As a kid I lived on and off with my Aunt who was a formally trained oil painter with a Masters in Fine Art and practiced in a high fantasy type of art with a lot of mythological themes in her works. I was always excited to occasionally peak into see in her studio and the progress she would make on rather large paintings. She was very into the renaissance period. I just remembered the scale and realism was always fascinating to me how she could achieve such types of work, it seemed you could almost feel the hairs on a head of a figure or the emotion conveyed in the facial expressions so clearly.