Mastering Realism

It could be argued that among the schools of art, realism is one of the hardest to master. Unlike its brethren styles, it requires more technical mastery than emotional application mastery. As such, the peaks of realism that fall beyond mere photorealism (i.e. hyper photorealism), requires an insane amount of experience that only comes with time and effort. For those seeking to pursue art permanently or temporarily, having an artistic drive can only get you so far in the school of realism. In order to produce hyper photorealistic works (essentially becoming a human camera/printer that is non-distinguishable from a real camera/printer), you need to have an enormous amount of talent, specifically in the realm of hand-eye coordination. Why is this so? Although many argue that those without artistic talent can achieve the same results as those with talent, this usually comes at the expense of additional time devotion. What can be mastered in 10 years through pure effort can be mastered in 2 years if talent is involved. Because hyper photorealism already exhausts talented artists of multiple decades before some mastery is achieved, for the average artist without talent, more than one lifetime would essentially be required to conquer such a style. Nonetheless, art is immensely beneficial to calming one's state of mind; it should be pursued by everyone regardless of skill level.