There is a popular misconception that the more detailed a painting is, the more realistic it must be. But today’s animations can be extremely detailed, while remaining cartoonish, while some very realistic paintings do not share many details.
Yesterday, while painting “Under the Umbrella”, I had some thoughts about the topic of detail and realism, which I share in the narration of the video embedded below.
As I become more proficient in painting, I am learning to create more realistic images without adding more detail to my paintings. The improvement in realism stems from more accurate part to whole relations in the painting, without adding more details. It is not a matter of size or even exactly of shape, but of how the parts go smoothly together to make the whole.
When we learn to draw as children, our representations are mostly symbolic. Each part that is represented is loosely tied to the whole, but as we begin to have more realistic representations, the parts and the whole are more smoothly related one to the other. Some of this has to do with correct angles and spatial alignment, but other effects are related to how we slice the continuum. Continuity or the illusion of same can be created without adding detail, by allowing different objects to gradually ease into one another, rather than showing boundaries in the form of lines.
In this painting, Yoon Seri is especially realistic, while Captain Ri is a tad less so. Notice there are fewer details given in the case of the woman, but those details are well coordinated to create a whole. The progression from symbolism to realism is not in the details, but in the smooth relationships of part to whole.
