwise provoked by the experience, is left thinking: “Good, but now show me something else!”
Andrew Brown (2008) Portrait. Oil pastel and acrylic paint on paper.
