Why are modern artists able to draw hyper-realistic art using just a pen/pencil, but artists from 100+ years ago weren’t able to?

Question

Edit: In regards to what I mean by hyper-realistic, I’m referring to artwork seen here: Pics

these are almost photograph quality.

In: 0

Answer 1

As time goes on and media becomes more realistic, people get used to seeing more realistic art. I remember there was some 1500s artist that was so good, people would walk up to his paintings and start talking to them – they were certainly not realistic by today’s standards. But at the time, it was the most realistic art anyone had ever seen.