this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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History Memes

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[–] arandomthought@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 hours ago

There are some amazing oil paintings of waves where you can see the light scatter below the surface of the water (subsurface scattering for my CGI nerds) and I always found it so amazing that you could do that "by hand". These waves here are... Not that.

[–] aeronmelon@lemmy.world 20 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

England: Seas and bays and lochs. The worst waves come from the wind and rain. (Picture above)

Japan: THE MOTHERFUCKING PACIFIC OCEAN!!

[–] clockworkrat@slrpnk.net 2 points 29 minutes ago

I beg your pardon? You won't find lochs in England. Also, search for "storm waves Cornwall"

[–] CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 4 hours ago

Wind and rain are enough to make the North Sea one of the toughest seas to sail though and cause heavy floods regularly.

[–] CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) (1 children)

Pictures 2 and 3: are we sure that's to depict waves? To me it looks like the (stylised, artistic depiction of) backsplash when rain hits a water surface.

Pictures 1 and 4: yeah, that's kinda how waves look like pictured in a medievalist art style. You gotta remember that naturalism (i.e. the realistic approach to picture things) is not beginning before the renaissance. But besides the regularities in shape and orientation, this looks pretty well like windswept waves.

[–] Broadfern@lemmy.world 7 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Yeah sometimes we forget that art movements/styles existed intentionally well before the 19th century lol.

Short form symbolism is part of media, and while some of that understood context may be lost to time it doesn’t erase it entirely. They were just as nuanced, goofy and human as we are.

[–] logicbomb@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago

For me, at least, the top two pictures have an optical illusion. When I first look at them, I actually see a bunch of cylinders (or maybe fish scales?) instead of waves. However, once I look more carefully, the waves appear, and I can't see the cylinders until I look away for a while.

This seems so unlikely that I even double-checked that the picture was a jpg and not a gif.

[–] Lembot_0004@discuss.online 10 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Ok. Now go to the modern museum of abstract art and tell them that they can't draw shit.

[–] Klear@quokk.au 6 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

Have you seen any discussion of abstract art on Lemmy? They'd totally do that.

[–] scholar@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Can confirm, I regularly do

[–] Lembot_0004@discuss.online 1 points 3 hours ago

Oh, good then. At least they are consistent :)