Some intriguing pieces of art can fool the eye. No doubt you have glimpsed such works on deviantART before – you believe you’re about to view a photograph when you click the thumbnail, but upon finally viewing the image in full, you realise that you’re looking at a piece that demonstrates a mastery of texture and lighting and most definitely hasn’t been captured with a camera, but rather with the artist’s brush, pencil, graphics tablet or mouse – and their skill. This is a feature for those of you learning and experienced artists alike, who strive to achieve accurate and believable studies of landscape, objects, animals, people and the rest of the world around us.

Traditional Art – Pencil or Charcoal Drawings
To create a realistic drawing, an artist requires knowledge of how to translate colour into tonal values, and then represent these values complete with textures on the paper:



Traditional Art – Paint and Pastels
Painting accurately requires an eye for colour and a confident hand at the reins of a rather unpredictable medium:



Digital Art – Painting and Airbrushing
A realistic digital painting requires patience for details, and such artists work hard to recreate natural and real textures with ‘virtual’ brushes:



Digital Art – Vector
I tend to regard skill in vector art as an ability to ‘summarize’ an image whilst still ensuring that it is convincing – admire these works as the artists create plausible shadows even for softer textures using curves and polygons:



I hope that these works of art have inspired you, and, of course, that you have simply enjoyed looking at them.
_{Any suggestions (or complaints! - want to berate me for accidentally including a real photo? ) would be very much appreciated if forwarded to me in a note. I'd like to hear about any pieces of work you think deserve to be seen here.}