When you vote, how important is realism?

Put aside the idea, quality and skill involved, etc ...
now if you were voting on two similar chops of a tree, one is very realistic and the other is cartoony or Heavy Metal-ish but has a nice stylistic theme, would you lean towards realism or escapism?

neither takes the cake for me. I just have to like it. However if you took my voting stats, and placed them on a graph I'm sure I lean towards one or the other, its just subconscious.

I look at an image and then I feel something or I don't. That is why I vote. So, when I feel something more for the none realistic tree, I will vote for that one.
It's the emotion I get from an image that is more important.

But, when somebody chops a tree out of nothing like it - then I could vote for that too. Because its such a dang job to chop a tree and bring it to life.... get it.....

When you say 'escapism' do you actually mean "impressionism" ?

vicious circle....never ending story/thread/debate...I vote for skills, from expert, or emerging" choppers...for originality...on both territories (realism and surrealsm).No debate.Just quality.
Btw...cool "word" (escapism) to sum up surrealism,abstraction,pop art(the good one)etc.

Were is the choice for goodism?

thats wat i was trying to point out too...yep...goodism ...jejejeje

it's a lot harder to create a realistic looking tree than to create an artistic impression of a tree, so my preference when voting is for realism

this doesn't mean i don't appreciate art however

I think an abstract version of a tree is more interesting than a chop that looks like a photo of a tree. All that proves and hey I am not knocking execution but all realism proves is that you have mastered photoshop to the point that it looks like a photograph.
But If I am interested in say buying art or perusing art I find that abstract representation of a tree is much much more visually interesting , otherwise I'd just buy photographs.

I would love to be so good at photoshop I could whip a tree that looks real and say I've mastered this but really... really artistic expression of a tree is what excites me.


This could lead right off into a debate of is photoshop considered only good if it is realistic or so creative and wild it is labled ART and not just a chop.

To answer your actual question. Aside from what anyone may say from any kneejerk emotional response, the "lean' around here always was, is, and will be a 'lean' toward realism,
and with that, there is no way to "Put aside the idea, quality and skill involved, etc ... "... which brings us back to said 'goodism', Goodism
is what gets the job done, and goodism tends to 'lean' a certain way.

I vote knee jerk so I guess you must be saying my reply with a response in that matter. Most people you poll here vote with statements of " how it hits them". But most do seem to vote realism. I like fantasy but realistic is how we chop here Scion's right about that. But can you call it ART? Is chopping considered art? I know he (author of thread)did not ask that originally.

When one considers the evidence, as seen in the top voting wins within the PSC GALLERY. Its hard to believe the idea that photo-realism actually trumps surrealism for votes here.

A truer gauge would be to look through everyones fav's to see how they lean. What few fav's I have show that I lean toward fantasy/surrealism as best chops.

My best analogy would be:
Escapism: fantasy, fiction, (Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, etc...)
Realism: documentary, biography, (Super Size Me, JFK, When We Were Kings, etc...)

Escapism as a means to escape the "norm" of every day life. So Yes, I would think impressionism falls under the escapism blanket.

It's like the show, "How to Look Good Naked."

you either do or you don't.

Same with PSing....you either do it well or you don't. But you can learn how to get better. I doubt anyone can learn how to look better naked though.

is this off topic?

The reason I ask is, most people I am aquainted with prefer realism for everything from movies and TV to books and art, so I wanted a general idea of what the scope was around here. In retrospect, there should have been another couple of options 'goodism' (of course lol) and 'makes no difference when my vote'.


Cheers!