Photo-realism is an extremely realistic stype of painting where the artwork is based entirely upon a photograph and was primarily an art movement that emerged in the 1960's and flourished in the 70's.
Photo realistic artists were rebelling against Abstract Empressionism which was the predominant painting style in the US during this period.
Photo realist paintings usually contain commonplace objects, scenery and sometimes portraits. The imagery is most often banal and ordinary.
Photorealistic paintings are often quite large depicting objects many times larger than they are in real life and the paintings were normally done in oils and care was taken to make the surface as smooth as possible with no visible brushstrokes.
Photo Realistic artists transfer the image from the photograph to the canvas using a projector.
(This helps me to understand why some photo realistic artists have not been successful in doing their own designs when trying to transistion into todays art world and why they don't approve of those who like and do impressionistic designs).
NEXT: How to paint glass objects.....
I LOVE FREEZIN' FOG DAYS
Freezing fog on a pine tree bough.