Quote - Carodan's images are art. Do you know why?

1) They create a strong emotion or reaction in the viewer.
2) The reaction is strongly positive. (Some negative images are art, but most are not. Most are just junk.)
3) Even I, an expert with the same tools he uses, cannot reproduce what he did. Yet he is not an expert with these tools.

No question - Carodan is an artist.

And this is precisely why I say I am not an artist. My images do NOT create a strong emotion/reaction in the viewer. I do art for me, to explore concepts I'm learning on here and RDNA and so my images are explorations of those concepts, like gamma-correcting materials and light's inverse-squared falloff and some of the cool materials you can make with a shader, but do those explorations constitute art?
No.
I have shown my images to people at work (nurses and wardies and even some surgeons) and watch the reactions. No "Wow, this is amazing art!" or anything along those lines. It's like: "sheesh, that stone (behind my figure) looks so lifelike" and "her skin is so soft"... yeah, "too soft for skin" is what is really to be understood.

I don't think comments on the gallery here constitute a real feel for your "artwork's" true artistic value. People who post often have an agenda, one that's been discussed to death in another thread.

Perhaps, eventually, I will create a piece of art. But for the time being, it is not my intention. I want to learn the skills first, so that "Poserism" is minimised and the artwork's impact is maximised.

Carodan's images have achieved that.

Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2

Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand] 

Metaphor of Chooks