Timeline

In-Depth Study On Photorealism.

Photorealism is an art movement based on the study of a photograph and then production, from this, of a painting which is so realistic that it resembles a photograph. As a rule, paintings done in the United States in the late 1960s or early 1970s in this style are generally called original photorealism.
Photorealism evolved from Pop Art, mainly in America. The Photorealists opposed the increasingly popular Minimalist and Abstract Impressionist art movements, also evolving at the time. The general idea was to counter the rise of the sleek lines and abstraction of the movements currently in favour.
The whole point of photorealist painting was to have a photograph. The subjects must be still and unchanging; the idea behind it was a capturing of the current space in time. The photograph was still on the rise in art then, the Polaroid was coming into vogue, and photography had not yet become an accepted art form. The photorealist artist would take a still photograph and then develop the photo in order to transfer it by hand onto a canvas, and paint it. Nowadays we can print straight on to canvas, and this was the very thing the photorealists were rebelling against; the influx of technology into art, which is a paradox, as without technology, their art form would never have existed. The whole style is precise and intense, with natural lines and colours. Technical mastery was key; without a keen grasp of mark-making techniques, the artist would fail in his or her attempts to produce photorealist work.
The term photorealist came from Louis Meisel, who developed a five-point definition of a photorealist artist, seen below:
1. The Photo-Realist uses the camera and photograph to gather information.
2. The Photo-Realist uses a mechanical or semimechanical means to transfer the information to the canvas.
3. The Photo-Realist must have the technical ability to make the finished work appear photographic.
4. The artist must have exhibited work as a Photo-Realist by 1972 to be considered one of the central Photo-Realists.
5. The artist must have devoted at least five years to the development and exhibition of Photo-Realist work.
An example of original photorealist, American painters would be: Chuck Close, Ralph Goings, Charles Bell, Audrey Flack, Tom Blackwell, and Glenray Tutor, to name a few. The original movement was fairly small and captained mostly by artists who have now moved on to other things; Flack, for instance, moved into sculpture.
Photorealism is no longer merely an American movement. Beginning with Swiss artist Franz Gertsch in the 1980's, photorealism spread across Europe. However, it will still always be associated with America, and indeed most photorealist paintings today protray vintage American scenes.

Web Designer

Web design is a broad term covering many different skills and disciplines that are used in the production and maintenance of web pages. The different areas of web design include; web graphic design, interface design; including standardised code and proprietary software, user experience design and search engine optimisation. Often web designers will work in teams covering different aspects of the design process, although some designers will cover them all. The term web design is normally used to describe the design process relating to the front-end (client side) design of a website including writing mark up, but this is a grey area as this is also covered by web development. Web designers are expected to have an awareness of usability and if their role involves creating mark up then they are also expected to be up to date with web accessibility guidelines.

Games Design

Games design is the act of designing games. It is considerably more detailed and hard than anything we've looked at so far; games designers have to be well trained and know their way around programs.
Assassin's Creed, Fallout New Vegas, Call of Duty, and Black Ops are all examples of fully-designed games.

Logo Design

Logo design is basically designing a logo for a company. Generally the logo is simplistic and stands out to catch people#s eye. Examples of well-known logos are the Nike brand, Rolls Royce, Mercedes Benz, Tesco, and Samsung.

List of Resources for Graphic Design

1. computer
2. scanner
3. hard drive
4. memory stick
5. card reader
6. internet access
7. camera
8. Photoshop
9. mobile phone

I use Adobe and Photoshop PS3.

Principles of Graphic Design

Despite their apparent simplicity, effective graphic design is not created randomly or by chance. Outstanding graphic design follows design principles that aid in their success. These principles are conceptual ideas that assist graphic designers in the creation of great designs.
One of the most important principles of graphic design is balance; the picture must be balanced correctly for the intended effect. If you intend to make the piece jarring and intense, a leaning to the left could be required, or a steep tangent. Likewise if you desire a calm effect, and straight up and down balance would help.
Another important focus is emphasis. There is a great trend at the moment in graphic design towards simplicity and minimalism. Emphasis would be the part of your piece that you have chosen to catch the eye of the viewer - perhaps a single black tree on a white background.
On the other end of the scale but no less important is variety. Emphasis is sometimes not what a particular piece needs and then variety may be brought in; for example a repeated pattern in different colours, to grab the eye. Variety makes the page interesting.

Package Design

Package design is the art of designing packaging to make it look attractive to the potential consumer. It is an area of design which most people who live off of graphics venture into, being easy and making a lot of money. An example of graphic design is the brand logos such as Nike or Puma. Despite their apparent simplicity, a lot of thought goes in to such logos.

Graphics and Photography

One difference between photography and other forms of graphics is that a photographer just records a single moment in reality, with seemingly no interpretation. However, a photographer can choose the field of view and angle, and may also use other techniques, such as various lenses to distort the view or filters to change the colors. Even in the early days of photography, there was controversy over photographs of enacted scenes that were presented as 'real life' (especially in war photography, where it can be very difficult to record the original events). Shifting the viewer's eyes ever so slightly with simple pinpricks in the negative could have a dramatic effect.
Graphic photography is only graphics because the photographs are manipulated using graphics. People can create photorealist pictures using graphic tools, but they don't look like real pictures and are essentially computer paintings.

Graphic Illustration

An illustration is a visual representation such as a drawing, painting, photograph or other work of art which is focused on content rather than form. The aim of an illustration is to emphasise or decorate a story, poem or piece of writing, by providing a visual representation of something described in the text.
Graphic illustration has been in use since computer design came about, and nowadays is more common than hand illustration.
Some examples of graphic illustration.

Social Realism

A social realist photograph of a Mexican migrant with her children (c. 1930)

Social Realism is an artistic movementc which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through 'unvarnished' pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic. The movement originated because of the Great Depression - 'rich people liked to go out and take pictures of the noble poor people working away in their fields, starving in their houses...they did not think that possibly the joke might be on them'
The movement is a style of painting in which the scenes depicted typically convey a message of social or political protest edged with satir (this is not to be confused with Socialist Realism, the official USSR art form that was institutionalized by Joseph Stalin in 1934 and later allied Communist parties worldwide).
The Mexican painter Frida Khalo is associated with this movement; as are Edward Hopper, Jack Levine, Doris Lee and Diego Riviera.
The movement encompasses photography, photo-realist painting, murals, and portraiture.
Many artists who subscribed to Social Realism were painters with socialist (but not necessarily Marxist) political views. It achieved some popularity in the Eastern Bloc, but is often confused with Socialist Realism.

Spider Diagram

A spider diagram showing certain things which have influenced art in the last century. Several art movements have risen up in protest or support of these events; for example, the introduction of cameras and mobile technology spawned photorealism, in revolt; and again Futurism, in support.