/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

[Anonymous No.6774186]

Is there anybody today who can compete with Ruan Jia in technical ability? Did he surpass old masters?

[Anonymous No.6774193]

>>6774186
You have to be at least 18 to post here.

[Anonymous No.6774198]

my favorite type of bait thread

[Anonymous No.6774200]

>>6774186
bourgerau and raphaell and michael anglo couldn't lay a finger on this guy

[Anonymous No.6774203]

>>6774186
AI art generators

[Anonymous No.6774226]

>>6774186
holy mother of AI

[Anonymous No.6774236]

>>6774186
Ai slop

[Anonymous No.6774237]

I cant believe he does all this with oil paints and his imagination!
Truly the greatest

[Anonymous No.6774239]

>>6774186
Looks like AI

[Anonymous No.6774257]

>>6774237
>imagination
old masters used reference

[Anonymous No.6774260]

I hate how my brain looks at this and just dismisses it as ai slop. Truly over for render monkey

[Anonymous No.6774272]

Craig Mullins, if he felt like spending 50 hours on one painting. (He wouldn't)
Permabegs itt can't into rendering so dismiss it at their own peril. Very inspiring work.

[Anonymous No.6774281]

>>6774186
>no readability as a thumbnail
lol.

[Anonymous No.6774287]

>>6774281
Rules are made to be broken. Ruan is going for the where's waldo approach...

[Anonymous No.6774307]

>>6774186
I miss old Ruan

[Anonymous No.6774325]

>>6774307
Ruan misses him too. Oh to be young again...

[Anonymous No.6774329]

>>6774186
tons of work into the detail but the picture as a whole sucks, muddy muted, cramped, no sense of space, books, wizard, globe, boring shit, the most interesting part of it is the windows and they still feel like they could have been done better.
he's alright, got some memorable pieces here and there, nice colors and rendering style, but there's alot of other artists that beat him at other stuff like design, environments, lineart.

[Anonymous No.6774334]

>>6774186
It looks so soulless compared to his earlier works. Guess that's what happens when you get older. Everything's gotta be so realistic and detailed devoid of colors and imperfections

[Anonymous No.6774340]

Sad art man indeed

[Anonymous No.6774342]

>>6774186
fuckin A

[Anonymous No.6774345]

Old Ruan had better colors

[Anonymous No.6774350]

I guess I'll just dump my hoard

[Anonymous No.6774353]

>>6774350
Zoomed in detail from a magazine.

[Anonymous No.6774355]

>>6774345
wip

[Anonymous No.6774362]

I wih there was an higher pic of this

[Anonymous No.6774363]

>>6774345
He used to work months on these, maybe it's just age and not wanting to or not having the energy to put in as much effort as he used to

[Anonymous No.6774365]

>>6774355
Release the tongue cut. :P

[Anonymous No.6774370]

>>6774272
Craig Mullins is more Sargent and Ruan is more Bougureau
Both great but totally different approaches although Ruan's brushwork is more reminiscent of Rembrandt

[Anonymous No.6774371]

>>6774363
It think he used to be neet or something, where do you find 500 hours to make a painting? Let alone multiple of these a year...

[Anonymous No.6774376]

>>6774370
Ruan maybe Waterhouse than boogyroo.

[Anonymous No.6774380]

>>6774186
James Gurney is better

[Anonymous No.6774388]

>>6774371
I doubt the stuff he does today takes less time. Just look at the insane details in OP, even too much, I don't even know where my eye should look at.

But the greatest difference is the colors. The new drawings are more metallic, less dreamy. Dunno.

[Anonymous No.6774394]

>>6774186
this LITERALLY looks like an AI paintover
you can't change my opinion

[Anonymous No.6774396]

>>6774388
They take less time, he has a time lapse for the op one on his YouTube. That yellow eye girl took 500 hours, but he finished it about 4 times repainting it and repainting it...

[Anonymous No.6774405]

>>6774394
Why should we? You are mindbroken, the only cure is to get good.

[Anonymous No.6774409]

>>6774380
James Gurney has to draw from references though. His stuff is good, but not personally a huge fan of his work, especially his dinosaurs have a plastic or putty look because he references plastic toys and putty sculptures.

[Anonymous No.6774415]

>>6774203
>>6774226
>>6774236
>>6774239
>>6774394
filtered

[Anonymous No.6774419]

>>6774394
>you can't change my opinion
>but I still made this post

[Anonymous No.6774420]

quick rundown on this ruan jia nigga? Why does everyone has a strong opinion on him?

[Anonymous No.6774421]

>>6774388
His new art is bizarre, it looks like clay with oil spill colors filter he's also using binary pencil on some parts

[Anonymous No.6774426]

>>6774420
He blew oldfags minds 15 years ago with artwork rendered to another level compared to everybody working in the industry at the time. His tastes however did not grow more refined with time and instead regressed. He's like a 12 year old with godlike painting skills.

[Anonymous No.6774427]

>>6774420
He's the most technical digital painter, that's about it
Him being hated is an /ic/ meme that started from a single angry crab schizoposting in every single Ruan thread, eventually it infected other crabs but old /ic/ at least used to wait for him to upload his latest work and then spend an entire thread theorycrafting his process

[Anonymous No.6774758]

>>6774421
He was a 3d monkey in his past life retard.

[Anonymous No.6775043]

>>6774363
its less to do with age and more to do with shifting your priorities. you keep improving and improving and making lots of shit, but eventually, you need to expand your skillset outside of art, so it has to take a backseat as things get busier.
you see it happening to boomers where they learn the craft for the first time and its all exciting and colourful but years and years later, they kind of feel content with the knowledge and want to do something different.

not that big of a deal.

[Anonymous No.6775045]

>>6774380
his book and advice is great, but his subject matter is fucking boring.

[Anonymous No.6775055]

>>6774200
mike da angle is mid fr fr

[Anonymous No.6775057]

>>6774186
Cant even tell if those anime people on the far side of the room are suppose to be actual people or cardboard cutouts they are rendered so flat as it other things in that area.

6/10

[Anonymous No.6775148]

The rendering and colors are awesome but some of the character poses >>6774186 >>6774421 are hard to grasp and seem wrong.

[Anonymous No.6775190]

The stuff he does nowadays may be created a lot faster but that's mostly a testament to improvement on his end. What he did in 500 hours back then is easily done in 40 hours now. Likely less. Looking at the old stuff it's actually less detailed than the new stuff.
I agree that the colours way back were way more interesting than what he's currently doing but that has nothing to do with time spent but rather with personal choice and taste. You're only ever a dozen of glazing passes away from really moody colours.
If I had to guess what he does now is somewhat connected to him working with what he does now. You often learn to like what workflows and styles you work with given time. It's a shift from soft reads with moody colours to hard reads with greys and saturated colours only here and there. The latter being somewhat more suited for concepting

[Anonymous No.6775234]

>>6774203
>>6774226
>>6774236
>>6774239
Ain't no way you guys are this mind broken from AI

[Anonymous No.6775242]

>>6775234
they did it for attention and (You) gave it to 'em

[Anonymous No.6775277]

>>6774409
>James Gurney has to draw from references
Ruan Jia dont use refrence? why is that bad anyway James creates his own reference
>dinosaurs have a plastic or putty look
its preference, like Ruan Jia has a rock or grainy look
>>6775045
>anime girls looking into void
>anime girls dancing around a pot
its boring too

[Anonymous No.6775314]

>>6775277
I'm generally uninterested in people who over-reference, or worse, copy reference. KJG showed that one can just study reference and then create without visual reference at hand. I gained a whole new appreciation for those who draw and paint by referencing pretty much nothing and do it well. If you're practiced enough, all you really need is a character sheet for design accuracy. Everyone else then who rely on their eyes to draw and paint lose a lot of their shine by existing in relativity to that. Pose-referencers now feel like they're coping instead.
I know it often comes around to "its about the final result arguments" but I don't care for it now that some really great people can do really great things from mind alone.

[Anonymous No.6775342]

>>6774186
Nice picture, too bad pixels aren't worth anything. Imagine if, instead, that were done in oils on a nice large linen canvas say 3'x7' (or whatever the aspect ratio is), now that would be a valuable piece of art.

[Anonymous No.6775353]

>>6774421
It's like he's massively improved on form and three dimensionality, but regressed on, I guess subject matter, interest, style, and looseness?

[Anonymous No.6775360]

>>6775314
>>6775314
thats personal opinion tho... so ruan Jia dont use refrence? sometimes you can't tell if an artist used a reference or not unless asked about it

[Anonymous No.6775443]

>>6774186
His stuff while amazing always looks so kitschy or like heading into uncanny valley. Guess sometimes it looks way too overworked and missing that spontaneity or freshness.
.

[Anonymous No.6775469]

>>6775443
I think it's kinda on purpose, that's why he always stood out from the usual rendermonkeys for me, it's so over the top it gives it this strange dreamy atmosphere

[Anonymous No.6775497]

>>6775277
By reference I mean James Gurney paints with a dinosaur toy or sculpture in front of him, copying the lighting and the texture. Sorry, but that's not impressive or creative to me. I don't prefer artists who relies on references as that much of crutch. If you followed his blog, you would actually know this.

[Anonymous No.6775500]

>>6775277
By "reference" I mean James Gurney paints with a dinosaur toy or sculpture in front of him, copying the lighting and the texture. Sorry, but that's not impressive or creative to me. I don't like works that relies on references as a crutch like that. I followed his blog for several years mostly for his knowledge, but not his work. If you followed his blog, you would actually know this. Ruan Jia still uses references, but he doesn't copy the references to the degree James Gurney does.

[Anonymous No.6775547]

>>6775500
and? i don't see the issue... plus, you do not know how much Ruan Jia relies on references. because unlike James most artists do not share their references. I can say that Ruan Jia is not impressive because he doesn't blend and paints his own colors traditionally. people have different skills it doesn't negate one or the other.

[Anonymous No.6775556]

>>6775547
nta, but i think what he's mainly referring is to the 'type' of reference he uses mainly. Ruan Jia typically focuses on more elegant iconography with his work with refernce to plating and strange jewellery where in contrast to Gurney, his main reference point are plastic figurines of dinosaurs, which kind of results in his work evoke that 'plastic' effect.

but tbf, James is also a traditional artist, and that alone is pretty impressive. Ruan has the luxury of using digital to clean up his work but even so, his choice of colour looks more appealing, and his use of texture is very unique too. Its a shame he's a digital artist tho.

>Captcha; GRGRG8

[Anonymous No.6775569]

Ruan does oil painting too, but it's probably less than 1% of his output these days.

[Anonymous No.6775571]

>>6775547
That's just your personal preference to care whether someone actually mixed paint for their painting, which is a very odd criteria for you to look a painting. Most people should not care whether someone had to mix real paint for their work. If their work looks like plastic toys, they look like plastic toys. I don't care that he had to mix real paint.

[Anonymous No.6775572]

>>6775547
That's just your personal preference to care whether someone actually mixed real paint for their painting, which is a very odd criteria for you to look in a painting. Most people should not care whether someone had to mix real paint for their work. If their work looks like plastic toys, they look like plastic toys. I don't care that the artist had to mix real paint.

[Anonymous No.6775580]

Every digital changs you see can paint by default. They're literally worshiping Russian art schools and hire grad students to teach them. Painting wouldn't be a esoteric magic if modern art didn't kill academic art education in the west (besides France).

[Anonymous No.6775584]

>dinosaurs have a plastic look
KYS
and post a photo of real dinosaur
KYS

[Anonymous No.6775597]

>>6775584
Crocodiles are close enough to use as material ref no?

[Anonymous No.6775600]

>>6775584
>how do you know real dinosaurs aren't made of plastic? Checkmate.

[Anonymous No.6775603]

>>6775597
they're not real and made from rubber
>>6775600
KYS retard

[Anonymous No.6775605]

>>6775600
>plastic
made out of oil
>oil
made out of dinosaurs
q.e.d.

[Anonymous No.6775610]

>>6774186
The characters look like flat cardboard cut-outs.

[Anonymous No.6775613]

>>6775605
Uhhh, achktually, most fossil fuel materials come from algae, bacteria, and plants dating back as far as the Devonian Period.

[Anonymous No.6775619]

>>6775556
I think you are nitpicking
>>6775572
traditional is more difficult compared to digital so it is more impressive. 500 hours is nothing in a traditional painting

[Anonymous No.6775621]

>>6775619
>500 hours is nothing in a traditional painting
If you get paid.

[Anonymous No.6775622]

>>6775619
If I rode a unicycle while juggling as I paint, that's impressive too. But we're talking about the painting itself, not how the person painted it.

[Anonymous No.6775623]

>>6775619
>the more inconvenient it is, the better
pyw

[Anonymous No.6775629]

>>6775623
>pyw
I can't yet, I'm still waiting for the tree I planted to grow so i can make paper from it.

[Anonymous No.6775634]

>>6775622
I was referring to >>6775314 stating not using reference is impressive and justifying it as better skill. what's impressive is any strength an artist excels at. whether its painting traditionally or painting from imagination.
>>6775623
that's the argument I'm debating against

[Anonymous No.6775638]

Ruan Jia newfags what spam his threads don't even remember about actual chink GOD. And I think I miss all DK pseuds and momshitter

[Anonymous No.6775641]

>>6775634
Painting directly from reference is easier than painting from imagination. So, painting from imagination is more impressive than painting directly from reference.

[Anonymous No.6775642]

>>6775634
so in your view, James is better purely on the fact that he is trad? i mean, that's a fair point, but it does mean that if Ruan was a trad artist, he'd be leagues above Gurney, in your pov, yea?

[Anonymous No.6775643]

your Ruan Kek is nothing
your discord is weak

[Anonymous No.6775651]

>>6775643
Huang is hung

[Anonymous No.6775663]

>>6775643
People like to call Ruans stuff kitch but Huang's as kitch as it gets dawg

[Anonymous No.6775700]

>>6775663
Kitsch as insult is just a pseud cope. Since ancient times pseuds are trying to stay relevant because plebs got access to all their precious toys. Like how cool kid can't watch his favorite cartoon if it's too popular. Remember saloon fights? Degas with his shitty ballerinas vs Bouguereau? There is a reason why a lot artists made fun of them (Osamu Dazai for example). In 2023 contemporary/modern art can beat everything because its existence was based around pure philosophy/logic circlejerk masturbation among higher level pseuds. Only one thing can beat their shitty arguments- kino.
>tl;dr
Kitsch is kino.

[Anonymous No.6775703]

>>6775642
not him, but don't underestimate how easy digital makes things compared to traditional. mixing colors, the ability to adjust proportions easily, at any stages of the paintings, flexible layering, no drying time, no paint reactivation, the ability to zoom in like crazy, etc.

Let alone the "cheating" technique (photo bash, partial generation, etc.)

Ruan, and digital artists in general, are much more creative and original than their traditional peers. But IMO the "malleability" of the digital medium is a major cause:they have so much less constraints and gritty bits to think about that their brain can focus on the creative side of things.

So yes, Ruan would pwn Gurney, theoretically. But I'd be curious to see him taking on a brush (like, would he even have the patience to develop the skills).

[Anonymous No.6775708]

>>6775638
If only Yizheng Ke went trad... he'd be such a force.

[Anonymous No.6775710]

>>6775642
>>6775641
my view is you can't compare different skills. every artist is good at using his own methods. compare artists with a shared skill like perspective or gesture.

[Anonymous No.6775712]

>>6775703
This is his trad work >>6775569
He's got a few on his website

[Anonymous No.6775723]

>>6775710
>you can't compare different skills
Yes you can, actually. I can say fluid physics is harder than learning to move your legs, they're two different skills but you can still compare their difficulties.

[Anonymous No.6775763]

>>6775703
How quickly you decide that Ruan for some reason cannot do Trad at all
For most twitter anime artists I would never in my life criticize stating that they do not know trad. But Ruan knows trad and you're sitting her asking if one of the most patient artists around would have the patience to learn trad mediums and tools? Don't be so all-assuming

[Anonymous No.6775771]

>>6775500
>>6774409
>dunning kruger

[Anonymous No.6775776]

>>6775771
>waaaaah! you have to like what i like otherwise dunning kruger!
cope and seethe

[Anonymous No.6775811]

>>6775723
you are branching too far. we are comparing skills in the context of two artists. if we compare a disabled person to a healthy person the disabled will find it easier to learn physics than walking. a skill is hard for one person doesn't mean its absolute to all.

[Anonymous No.6775872]

>>6775811
>if you compare a disabled person to a healthy person, the disabled person will have a harder time walking, thus making it more difficult for him to walk then learn physics.
You just made my point for me within a different analogy that, you yourself, compared two different skills by difficulty. In my analogy, I was applying the two skills to a normal functioning person, and I never said walking, but moving your legs. If you think that a normally functioning person will have an easier time moving their legs around than learning physics, you're actually retarded. And you thought introducing the disabled person into my analogy would help your point, but you ended up making my point by comparing two different skills yourself.

[Anonymous No.6775875]

>>6775811
>if you compare a disabled person to a healthy person, the disabled person will have a harder time walking, thus making it more difficult for him to walk then learn physics.
You just made my point for me within a different analogy that, you yourself, compared two different skills by difficulty. In my analogy, I was applying the two skills to a normal functioning person, and I never said walking, but moving your legs. If you think that normally functioning people will have an easier time learning physics than moving their legs, you're actually retarded. And you thought introducing the disabled person into my analogy would help your point, but you ended up making my point by comparing two different skills yourself.

[Anonymous No.6775946]

>>6775712
Nice. It's not outstanding though, esp. by comparison with his digital work, and there really don't seem to be that much of it either indeed

https://twitter.com/RuanJiaJia/status/1359683668558499843

>>6775763
> How quickly you decide that Ruan for some reason cannot do Trad at all
1) Never saw a trad piece of him in literally years
2) Reasonable guess, considering the difference in difficulty, as argued earlier

> But Ruan knows trad
> one of the most patient artists around
Well. He can do a few stylized portraits, but I think your main point was about not jumping to conclusions too fast?

Anyway.

[Anonymous No.6775955]

>>6775771
>reddit-tier response

[Anonymous No.6776089]

>>6775875
>compared two different skills by difficulty
thats was an example of why it isnt viable to compare two skills. what you assume is hard for someone else its easy. I introduced a context because your comparison lacked context. we are comparing two artists not two skills.

[Anonymous No.6776104]

>>6776089
You're just moving the goalpost now.

>we are comparing two artists not two skills.
That was not the original argument. The original disagreement was with this:
>>6775710
>my view is you can't compare different skills.
I specifically quoted and disagreed with this, that you can compare two different skills in terms of difficulty. But of course now you want to move the goal post knowing you don't actually have any good arguments.

From >>6775875
>if we compare a disabled person to a healthy person the disabled will find it easier to learn physics than walking
Here you just compared two different skills' difficulties yourself, so it is possible to compare two different skills' difficulties.

Your argument that we cannot know whether two different skills are of different or equal difficulty is plainly retarded.

[Anonymous No.6776107]

>>6776089
You're just moving the goalpost now.

>we are comparing two artists not two skills.
That was not the original argument. The original disagreement was with this:
>>6775710
>my view is you can't compare different skills.
I specifically quoted and disagreed with this, that you can compare two different skills in terms of difficulty. But of course now you want to move the goal post knowing you don't actually have any good arguments.

From >>6775811
>if we compare a disabled person to a healthy person the disabled will find it easier to learn physics than walking
Here you just compared two different skills' difficulties yourself, so it is possible to compare two different skills' difficulties.

Your argument that we cannot know whether two different skills are of different or equal difficulty is plainly retarded.

[Anonymous No.6776221]

>>6776107
i didnt move the post. i stated difficulty depends on the person. you can compare a skill in a fair context of people. you cant compare a skill in a context of people who are not possesive of that skill, like a disabled person cannot move their legs so obviosly walking is difficult and your comparison doesn't hold up in that context. if an artist cant paint from imagination it doesn't negate his existing skill. a beginner artist can paint from imagination but the results will be bad. painting from imagination means nothing without skill. and james has the skill.

[Anonymous No.6776244]

>>6775710
>my view is you can't compare different skills.
>>6776089
> we are comparing two artists not two skills.
>>6776221
>i didnt move the post.
kek

>>6776221
>you cant compare a skill in a context of people who are not possesive of that skill
FYI, you're the one who compared different skills across different people, so you're arguing with yourself here. I compared skills as it pertains to an average person attempting that skill.

[Anonymous No.6776281]

>>6774186
>Did he surpass old masters?
With many of the old masters, there are many artists today who can draw with our modern tools better than they could, but that ignores why they were masters - they were amazing despite their serious constraints of making their own paints, or having no instructions on things such as perspective or anatomy, and while they could make detailed pieces it would be very difficult to make pieces as detailed as this.

So yeah, in a way he's better than the old master, as you'd hope there would be as information and tech moves forward.
In another way, his work and most other work is sorely lacking what it was that made the old masters' work so impactful.

[Anonymous No.6776956]

>>6775613
>most fossil fuel materials come from algae, bacteria, and plants
I'm the only one who thinks the amount of matter needed to create such amount of oil is simply too absurd?

[Anonymous No.6776970]

>>6775580
I thought it was dead in France as well

[Anonymous No.6777052]

>>6776956
Back in the day the fungi and such that would break down all that material did not exist yet so for millions of years it just sort of piled up.

[Anonymous No.6777362]

>>6774380

[Anonymous No.6777369]

>>6776970
Not him, it's absolutely dead in France as well. FWIW, there's *one* ARC recommended atelier in France, and it wasn't there earlier. All "fine" art school teach modern let-me-loudly-express-my-uneducated-self.

There have been a few interesting bits popping recently however, but I think that's just because people (the art market, worldwide) seems to get bored of that crap, and seems to be more inclined toward more sophisticated works.

See for instance https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV60suISgRo

t. French

[Anonymous No.6777393]

>>6777362
Imaginitive shitpostism: How to post what doesn't exist

[Anonymous No.6777515]

>>6774409
post your dinos

[Anonymous No.6777541]

>>6777362
That's actually funny

[Anonymous No.6778479]

>>6777052
>plant-eating animals existed
>but not plant-eating microbes
bullshit

[Anonymous No.6778486]

>>6774342
what is this supposed to mean

[Anonymous No.6778493]

>>6778479
Geological history is full of crazy shit like that. For example the Camrbrian explosion lead to so much life which consumed CO2 and produced oxygen that there was massive global cooling to the point that the entire planet was covered by ice and nearly ended everything, except for volcanoes and shit and some other evolution of life spitting out CO2 to the point that it was 350x what it is today, to warm up the planet and melt all that ice.
In any case, why would micriobes that could digest lignens and such before said lignens existed? Obviously it works the other way around. That's why there are massive deposits of coal and oil and such, and not just in isolated locations which could have been anoxic at the time.

[Anonymous No.6778494]

>>6778479
Oh, and also that shit came before the animals too, there weren't dinos running around back then lol. This shit was during the Paleozoic like the Devonian, animals didn't really come around until somewhat later and the big dinos are all from the Mesozoic.

[Anonymous No.6778496]

>>6774186
>anime
>ever surpassing old masters
Just no. Lmao it’s comical to even consider it.

[Anonymous No.6778509]

>>6778496
That's stretching definition of anime pretty far

[Anonymous No.6778637]

Don't understand why people dicksuck this guy so much. Is he very technically competent? Yeah sure, no doubt about it. But his art is boring as fuck and sterotypical chinese render monkey shit.

Art is a means to an end. Sadly you can't account for taste/soul.

[Anonymous No.6778649]

>>6775314
The people who suck off KJG as the god of art are even more insufferable. KJG's work was technically good but boring as fuck. His work never made an impact beyond making normies jerk him off for his skill but he won't be remembered as much compared to Mangaka who actually use their art to communicate a good story or idea.

Saying reference is bad is an example of /beg/s. KJG's are was samey as fuck.