A few years ago, a bunch of criminals in my neighbourhood put a car through the front door of an art gallery.   I'd been in there, just the day before, and (as far as I know) the paintings I admired that day (and I wish I had bought) were stolen.

OK:  pretty odd intro, but what had stunned me, the day before those t*ssers took what wasn't theirs, was the fact  that an artist who painted in Oxfordshire and an artist from Dorset, probably less than a hundred miles away, both painted rivers perfectly - but in an entirely different way.  

This makes me think about human textures for Poser.   They differ hugely, but they still work wonderfully.    How?  

How do they achieve a similar effect with totally different techniques?   How did those two fantasctic British painters devise such contrasting ways of painting water?

a lot of happy accidents- then experimentation

Many thanks for your reply.  

But did they actually see things in different way, because of differences in their eyesight, or in their brains?    That's why I think it's relevant to Poser, because some Poser textures drastically differ from others, but in technique, not quality  (i.e. they seem to get the same resul, in totally different ways.   Just as those painters did a great impression of water, in totally different ways, Poser artists choose fairly radically different ways to portray people, but the best end up deceiving the eye just as well, regardless of technique.

A lot has to do with the artist's internal vision. What was the overall 'feel' of the painting? Water, especially, can take many forms... it's dynamic. Personally, I love some of the Victorian paintings with turbulent green ocean water with huge plumes of spray. Lake or river water can be as reflective as a mirror, clear as glass, or anywhere in between, with currents, or perfectly still. It depends on the body of water, the angle of the light, and weather conditions, all of which set a mood.

Skin textures can be even more complex. The texture used for a poor, down-trodden figure would be much different from that of a heavily made up celebrity. Some artist prefer the bare, flawed realistic textures, others the look of smooth perfection. The trick is to breathe life into both.

can you post a picture or some information about the artist?

My best guess is they differed because the paintings themselves were conveying different ideas, or at least, the artists involved felt differently about their chosen subject.

For example, if I was painting something when I wanted to convey the literal reality of what I saw, I'd try my hardest to portray something in a "photo realistic" manner.  My technique, however, would differ from another artist working in the same way, so the end results would immediately be different.

OTOH, if I wanted to convey some emotional content within the subject, I'd play around until I found something to put the idea across to the best of my abilities.

Your question is interesting in itself because it addresses the question of how we see things, which is something nobody yet understands, except in very broad terms.  It seems we can happily accept wildly different interpretations of the same subject as being a fair portrayal.  That suggests an awful lot of processing going on at both the painter's end and the viewer's.