question: Why is it so much easier to make hyper realistic art nowadays?
comment: There is a phrase: "Standing on the shoulders of giants" Basically every discovery enables people to use a higher skill baseline when learning for themselves. When they expand and grow it is from a higher baseline than those before them, making their end result objectivly more advanced. In other words: kids learning to art aren't starting off with only the knowledge of cave painting available to them, they have the a large chunk of the world's sum total of art knowledge to work from.
passages: Hyperrealism has its roots in the philosophy of Jean Baudrillard, "the simulation of something which never really existed." As such, Hyperrealists create a false reality, a convincing illusion based on a simulation of reality, the digital photograph. Hyperreal paintings and sculptures are an outgrowth of extremely high-resolution images produced by digital cameras and displayed on computers. As Photorealism emulated analog photography, Hyperrealism uses digital imagery and expands on it to create a new sense of reality. Hyperrealistic paintings and sculptures confront the viewer with the illusion of manipulated high-resolution images, though more meticulous.
  
  Section::::Style and methods.
   However, Hyperrealism is contrasted with the literal approach found in traditional photorealist paintings of the late 20th century. Hyperrealist painters and sculptors use photographic images as a reference source from which to create a more definitive and detailed rendering, one that often, unlike Photorealism, is narrative and emotive in its depictions. Strict Photorealist painters tended to imitate photographic images, omitting or abstracting certain finite detail to maintain a consistent over-all pictorial design. They often omitted human emotion, political value, and narrative elements. Since it evolved from Pop Art, the photorealistic style of painting was uniquely tight, precise, and sharply mechanical with an emphasis on mundane, everyday imagery.
   Hyperrealism, although photographic in essence, often entails a softer, much more complex focus on the subject depicted, presenting it as a living, tangible object. These objects and scenes in Hyperrealism paintings and sculptures are meticulously detailed to create the illusion of a reality not seen in the original photo. That is not to say they're surreal, as the illusion is a convincing depiction of (simulated) reality. Textures, surfaces, lighting effects, and shadows appear clearer and more distinct than the reference photo or even the actual subject itself.
   Digital painting thrives mostly in production art. It is most widely used in conceptual design for film, television and video games. Digital painting software such as Corel Painter, Adobe Photoshop, ArtRage, GIMP, Krita and openCanvas give artists a similar environment to a physical painter: a canvas, painting tools, mixing palettes, and a multitude of color options.
   The Hyperrealist style focuses much more of its emphasis on details and the subjects. Hyperreal paintings and sculptures are not strict interpretations of photographs, nor are they literal illustrations of a particular scene or subject. Instead, they use additional, often subtle, pictorial elements to create the illusion of a reality which in fact either does not exist or cannot be seen by the human eye. Furthermore, they may incorporate emotional, social, cultural and political thematic elements as an extension of the painted visual illusion; a distinct departure from the older and considerably more literal school of Photorealism.
   Section::::Themes.
  
  Subject matter ranges from portraits, figurative art, still life, landscapes, cityscapes and narrative scenes. The more recent hyperrealist style is much more literal than Photorealism as to exact pictorial detail with an emphasis on social, cultural or political themes. This also is in stark contrast to the newer concurrent Photorealism with its continued avoidance of photographic anomalies. Hyperrealist painters at once simulate and improve upon precise photographic images to produce optically convincing visual illusions of reality, often in a social or cultural context.
   Technology has played a definitive role in function catching up to attribute. An example is the touch-screen in which the attribute on the screen (ratio, shape, color, animation) becomes the focus of interaction as opposed to manipulation by an external tool i.e. cellphone keyboard. In the long-term the object ceases to become the middleman between attribute (form) and function.
  
  Section::::Non-composability of objects.
   The evolution of technology has brought forth photorealistic paintings that exceed what was thought possible with paintings; these newer paintings by the photorealists are sometimes referred to as "Hyperrealism." With new technology in cameras and digital equipment, artists are able to be far more precision-oriented and can produce imagery using a wider range of media. The artist Bill Fink has developed his own technique for creating photorealistic images using soil, pollen, human hair, and cremated human remains.
   Working as a graphic designer, Dan began experimenting with vector-based design programs and the Wacom Intuos drawing stylus. There he had an epiphany, seeing a new kind of storytelling workflow to create comic narratives digitally. His first night at home with his very own Wacom stylus, he drew until dawn—realizing he could now draw whatever he could write. What began here is a still-continuing investigation into the limits of vector illustration and mixed-media storytelling that resulted in a new style of 100%-digital "Hyperreal Comics" that combined the medium's narrative language with an immersive feel drawing equally on the aesthetics magazine illustrations, cinema production, album artwork and video games.
   Concept art has embraced the use of digital technology. Raster graphics editors for digital painting have become more easily available, as well as hardware such as graphics tablets, enabling more efficient working methods. Prior to this, any number of traditional mediums such as oil paints, acrylic paints, markers and pencils were used. Many modern paint packages are programmed to simulate the blending of color in the same way paint would blend on a canvas; proficiency with traditional media is often paramount to a concept artist's ability to use painting software. Popular programs for concept artists include Photoshop and Corel Painter. Others include Manga Studio, Procreate and ArtRage. Most concept artists have switched to digital media because of ease of editing and speed. A lot of concept work has tight deadlines where a highly polished piece is needed in a short amount of time.
   Early 21st century Hyperrealism was founded on the aesthetic principles of Photorealism. American painter Denis Peterson, whose pioneering works are universally viewed as an offshoot of Photorealism, first used "Hyperrealism" to apply to the new movement and its splinter group of artists. Graham Thompson wrote "One demonstration of the way photography became assimilated into the art world is the success of photorealist painting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It is also called super-realism or hyper-realism and painters like Richard Estes, Denis Peterson, Audrey Flack, and Chuck Close often worked from photographic stills to create paintings that appeared to be photographs."
   Hyperrealism (visual arts)
  
  Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high-resolution photograph. Hyperrealism is considered an advancement of Photorealism by the methods used to create the resulting paintings or sculptures. The term is primarily applied to an independent art movement and art style in the United States and Europe that has developed since the early 1970s. Carole Feuerman is the forerunner in the hyperrealism movement along with Duane Hanson and John De Andrea.
  
  Section::::History.
   Speed painting is particularly common among digital media artists, because digital painting mediums allow for a work to circumvent drying times of traditional media. Digital media artists primarily use speed painting to practice working quickly and efficiently. Speed painting techniques are also frequently used in concept art, particularly in the early stages of a production when the polish of an individual image matters less than a clear basic presentation of many candidate concepts for consideration.
  
  Traditional media artists also use limited-time pieces as a challenge of skill, and an exercise in not over thinking their work.
   Paint has now been superseded by digital images created using photo references, 3-D models, and drawing tablets. Matte painters combine their digitally matte painted textures within computer-generated 3-D environments, allowing for 3-D camera movement. Lighting algorithms used to simulate lighting sources expanded in scope in 1995, when radiosity rendering was applied to film for the first time in Martin Scorsese's "Casino". Matte World Digital collaborated with LightScape to simulate the indirect bounce-light effect of millions of neon lights of the 70s-era Las Vegas strip. Lower computer processing times continue to alter and expand matte painting technologies and techniques.
  
  Section::::Significant uses.
   Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high-resolution photograph. Hyperrealism is a fully fledged school of art and can be considered an advancement of Photorealism by the methods used to create the resulting paintings or sculptures. The term is primarily applied to an independent art movement and art style in the United States and Europe that has developed since the early 2000s.
  
  Section::::Painting styles.:Western.:Modernism.:Surrealism.
   BULLET::::- Franz Gertsch
  
  BULLET::::- Frederic Gracia
  
  BULLET::::- Gilles Paul Esnault
  
  BULLET::::- Glennray Tutor
  
  BULLET::::- Gottfried Helnwein
  
  BULLET::::- Gus Heinze
  
  BULLET::::- Hilo Chen
  
  BULLET::::- Howard Kanovitz
  
  BULLET::::- Ian Hornak
  
  BULLET::::- István Sándorfi
  
  BULLET::::- Jack Mendenhall
  
  BULLET::::- Jerry Ott
  
  BULLET::::- John Baeder
  
  BULLET::::- John De Andrea
  
  BULLET::::- John Kacere
  
  BULLET::::- John Salt
  
  BULLET::::- Jorge Melicio
  
  BULLET::::- Joseph Canger
  
  BULLET::::- José Ramón Muro
  
  BULLET::::- Juan Francisco Casas
  
  BULLET::::- Kamalky Laureano
  
  BULLET::::- Kelvin Okafor
  
  BULLET::::- Ken Nwadiogbu
  
  BULLET::::- Malcolm Morley
  
  BULLET::::- Marilyn Minter
  
  BULLET::::- Mark Jenkins
  
  BULLET::::- Maurizio Cattelan
  
  BULLET::::- Michal Ožibko
  
  BULLET::::- Noah Creshevsky
  
  BULLET::::- Oresegun Olumide
  
  BULLET::::- Otto Duecker
  
  BULLET::::- Patricia Piccinini
   Hyperreal paintings and sculptures further create a tangible solidity and physical presence through subtle lighting and shading effects. Shapes, forms and areas closest to the forefront of the image visually appear beyond the frontal plane of the canvas; and in the case of sculptures, details have more clarity than in nature. Hyperrealistic images are typically 10 to 20 times the size of the original photographic reference source, yet retain an extremely high resolution in color, precision and detail. Many of the paintings are achieved with an airbrush, using acrylics, oils or a combination of both. Ron Mueck's lifelike sculptures are scaled much larger or smaller than life and finished in incredibly convincing detail through the meticulous use of polyester resins and multiple molds. Bert Monroy's digital images appear to be actual paintings taken from photographs, yet they are fully created on computers.
   The emergence of 3D printing has introduced a new bridge to new media art, joining the virtual and the physical worlds. The rise of this technology has allowed artists to blend the computational base of new media art with the traditional physical form of sculpture. A pioneer in this field was artist Jonty Hurwitz who created the first known anamorphosis sculpture using this technique.
  
  Section::::Longevity.
   Some hyperrealists have exposed totalitarian regimes and third world military governments through their narrative depictions of the legacy of hatred and intolerance. Denis Peterson and Gottfried Helnwein depicted political and cultural deviations of societal decadence in their work. Peterson's work focused on diasporas, genocides and refugees. Helnwein developed unconventionally narrative work that centered on past, present and future deviations of the Holocaust. Provocative subjects include enigmatic imagery of genocides, their tragic aftermath and the ideological consequences. Thematically, these controversial hyperreal artists aggressively confronted the corrupted human condition through narrative paintings as a phenomenological medium. These lifelike paintings are an historical commentary on the grotesque mistreatment of human beings.
   BULLET::::- Paul Cadden
  
  BULLET::::- Paul John Wonner
  
  BULLET::::- Paul Thek
  
  BULLET::::- Peter Anton
  
  BULLET::::- Peter Maier
  
  BULLET::::- Ralph Goings
  
  BULLET::::- Randy Dudley
  
  BULLET::::- Raphaella Spence
  
  BULLET::::- Richard Estes
  
  BULLET::::- Richard McLean
  
  BULLET::::- Robert Bechtle
  
  BULLET::::- Robert Cottingham
  
  BULLET::::- Robert Gniewek
  
  BULLET::::- Robert Neffson
  
  BULLET::::- Roberto Bernardi
  
  BULLET::::- Robin Eley
  
  BULLET::::- Rod Penner
  
  BULLET::::- Ron Kleemann
  
  BULLET::::- Ron Mueck
  
  BULLET::::- Sebastian Krüger
  
  BULLET::::- Taner Ceylan
  
  BULLET::::- Terry Rodgers
  
  BULLET::::- The Kid
  
  BULLET::::- Tom Blackwell
  
  BULLET::::- Tjalf Sparnaay
  
  BULLET::::- Willem van Veldhuizen
  
  BULLET::::- Yigal Ozeri
  
  BULLET::::- Zharko Basheski
  
  Section::::Further reading.
   Hyperrealist painters and sculptors make allowances for some mechanical means of transferring images to the canvas or mold, including preliminary drawings or grisaille underpaintings and molds. Photographic slide projections or multi media projectors are used to project images onto canvases and rudimentary techniques such as gridding may also be used to ensure accuracy. Sculptures utilize polyesters applied directly onto the human body or mold. Hyperrealism requires a high level of technical prowess and virtuosity to simulate a false reality. As such, Hyperrealism incorporates and often capitalizes upon photographic limitations such as depth of field, perspective and range of focus. Anomalies found in digital images, such as fractalization, are also exploited to emphasize their digital origins by some Hyperrealist painters, such as Chuck Close, Denis Peterson, Bert Monroy and Robert Bechtle.
   ""I started on the magazine about six years ago, and during that time we had competition come and go, as well as all the horror stories and nay-saying that print was dead,"" says Wilks. ""I'll admit there were a few times that I thought the end days may have been coming – especially during the peak of the GFC when every publishing company seemed to be shedding staff and magazines like it was going out of style, but I've always believed that the magazine could weather anything thrown at it. All of us who have worked on Hyper feel the same way. 200 is a pretty huge milestone for a magazine.""
   One particular drawback to the work of the digital matte artist is an occasional tendency of their output to look too realistic, which traditional artists avoided by using impressionistic elements or by suggesting details. What this means is that digital matte art is often characterized by an artificially perfect look. One of the modern approaches adopted to address this is the integration of details from a photograph, say, of real places to depict realistic scenes. It is this reason why some digital matte artists refer to their work as a combination of digital painting, photo manipulation, and 3D, for the purpose of creating virtual sets that are hard or impossible to find in the real world.
   BULLET::::- Many world cities and places which did not evolve as functional places with some basis in reality, as if they were "creatio ex nihilo" (literally 'creation out of nothing'): Black Rock City; Disney World; Dubai; Celebration, Florida; and Las Vegas.
  
  BULLET::::- TV and film in general (especially "reality" TV), due to its creation of a world of fantasy and its dependence that the viewer will engage with these fantasy worlds. The current trend is to glamorize the mundane using histrionics.
   Speedpainted pieces both digital and traditional are considered by artists to be an excellent exhibition of the subjective skill of a painter, as the time constraint requires efficient rendering of form and detail and a deep understanding of their chosen medium to capture a complete, strong image, and leaves little time for noticing and correcting mistakes.
  
  Denny Dent is recognized by many to be the pioneer of speed painting in the United States, introducing speed painting in live performances in 1981.
  