I’m really tired of people giving Euclase shit for photorealism. Like, just, so tired folks. I’m an artist, and I know a lot of other artists, some of them photorealists. Lemme tell you something, there’s copying a photo, and then there’s what Euclase does, and they are two different things.
Lemme just take a quick, random example:
Ok,now the top there? That’s a screen-grab from Wrath of Khan. The bottom? That’s Euclase’s version. Now, obviously, she’s going for accuracy to her source material. That’s what photorealists do. The point is to make something realistic. But let’s focus for a second on how the piece actually differs from the screengrab, because that’s the thing I noticed instantly about Euclase’s work, and what I, as a fellow artist, find so impressive about it.
You’re probably thinking I’m about to talk about that necklace or some arbitrary detail she changed. Nope, it’s the color. That blue hue, holy crap guys, that blue. While there is a pale blue in the original image, it’s nothing, NOTHING like what Euclase has done here. And some of you are going to say “so what? that’s just boosting some saturation” except it isn’t. Ask an artist, it just isn’t. Boosting a color like that and getting it to look natural and like it fits in with the realistic image you’re working from takes an incredible degree of subtle color knowledge. It’s not something you can get with a photoshop filter. And it’s not something you can do by just selecting colors off the original, it simply won’t look right if that’s all you do. You have to know how to do that going in.
And the thing is, this isn’t a one-off example, this is part of her style, and my favorite part in particular. Most of the images she works from are far more washed out to start with, and Euclase brings to them this sort of ultra tone correction. She cranks the intensity of specific colors up and not only alters the mood of the source material, but uses that color in such a way to suggest things about her subject.
So yeah, she’s absolutely using reference for her work, congrats, you’ve found the dirty secret of literally every professional artist alive. We use ref because that’s the only way to get it right. Even if you’re not tracing ref, you’ll have it out as a visual guide. That’s not cheating, it’s literally how it’s done.
And y’know what? if you don’t like it? Fine. If you’re not into photorealism (and the basic tenets of said style) then just don’t look at it. There are tons of non realistic artists out there (hell, I’m one of them). Unless you’re calling out an error in her work (good luck finding one) then basically you’re like a kid showing up to someone else’s birthday party and complaining that you didn’t get a present. She’s doing her art for her, and she does not need your approval for that.
