Let's Appreciate The Fuck Out Of Art
 

All art. Any art. Not just visual art, no. Anything that can be considered an art. Anything you consider an art.

We have threads for things like "Oh hey, I just saw/listened/played blahblahblah", but we don't have any threads that are solely dedicated to appreciating (and by appreciating I mean going on and on about the technical aspects. The things that make this so appealing or at least seeing what can make it appealing to others.) that thing we just saw/listened to/played.

Well, now we do. Feel free to go full on wall of text here about something artistic you really fucking enjoy. Or, if you can't think of something you like, go on about how awful you think something artistic is, but make sure you explain why you dislike it so. Someone is bound to enjoy that thing you dislike, and maybe it could bring up some interesting conversation about whatever it happens to be in question. I find music tends to strike up the most conversation because tastes can vary so drastically compared to other art forms.

I'll start off with appreciating the fuck out of SkepticArcher's work.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1...o1_r1_1280.jpg

Wow. Holy shit. That is some great stuff right there. I've always really admired the amount of detail she's been able to get into her digital paintings. That composition is excellent, too. I liked her stuff even more after getting to watch her paint in a live stream once before. Her marks are so precise, she only backtracks at the very end to refine the overall piece.

Everything in the piece above has a flow to it. That's what really draws my eye in. Without that flow, everything falls apart and it's just some boring, overly detailed picture not even worth mentioning.

This is the kind of stuff I want to be capable of one day. The only obstacle in my way is my lazy ass not wanting to work towards it. I also love how she doesn't stick strictly to painting and drawing. She also makes plushies. Her most notable ones are her custom anteater plushes, which are really well made.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ma...e2do1_1280.jpg

Amazing, right? Not to mention adorable as hell. I sure as hell couldn't make it if I tried. Not all of them are that brightly coloured, obviously, though personally I'd still enjoy them even if they were. If I weren't a broke ass bastard I'd probably commission her or something, because damn.

From what I understand, the claws are made of polymer clay, and she dyes the fur herself. The rest of the plush is made of fleece.

I don't know if you guys have ever tried to sew furry fabric before, but let me tell you it is a pain in the ass. Also, for the fleece, her sewing is practically seamless.

Okay, I think that's a good enough start for this thread. Let's get this thing rolling, I'd like to see what you guys appreciate the fuck out of.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VnfHiJ4IwS.../suibokuga.jpg

Japanese art is the shit.

Holy shit all that negative space.

For the longest time I’ve been a huge lover of the artwork of William Gibbons, aka ashwara. His style is heavily influenced by traditional ink paintings and some of his older work is actually hand-painted with ink brushes, but he uses digital color to really hammer home some gorgeous colors. That combined with his character designs (which seem styled somewhere between japanese and western cartoons) make for really arresting pieces of digital art.

I recommend taking some time to read through Para-Ten, a short graphic novel/webcomic he made. This comic probably shows off his ink-brush influence best out of all his work.

It is. I love all that old ink wash stuff, even though I don't know a great deal about it.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_zYu9GfptsG...+A+Feather.jpg
The late Don Van Vliet. I like abstract art that looks like there's some sort of technical aspect to its craft.

I also think Turner is brilliant.

That is some really well made generic, emotionally manipulative art right there. In other words, it sucks.

OANST's favourite artworks can be described as poorly-made, original, heartless and submissive

He does really good noodle-y limbs.

I like Escher and Dali, and that's about it from historical artists. I've never really seen the draw of artists who strive for realism.

Contemporarily there are a handful of Japanese artists I like, and I really get hard for fractal architecture.

http://fc03.deviantart.net/fs70/i/20...od-d5cguwj.jpg

Obligatory self promotion. This is the front cover for my novelette.

I don't really like this cover. And there's a line on the character's head that's not supposed to be here.

I like this guy's work.

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs30/i/20...by_tarrzan.jpg

http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs33/i/20...by_tarrzan.jpg

http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs27/i/20...by_tarrzan.jpg

I also like surrealist stuff.

Nah, it's supposed to look like that.

Oh, ok.

Well, when it comes to historical artists, painters in specific, the big thing about realism was that it wasn't really a thing that properly captured until the High Renaissance. I'm not a big fan of strictly realism. Semi-realsim, however, is really appealing.

Heavily stylized work tends to be my favourite in the 2D realm. Things that are very simple with maybe 3-4 colours at the most. Popart is also nice. Ed Heck makes some pretty great popart.

http://images.art.com/images/product...0/14002548.jpg

I think why realism draws so many people in now a days isn't because oh it's nice to look at, but rather because they can't do it themselves. The typical mind set is Realism is REALLY SUPER HARD and anything stylized is super easy and doesn't have as much effort put into it.

Also, something I wanted to share that I thought was pretty cool that I found recently. I've seen paper art before, but not really like this. Usually when I see paper art it's in the vein of paper dolls and popup books. I also saw some guy recently who did paper art, but it was more geometric and instead of cutting he focused more on folding. I can't seem to find a link to it though, much less remember the guys name.

http://www.helenmusselwhite.co.uk/wp...3_large_01.jpg

Aw hell yiss, I feel the same way. To me heavily stylized/simplified art generally takes the form of cartoons, illustrations or comics. What I find interesting about that is how all of these mediums require the artist to communicate a whole lot of emotion, character or direction into such an image.

Stylization is good for that because you can bend the rules of reality in favor of visual flair, while whittling the image down to only what is required for the desired effect.

Recently I’ve found myself rolling around in webcomics because of how many follow those rules.

I like the stuff Dyna posted. Futuristic and industrial art stylings are way cool.

I can't think of any to post, so I'll just leave it at that.

Jake and Dinos Chapman's "Insult to Injury".

http://www.diagonalthoughts.com/wp-c...01/injury2.jpg

http://alittleroad.files.wordpress.c.../03/insult.jpg

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...d_1191983a.jpg

They bought priceless Goya sketches for millions and then doodled over them, before putting them on display again. How meta.

http://waynebarlowe.files.wordpress....we_wargate.jpg

I wanted to buy Barlowe's art book. I'm poor so I bought his other book instead.

http://www.alexries.com/jpg/gallery/c_tanis.jpg

Alex Ries or 'Abiogenesis' is one of the most talented artists I ever saw on DA.

Can you give some examples of what you mean?

I'm a huge lover of pixel art; the preciseness of every pixel's placement makes it look so neat and perfect, provided it's well-drawn. I've done a bit of it myself (my avatar for example, apart from the boots which were taken from another character so it matched the set), but never anything you could really call art. This guy, however:


http://www.foolstown.com/img/osho.png


http://www.foolstown.com/img/curious.png

http://www.foolstown.com/img/dragon_rider.png

This last one I especially adore, but I appreciate the fuck out of everything he does.

Ah I love Fool, it's a shame he stopped doing art after (was it his daughter) a member of his family died. I had the good fortune of having a very brief discussion with him on DA if I remember correctly.

All artists are inferior to Beksinski

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7...qwdto1_500.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eI-CpO6lhi...255B1%255D.jpg

http://art.vniz.net/beksinski/Beksinski-x32.jpg

http://i2.listal.com/image/486017/60...-beksinski.jpg

http://t.wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/...7_1024x768.jpg

I'm a big fan of Light Graffiti/Light Painting. It's a great a photographic technique which uses light to draw shapes and pictures. It works by moving a light source around whilst a camera with a large exposure time captures all the movements. The results are quite amazing.

An artist who I really like is Michael Bosanko.

http://sphotos-h.ak.fbcdn.net/hphoto...37696913_n.jpg

http://sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/hphoto...03424739_n.jpg

http://sphotos-g.ak.fbcdn.net/hphoto..._7745706_n.jpg

That is pretty awesome.

I pick option 1 and 3.

I don't know, so I pick the fourth one

I follow him. A few years ago he posted this:

http://fc04.deviantart.net/fs39/f/20...biogenisis.jpg

And then wrote a blog expressing his worry that lots of people had told him that it looked artificial, like a robot or something. I think he intended it to be the cover of a book eventually, so it was a concern.

I posted a detailed analysis of what might make people think that, and how he might rectify them. I was very surprised when he took on board every single suggestion of mine and produced this:

http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs38/f/20...biogenisis.jpg

Whether you think it's an improvement is up to you.

It's definitely less artificial-looking. I like the first version more, though, because it uses brighter colors and it pleases my eyes

I like the second one a lot.

I actually prefer the first one, but mainly because I thought it actually was meant to be a robot. Or at least a cybernetically-enhanced dodo.

You should take a look at this book and this talk by the author.

Nate would have a book on African fractal architecture.

I sometimes wonder what my personality looks like over the internet. I didn't think I came across as someone who would definately collect books on African fractal architecture, even if I do. It's on my bookshelf with all the other wierd and wonderful books I haven't gotten around to reading yet.

It's not really a personality thing, it's more of a shallow appraisal. The second I saw your face in WDYLL, I thought, "Yeah, that's guy's definitely an African fractal architecture fan".

Also, I like how you're recommending WoF a book you haven't read.

In reference to BM's post, I prefer the second one because the creature stands out a lot more from the sky with it's new colour palette. Maybe had the sky been a different colour the first one would have looked more organic.

Anywho, I've always had a hard time enjoying photography because I usually enjoy seeing brush strokes and other personal touches paintings, drawings and so on provide. However, I do think it's incredible when someone's able to capture a scene just right with a camera. You know, things like lightning strikes in the distance or light painting like Crashpunk posted. Macros often fall into that category for me because I find it very difficult to properly photograph anything smaller than a mouse, and find it even more difficult to capture them at just the right moment.

http://www.davidchambon.com/703_500_...g?u=1205348054

This, I consider to be just the right moment. This guy has many photographs of (mostly) insects coated in morning dew, and they're often looking right into the camera. I love being able to see how the water droplets warp the figures and the intense detail you couldn't see without the aid of a camera. It also makes for good reference material.

http://www.davidchambon.com/749_500_...g?u=2299957102

This is also a pretty cool shot.

http://marumiyan.com/

In love with this shit.

http://marumiyan.com/image/postfile/minami01.jpg

http://marumiyan.com/image/postfile/dosei01.jpg

http://marumiyan.com/image/postfile/pana01.jpg

Admitted, the pictures aren't that different from each-other and the style isn't that unique but I love the colourfulness of it all.

i really like those too.

i fucking love the character heads by Franz Xaver Messerschmidt. i'd love to pick his brains and get him to answer a few questions, shame he's long dead.

http://www.odditycentral.com/wp-cont...dt-heads15.jpg

http://www.aeontours.com/assets/imag...serschmidt.jpg

http://www.odditycentral.com/wp-cont...idt-heads5.jpg

couple of links for anyone intrigued.

I'm quite a big fan of this guy's work.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--f4QiD71fm...00/john292.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zeoN-SjBSi...00/john316.jpg
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-k6HJ2RL_Zc...00/john304.jpg

Graahhh! those are creepy!