I have recently gotten a million recommendations about sculpting reliefs and bodies on youtube. It seems like there's still dozens of skilled sculptors alive.So I was initially wondering about the fact that it seems like traditional sculpture is far better preserved than traditional painting. Even the people trying their hardest to copy the old masters simply will never be able to get it right, and certain techniques even at the molecular level of the pigment grinding methods will be lost forever that make all the difference. Sculpture though? It seems like sculpture is just as good as ever, there is no short supply of stone masons ready to make good work if you pay them properly.Now that isn't exactly a good thing, sculptors of the past would probably be distraught to see modern sculptors reduced to interior decorators, but I kept comparing the processes and realized maybe sculpture is just easier?The process ultimately comes down to drawing out three dimensionally in marble, and focusing on the skin tones in polychrome. It requires less focus on the positioning of the final image because you cannot control the way you enter the room, and is ultimately just an easier technique.Is this why sculpture is not just better preserved now, but also why Romans and Greeks were able to create god tier stuff thousands of years ago, but their paintings barely just discovered perspective at the same moment they collapsed? Is sculpture just objectively the easier artform to master, while painting has a harder learning curve?
>>7144400Da Vinci regarded sculpture of "lesser genius" than painting. As I understand it, because the mind doesn't need to make as many calculations or grasp as many complex mathematical rules, it was never regarded as quite as "high" of an art form and thus not worthy of the same degree of respect. This doesn't mean it's Objectively Bad, but since art has generally been valued for its intellectual effort and mastery, sculpture was seen as a kind of less impressive sibling, a brutish form of expression.Da Vinci's exact quote:I myself, having exercised myself no less in sculpture than in painting and doing both one and the other in the same degree, it seems to me that I can, without invidiousness, pronounce an opinion as to which of the two is of the greatest merit and difficulty and perfection. In the first place sculpture requires a certain light, that is from above, a picture carries everywhere with it its own light and shade. Thus sculpture owes its importance to light and shade, and the sculptor is aided in this by the nature, of the relief which is inherent in it, while the painter whose art expresses the accidental aspects of nature, places his effects in the spots where nature must necessarily produce them. The sculptor cannot diversify his work by the various natural colours of objects; painting is not defective in any particular. The sculptor when he uses perspective cannot make it in any way appear true; that of the painter can appear like a hundred miles beyond the picture itself. https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Leonardo-believe-painting-was-superior-to-sculpture
>>7144409sculpture is very underrated now cause there has been a flood of zoomer millenial artists, all shitting out paintings, albeit digital. The few sculptors i like only do anime/pop culture stuff though cause thats whats in vogue for now
From my experience sculpting is the easiest, then painting is the next at medium-easy which is more difficult than sculpting but not by that much, and then drawing is quite much more difficult than painting like twice or three times as difficult than painting.I’m thinking about switching to 3D animation even though my true love is 2D animation.
>>7144400>Is sculpture just objectively the easier artform to master, while painting has a harder learning curve?Haven't thought of it. I think that it's probably not a fully binary thing, but indeed, I would theoretically be inclined to think that sculpting is overall easier.The reasoning would be that a painter must do at least everything a sculptor should do (how to pose someone, anatomy, facial expressions and so forth) and more (general composition, color, mood, lighting, perspective).Another argument, to complement what you said regarding the Greeks and al, would be that advanced painting techniques only happened in the West, after a while. All other civilizations had good sculptures, including Africa, China, India, probably even South Americans, but none of them developed painting as far as the West: we could argue that if it was this easy, it would have been developed easily elsewhere.Then, things like sculpting in precious, semi-precious stones or gigantic marble blocks, or sensitive stones will require solid technical skills, even more so as the forms grows in delicacy and intricacy (remember that marble net), and will for sure be more difficult than a Bob Ross painting.But there may be approaches to sculpting thatI'm not aware off that might throw this out of balance.
>>7144623how is painting easier than drawing? Painting IS drawing, but with light and color added.Sculpture, on the other hand, is a lesser form of drawing, because all you need to know are forms + proportions, without thinking about how to express those forms on a 2d surface
>>7146053Not him but when people make the distinction between drawing and painting, they generally imply that drawing is not approached in a loose and broad manner, as is typical with painting.This looser approach is very efficient, but this efficiency often cost in precision. If you're well trained, that cost is practically not so important. And getting those bits of extra precision is costly (80/20 rule).Also, the drawing material is less malleable than (oil) paint. For example, if you want a large smooth covering with graphite, it's painful. Charcoal makes it easier in some ways, but painful in others.
>>7146053>how is painting easier than drawing? Painting IS drawing, but with light and color added.nta, but that's true in some sense. However there's generally been a divide between painting and drawing in practice, and that's because there's a 'type' of painter/student that is purely imitative and lacks fundamental knowledge. They can look at a landscape and wrangle together the effect of depth and detail without understanding how things are put together, and so have these huge gaps in their skill set. Bob Ross was once such painter. If given a pencil and told to rotate an environment in perspective, or consistently redraw a person or animal from different angles, he couldn't do it, because he lacked the knowledge of drawing fundamentals. He didn't have the understanding / internalization of 3D space to grasp geometric form beyond a rudimentary surface level. This is why he stuck almost exclusively to organic environments, avoided animals, people, and produced awkward looking houses and cottages that lacked a sense of genuine dimensionality.It's easier to create simulacra of the fundamentals in painting than it is in drawing. Drawing requires far more exacting and complex modes of thought, measurement and calculation. The drawer needs to internalize a mathematical logic that compares vanishing points and creates a genuine simulation of 3D space on the page that they can then enter and manipulate. Almost anyone can easily learn to paint a natural landscape from a photo or reference, only a trained drawer can construct complex buildings, machines, animals, etc and develop a deep understanding of how things actually function.At a certain point it is ultimately semantics. You can absolutely draw and paint at the same time, and at that point there really is no distinction. It's just that the tendency for painters to not learn the fundamentals has led to the divide.
>>7144400Yeah, I think it's a lot easier. I've been drawing for awhile and I've had a very hard time getting past what I think is maybe a beginner or at best low-intermediate level (whatever level you'd consider the drawing on the right side of this picture), but I started sculpting a few weeks ago in zbrush and I think my sculpts are already significantly better than anything I can do in a drawing or a painting.
Just do both.
>>7144623Excuse me? Sculpting is the hardest thing you can possibly do.>digitalNot sure how it translates to digital but it sure as hell can’t be easy
>>7144409Yet again, Michelangelo regarded sculpting the greatest art form, and so did the ancient Greeks and Romans.Adn for most of history, the most sublime and perfect form of art has always been considered music.As in everything, it depends on who you ask.
>>7147909>Excuse me? Sculpting is the hardest thing you can possibly do.There are arguments in the threads; care to answer those?>>7147913Danse is the real deal, actually.
It's easier to fraud painting or drawing with sightsize, shape copying, and symbol drawn cartooning than it is to sculpt, but doing a good drawing or good painting is harder than sculpting.
>>7144400When something is perceived to be easier, expectations and standards are adjusted accordingly, such that being at the top of one field would be just as difficult as in another.As for your assumption that sculpture seems better preserved, any such thing would be a matter of market forces, not difficulty. In fact, I think your assumption is false to begin with, as there are far more working painters in traditionalist/academic styles than sculptors. You just don't think of them as painters.
>>7148049>You just don't think of them as painters.Are you talking about calligraphy artists and the like?
>>7148557No, we just call them illustrators. A great deal of them work in entertainment. There is still huge demand for those traditional skills, that hasn't changed. It's art academia that moved away from representational painting, which gives the appearance that old knowledge has been lost. It hasn't.And don't get me started on how many traditional portraiture painters there are. Their ranks seem inversely proportional to the amount of prestige we still afford them.
>>7148683All due respect where the fuck is your source, because traditional stone masons and sculptors vastly outnumber them.Secondly, you do realize that modern academic methods are nothing like the old academic methods, and calling modern artists even those with talent as following practice is an insult to pretty much all painters from Goya and before right?
>>7148744>All due respect where the fuck is your sourceWhere is yours?>The illustration workforce comprises of 2.2 million peoplehttps://www.linearity.io/blog/illustration-statistics/>There are over 4,096 stone masons currently employed in the United States.https://www.zippia.com/stone-mason-jobs/demographics/>Secondly, you do realize that modern academic methods are nothing like the old academic methodsI disagree. Concepts remain the same, techniques are adapted to evolving media. If you observe more changes in painting, it's likely because there were more changes in medium.
>>7148788According to your same source>Retro styles from the 80s and 90s, characterized by vibrant colors and distinctive outlines, are returning.2>Minimalistic styles, now incorporating more vibrant colors, remain popular.2Most of these artists would be digital too.We are not seeing Caravaggio or even Norman Rockwell type advertisements anymore. When someone says they're an "illustrator" they can just as well mean they draw in fucking Corporate Memphis using Adobe Illustrator.If this is what you mean by "Don't think of them as painters" no, no I don't, not one bit. Because they're not traditional painters.We're discussing how many people here still follow tradition, not how many sculptors there are if we count people who do crochet as a side hustle and compare it to all the people who sell caricatures on sidewalks.So what is my source?My source is that I made it the fuck up based off basic observations that make it obvious, go on Youtube, it's full of videos and shorts of people who are still making traditional sculpture en mass. Traditional sculpture isn't dead.Painting is. How do I know? Because I've known illustrators, none of them work in oil, much less tempera, or anything else, most work in color pencil or digital. More over the few that are, do not use even close to the same techniques that have been used in that of the old academics.We have scientific studies that compare the particle size and layer size of DaVinci's works to that of modern painters, who use smaller particles but even thicker layers, why? Because most use tube paint even when doing academic painting over grinding things themselves, they have to buy it pre ground even if they don't get paint pre made, I know I do.There is no way to ever get a 1 to 1 of any old masters, this is due to the fact that there are no well preserved or detailed records of their methods, even those who wrote treaties don't go into detail, they're beginner books if anything
>>7148788>>7148801And even if they train to try and best approximate the old masters, using similar principles, almost no one uses the exact amount of layers, mediums, or blends, most painters work alla prima, or with 2-4 layers at most, while we know Titian used 8 layers, of the same colors, working with translucency, and we know that Bouguereau spent a year on paints often only releasing 12 works each year because that was all the time he had for them. Gericault used mediums that are still wet today, no other artist does this. Basically we no longer work like this, and we know that we've lost knowledge before from lack of archiving. The gradual decline of traditional painting has happened overtime and in fact you can say there never really was real painting.You will never be an old master.There never really was traditional painting.Meanwhile sculpture was discovered earlier, we have surviving techniques for marvel carving and casting centuries old before the Renaissance, used then, and used now, and it has never changed.Now we have a massive influx of sculptors. Classical sculptors and masons still offer apprenticeships, no painting artists really do that anymore. And the reward these sculptors receive nowadays for their longevity?No longer being accepted into museums but being reduced to decorators instead who have to make YouTube videos for sustainability.Use your eyes for a source, don't come in here and call me out as if I'm not speaking purely factual statements, this is all unquestionable period, now the question is simple:Is this entire line of events down to sculpture being easier than painting?
>>7148804>crazy wall of textIt's far too late in the night for this. All I'll say is I gave you sources with numbers, you gave me your personal anecdotes. So I'm done with that.>Is this entire line of events down to sculpture being easier than painting?I already gave my answer in my very first post. You can perceive it to be easier. But to be at the top of sculpting would be just as difficult to be at the top of painting, and I don't see how this could have anything to do with a preservation of techniques. It's far more likely down to the medium undergoing fewer changes. Stone is stone, marble is marble, wood is wood.
>>7148823>Muh anecdote fallacyWhatever helps you sleep at night.>But to be at the top of sculpting would be just as difficult to be at the top of painting, and I don't see how this could have anything to do with a preservation of techniques. It's far more likely down to the medium undergoing fewer changes. Stone is stone, marble is marble, wood is wood.Hm.So that's it then? There was never a call for change in medium or technique in marble, wood, or stone? It's only in recent times that the same problems with the invention of the camera setting in happening to sculptors now?Why?Let's say your theory is true, and I guess it partially is, paint did go through multiple mediums, each requiring a different technique, over the centuries, but sculpture has always been wood, marble, and casting before now?Let's say sculpture is just as hard as painting, why was there less of a need to make sculpture in a variety of mediums while with painting there was little to none?What is your explanation for how it has survived with far more comparable longevity until recent times, while painting has been dead for at least a century?
>>7148834>Whatever helps you sleep at night.You are the one who asked for evidence, while providing none. Just stop, you're not winning this one and it's plain to everyone.>There was never a call for change in medium or technique in marble, wood, or stone?You're being obtuse and reductive. The point is that much of sculpting is based on found natural media. That is a point of consistency. Paint, *relatively speaking*, has undergone a lot of changes. The mere discovery and production of different pigments have affected painting techniques throughout history.>while painting has been dead for at least a century?It hasn't.
Yes/thread
>>7149020>It hasn't.Oh I see you're one of those people who chooses to ignore the obvious through disarming things based of semantics and vocabulary rather than looking at objective reality.Ok, what a shame, you might have been onto something with your theory that maybe materialism and economics had to do with the death of painting techniques over the centuries, but why sculpture was well preserved in both technique and until recently, reputation, but I guess whatever that was just got sidelined over inability to admit when you're wrong too huh?Back to saying sculpture is easier then, because limited techniques now falls under the umbrella of ease, which painting has no limits and hasn't had in eons.
>>7144400if you want to see some shit tier sculpting, go /3/ and look at people learning zbrush.
