Defining Pictorial Style: Lessons from Linguistics and Computer Graphics

Abstract

A definition of pictorial style in terms of distinctive combinations of pictorial devices characteristic of a particular culture or period or the work of an individual artist is proposed. Four kinds of pictorial structure are described: the drawing (spatial) systems, the denotation systems, the mark systems and the attributes systems. Three pictures by Poussin, Rembrandt and the Achilles painter are then analyzed in terms of these four systems. It is suggested that descriptions of style of this kind can be thought of as hypotheses about the nature of the implicit rules that generated the pictures to which they were applied. Examples of ways of testing this suggestion by embodying such stylistic rules in computer graphics programs are given.Axiomathes (2005) 15:319-351 Ó Springer 2005

Stroke Based Painterly Rendering

“…There are many other considerations in the creation artwork, for example geometry, layout and scene composition that require analysis at a higher conceptual level [19,24].…”

“…Currently most artistic rendering systems enable the user to influence the "style" of presentation; using the terminology of Willats and Durand [24]. Willats and Durand refer to the rendering process as a mapping between a scene -a reference image in our case and a set of marks with attributes (color, color gradient, relative depth, etc.).…”

State of the "Art”: A Taxonomy of Artistic Stylization Techniques for Images and Video

“…The manipulation of global structure for abstraction has also been explored recently [169]. Willats and Durand [162] clearly differentiate between such renderings and current IB-AR when writing about the distinction between spatial and depictive systems. Abstract visual art is only one potential beneficiary of structural analysis.…”

RTcams: A New Perspective on Nonphotorealistic Rendering from Photographs

“…John Willats worked with Fredo Durand [18] using 3D models to demonstrate that his descriptions of artistic style can be connected to rules used to generate pictures. Halle [19] also uses multi-viewpoint rendering, not to produce a combination of several views in one, but rather to efficiently produce many similar views.…”