What media have art styles that are very hard to learn and reproduce (only modern media, no ancient painters)?
Vantablack?
How modern? Because there’s lots of artist from the late XXth who had interesting and recognizable styles that are hard to replicate, both in style and vibe. Moebius (Jean Giraud) comes to mind. It is deceptively simple, but to replicate it you need to have a solid grasp on character design, stipple shading and crosshatching, color theory, and composition. It’s not traditional comic-book style, and you cannot approach it with that mindset and expect a good outcome.
Current artists, I suppose the artists behind Valorant’s art? There’s a lot of decision making when it comes to how much detail to include, since its very stylized. But I’d argue it’s not as hard a style to replicate as Moebius’. Bartosz Kosowski also comes to mind. He’s really, really good at depicting things in his style, and you’d need a solid grasp at anatomy and faces to replicate it.
I agree with this. It’s the artists, not necessarily the “style” itself. Basically the fundamentals of visual language are what’s hard to master, just like writing beautiful poetry requires mastery of a written/spoken language. Artists that have spent the time and put enough thought and practice into creating their own unique voice will be difficult to replicate.
Some modern artists I can think off of the top of my head:
- Piotr Jabłoński’s art for the Dishonored series
- Laurel Austin and Wei Wang’s art that created the modern Blizzard look.
- Disney Studios’ Nine Old Men.
- Craig Mullins the “grandfather” of digital painting.
- Traditional painters like Arthur Gain, Richard Schmid, Ruo Li, Mark Boedges, and on and on.