5 ms·

No, never. I just asked about it because I heard the term once a long time ago, but to be honest I'm note even sure what an oil painting is. Is it like the same

by dkrich 10y ago

No, never. I just asked about it because I heard the term once a long time ago, but to be honest I'm note even sure what an oil painting is. Is it like the same thing they put in engines to make them run smoothly? This was actually a question for the OP, since he has experience in it, but I'll bite. If you use high quality paper and printing, you can make extremely high quality prints that imitate all kinds of effects like oil, watercolor, colored pencil, and sketching. I actually have quite a bit of experience in producing them, which is why I asked this question in the first place. There are many other factors besides texture to consider. Cost, color, consistency, etc.

teh_klev 10y ago
Oil [0] (and acrylic) paintings aren't just flat things like you get off of your high quality printer. They have a 3D texture which you can visibly discern and run your fingers over (but probably shouldn't) and feel the brush or palette knife strokes laid by the artist. You really should get yourself to some decent art galleries; you'll then, I hope, discover there's no comparison between a hand painted or drawn picture to that produced by printer. Once you've viewed artwork produced by the human hand, prints produced by all those fancy effects and fancy papers become pale imitations. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_painting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_painting
- dkrich 10y ago
  Does the Art Institute of Chicago, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art qualify? In fact, the existence of products like, say this: http://www.artinstituteshop.org/item.aspx?productId=931 http://www.artinstituteshop.org/item.aspx?productId=931 would seem to indicate that there actually is a pretty decent market for oil painting reproductions that are [GASP] the product of a high quality printer and that you are wrong. In other words, don't assume that just because you are an art snob who was educated at the Sorbonne and obsesses over the textures that you can run your fingers over that the entire market (or even a majority of it) is like you.
  - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
    One man's poster is another man's oil painting reproduction, eh?
    - hilop 10y ago
      Some of the oil painting reproductions on HN at downright rude.
  - teh_klev 10y ago
    > In other words, don't assume that just because you are an art snob who was educated at the Sorbonne and obsesses over the textures that you can run your fingers over that the entire market (or even a majority of it) is like you. No need to be rude. I'm certainly not an "art snob", though I did study art and art history in high school over thirty years ago. And only then to escape playing football (soccer) in PE because I took A&AH as an extra subject. To be honest I was largely bored rigid, but I was, at least, clean, warm and dry and not getting tackled and kicked in the shins. However when I went to college I bumped into numerous artists and through hanging out with them the subject grew on me as a passing interest, but certainly not a snobbish obsession as you so impudently assume. Anyway, I am just pointing out that, should you wish to inform and educate yourself a little better, if you visit an art gallery and see real works of painted and drawn art (regardless of era), you'll discover they're massively different from $18 poster prints. I don't know what art galleries you have in Chicago so can't comment. I'm sure google and wikipedia research can help you there (and if it's a half decent gallery then it'll have a wikipedia entry).
    - lorenzhs 10y ago
      The Art Institute of Chicago is great. Not sure if OP is from Chicago, though—the other museum they named is the Met Museum in New York. I visited both this summer (and also the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.), and they're all truly fascinating. I could spend several days in each ;)
      - teh_klev 10y ago
angus-prune 10y ago
Really worth getting yourself to a gallery. Painting is applying pigment to a page using a liquid which then dries after it has been applied. This liquid could be water (for watercolours), an acrylic polymer compound (for acrylic paints) or linseed oil (for oil paints). The liquid used has its own properties which mean you can achieve different styles and textures. For instance, water colours absorb into the paper and spread out. Oil paints are very thick and slow drying. You can layer up the paint, and even crave back through it revealing different layers. It is common to use pallet knives and spatulas to work in oil aswell as brushes. Some artists even create work where the paint is centimetres thick on the canvas - creating work which is more of a relief than a painting. Because you have this texture, the light interacts with the paint differently to a printed photoshop filter. There will be highlights and shadows as the light hits the painting from an angle, as you move your perspective these will change too. You can even mix paint so that pigment is more dilute and the paint ends up slightly translucent or pearlescent, this can make parts of the canvas almost glow under the right light. There is a lot more to oil paintings than just a photoshop filter.
- dkrich 10y ago
  And there's really no comparison between the leather in a Rolls Royce Phantom and the leather in a Honda Accord, and yet somehow Honda moves hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year. My question was not a refutation of the claim that original oil paintings are superior to prints. It was rather an honest attempt to understand the market opportunity of a business and whether the OP believes that a market for prints exists. However that attempt seemingly gave way to a forum for people here to show how much they know about art. Let me be clear- I have been to many, many world class art galleries. I actually live less than a half mile from one. I do not dispute that there is a difference between a Francis Bacon and a Photoshop reproduction of a vacation photo from my phone. My question was how the OP figured out that making clear that the picture was not a filter and was produced by a real person was an important feature of the service. I give up.
  - gm-conspiracy 10y ago
    Why are you so openly hostile to everyone being confused by your inability to differentiate between the output of a 2D printer and the 3D texture of an oil painting?

by dkrich 10y ago

teh_klev 10y ago

Oil [0] (and acrylic) paintings aren't just flat things like you get off of your high quality printer. They have a 3D texture which you can visibly discern and run your fingers over (but probably shouldn't) and feel the brush or palette knife strokes laid by the artist. You really should get yourself to some decent art galleries; you'll then, I hope, discover there's no comparison between a hand painted or drawn picture to that produced by printer. Once you've viewed artwork produced by the human hand, prints produced by all those fancy effects and fancy papers become pale imitations. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_painting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_painting

dkrich 10y ago
Does the Art Institute of Chicago, or the Metropolitan Museum of Art qualify? In fact, the existence of products like, say this: http://www.artinstituteshop.org/item.aspx?productId=931 http://www.artinstituteshop.org/item.aspx?productId=931 would seem to indicate that there actually is a pretty decent market for oil painting reproductions that are [GASP] the product of a high quality printer and that you are wrong. In other words, don't assume that just because you are an art snob who was educated at the Sorbonne and obsesses over the textures that you can run your fingers over that the entire market (or even a majority of it) is like you.
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  One man's poster is another man's oil painting reproduction, eh?
  - hilop 10y ago
    Some of the oil painting reproductions on HN at downright rude.
- teh_klev 10y ago
  > In other words, don't assume that just because you are an art snob who was educated at the Sorbonne and obsesses over the textures that you can run your fingers over that the entire market (or even a majority of it) is like you. No need to be rude. I'm certainly not an "art snob", though I did study art and art history in high school over thirty years ago. And only then to escape playing football (soccer) in PE because I took A&AH as an extra subject. To be honest I was largely bored rigid, but I was, at least, clean, warm and dry and not getting tackled and kicked in the shins. However when I went to college I bumped into numerous artists and through hanging out with them the subject grew on me as a passing interest, but certainly not a snobbish obsession as you so impudently assume. Anyway, I am just pointing out that, should you wish to inform and educate yourself a little better, if you visit an art gallery and see real works of painted and drawn art (regardless of era), you'll discover they're massively different from $18 poster prints. I don't know what art galleries you have in Chicago so can't comment. I'm sure google and wikipedia research can help you there (and if it's a half decent gallery then it'll have a wikipedia entry).
  - lorenzhs 10y ago
    The Art Institute of Chicago is great. Not sure if OP is from Chicago, though—the other museum they named is the Met Museum in New York. I visited both this summer (and also the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.), and they're all truly fascinating. I could spend several days in each ;)
    - teh_klev 10y ago

angus-prune 10y ago

Really worth getting yourself to a gallery. Painting is applying pigment to a page using a liquid which then dries after it has been applied. This liquid could be water (for watercolours), an acrylic polymer compound (for acrylic paints) or linseed oil (for oil paints). The liquid used has its own properties which mean you can achieve different styles and textures. For instance, water colours absorb into the paper and spread out. Oil paints are very thick and slow drying. You can layer up the paint, and even crave back through it revealing different layers. It is common to use pallet knives and spatulas to work in oil aswell as brushes. Some artists even create work where the paint is centimetres thick on the canvas - creating work which is more of a relief than a painting. Because you have this texture, the light interacts with the paint differently to a printed photoshop filter. There will be highlights and shadows as the light hits the painting from an angle, as you move your perspective these will change too. You can even mix paint so that pigment is more dilute and the paint ends up slightly translucent or pearlescent, this can make parts of the canvas almost glow under the right light. There is a lot more to oil paintings than just a photoshop filter.

dkrich 10y ago
And there's really no comparison between the leather in a Rolls Royce Phantom and the leather in a Honda Accord, and yet somehow Honda moves hundreds of thousands of vehicles a year. My question was not a refutation of the claim that original oil paintings are superior to prints. It was rather an honest attempt to understand the market opportunity of a business and whether the OP believes that a market for prints exists. However that attempt seemingly gave way to a forum for people here to show how much they know about art. Let me be clear- I have been to many, many world class art galleries. I actually live less than a half mile from one. I do not dispute that there is a difference between a Francis Bacon and a Photoshop reproduction of a vacation photo from my phone. My question was how the OP figured out that making clear that the picture was not a filter and was produced by a real person was an important feature of the service. I give up.
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  Why are you so openly hostile to everyone being confused by your inability to differentiate between the output of a 2D printer and the 3D texture of an oil painting?