Abstract depiction of human and animal figures: examples from two centuries of art and craft

The human figure is important in art. I discuss examples of the abstract depiction of the human figure and the challenge faced in algorithmically mimicking what human artists can achieve. The challenge lies in the human brain having enormous knowledge about the world and an ability to make fine distinctions about other humans from posture, clothing and expression. This allows a human to make assumptions about human figures from a tiny amount of data, and allows a human artist to take advantage of this when creating art. We look at examples from impressionist painting, cross-stitch, knitting, pixelated renderings in early video games, and the stylisation used by the artists of children's books.