WHY BOTHER Creating Realistic Artwork?? // Is there a point to REALISM?

I don't know about you, but because I work mainly in realism, I always get asked the question, why do you create realistically? Why not just take a photo instead? I'm Kirsty Rebecca and I make drawing and painting tutorials that are easy to follow even if you're just starting out. While I have a chat to you about this topic, in the background is a time lapse of a commission that I did a while ago using pastels, so you have something interesting to look at. Usually this question is intended as an insult, but sometimes it's just a general thought that people innocently have. When they look at some of my work, it looks like a photo, so why spend numerous hours creating this artwork when you could have just taken a photo? And if you haven't heard someone say this about your own work, but you may have heard it about someone else's work. A lot of the time when people ask me this question, they're either suggesting that I've wasted my time or that all I did was copy a photo and that there's no creativity involved. Firstly, art is subjective, so it means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Sometimes I simply choose to buy a piece of art because it matches my decor, but most of the time I enjoy artwork that shows the tremendous skills that the artist has. I also admire surrealism and impressionism. Everyone has their own answer to the question, what is art? Now I'm the type of person that would walk around noticing the sunlight, how it hits the trees, the movement of the birds and the wildlife, and the effects of light and shadows in nature, and the different shades of green in the leaves, the expressions in the eyes and faces. And I aim to capture this beauty within my art and show my viewers how beautiful the world around them really is. And I like to achieve this by creating realistic artworks that can often look like photographs from a distance. Others try to achieve this with abstract art, sculpture, surrealism, or other forms of art. In my own personal work, I aim to capture the beauty of the subject. I like to draw and paint realism to the point where the artwork speaks for itself and doesn't need a paragraph of writing to explain to the viewer what it is that they're actually looking at. Art is different for everyone and no type of art is better than another, this is just the way that I like to create art. When you look at my art or another artist that works in realism from a distance, it might look like a photo, but when you look closer you can usually see the pencil or the brush strokes. It looks more like a mismatch of shapes and colors than it does a photo. And I love looking at the old master's paintings from a distance and seeing how realistic it looks and then stepping closer and seeing the way the artist has created that illusion. I really believe it takes a lot of skill to achieve these kind of results and that is what I'm aiming for. Another reason for creating realistic artwork is to enhance the original photo. And I do this a lot in my pet portraits actually. Sometimes I get a photo where the background is not ideal but the pet looks really nice, so I change the background. Sometimes the photo was taken in unnatural lighting and then by changing the colors in the fur to look more natural, it dramatically changes the way the portrait looks and is more visually appealing. Sometimes the photo is cropped at the wrong angle or a part of an ear is missing outside the frame or there's an object obscuring part of the pet. These are all things that you can fix or add in And what if the pet passed away many years ago and all the owners have is a small blurry photo of their beloved pet with a background that's not ideal? They can't just go and take another photo of their deceased pet, can they? As an artist I can recreate a larger scale portrait from a less than ideal photo for the owners to keep as a treasured memory of their pet. And do you honestly think that as an artist you could ever copy a photo 100% accurately to the point where you can't distinguish which is the photo and which is the artwork when you look closely? I really don't think it's possible. Even artists working in hyper-realism, if you look close enough you'll be able to see the pencil or the brush strokes. If this were possible then why not take a photo instead would be a valid question in my opinion. You'll always have that artistic expression and the brush strokes and pencil strokes that make that artist who they are show through in their paintings and drawings. In fact if you choose 10 artists that you love and told them to copy the same reference photo exactly you would end up with 10 different pieces of artwork all distinguishable from each other. Their artwork won't look the same even if they're working in realism from the same photograph. When I think about the artists that I know that work in realism I can always distinguish which artist created which piece. If they are working from photos they always manage to inject their own style even if they don't know they're doing it. Even if they are trying to copy the photo 100% accurately the artist's voice will still show through and the work may look like a photograph but I can still tell which artist created it. It's never 100% like the photo they worked from they will always put their own style into the painting. It might be the colors or the values or the subject matter or the brush strokes or something else but they always make it their own whether the artist is doing it consciously or not. Personally I enjoy creating artwork that looks realistic from a distance but you can also tell that it's artwork when you look closer. I enjoy bringing out the blues and the purples in black fur that aren't there in the photos. I end up putting magentas in orange fur because it looks nicer but it's not actually there in the original photo. I enjoy putting my own style into my artwork even if I'm copying from a photo trying to make it look realistic. I try to enhance my artwork so it's more pleasurable to look at than the original photograph but I still want it to look realistic like a photo. I know that there are many artists out there that are thinking the same thing that I am and want to create the same way that I'm creating. In fact my mum actually told me a story just the other day about my grandpa and I was a very young child probably only three or so and I was drawing this picture and my grandpa came up to me and asked me what it was that I was drawing and I cried because I really thought that everybody should know what I'm drawing it should look realistic enough to look like that subject. Even at such a young age of three years old I was already striving to create that realistic kind of artwork that speaks for itself that doesn't need explaining that looks like the subject that I'm trying to draw or paint. And there's also the other end of the question where it can be offensive to photographers when people ask the It most certainly is an art. My partner is actually a photographer and I dabble in it here and there as well. Art is subjective and everyone's opinions on this topic will be different so please be mindful when you ask questions that are intended to be rude like why not just take a photo instead of wasting your time drawing this. And everyone's entitled to their own opinion of course but these are the reasons why I choose to spend those hours creating realistic artwork instead of just taking a photo. I'd love to know if you guys get asked these questions as well and I'd love to hear any stories that you might have or any opinions that you have on this subject. You can leave a comment below because I'd love to hear from you guys. I've put together a playlist on the screen that has some other interesting topics related to art that I thought you might enjoy so click on that and I'll see you over there.