Artists, chemist, pathologists, and image analysts who study the Shroud quickly come to an inescapable conclusion. It is not a painting, drawing, or any known form of artistic rendition.

Artists readily notice that there are none of the signs of painting or drawing. There is a complete lack of any outline, brush strokes, or directionality from a tool used to create the image. Internationally renowned artist and an expert in practiced art Isabel Piczek stated "art always exhibits the mandatory use of outline, the event horizon in art." 

Directionality, another characteristic in art, cannot be avoided unless an artist were to use a dot painting technique so precise as to be able to apply a colorant individually to top-layer fibers thinner than human hair. For deeper color the artist would need to touch more fibers in an area than in lighter areas. Furthermore, the image on the Shroud is so light and diffuse that the image cannot be seen from less than about six feet away. As Isabel Piczek and many scholars argue, an artist would have needed to work from a long distance, something that is really not possible.

Scientists using infrared, ultraviolet, X-ray fluorescence, and microchemistry analysis have clearly demonstrated that pigments, paints, dyes or any form of liquid or solid colorant are not used to create the image. There is no evidence of capillary action between fibers and no soaking in of any kind in the image area. In fact, it has been shown that the image is a direct result of a chemical change to the fiber  -- dehydration and oxidation of the cellulose. Though chemical agents, such as acids, could alter the chemistry of the fiber, the lack of any capillary action and the abrupt delineation between image and non-image areas in individual fibers preclude this as a reasonable possibility.  

The image is a 3-dimensional map in negative. This is totally uncharacteristic of any art form. To create the image, an artist would have needed to "apply" microscopic dots or pixels to the linen in a single color. Areas closer to the observer such as the tip of the nose would have required more pixels (or longer pixels along a fiber's length). Areas that are recessed such as the back of the knees would have required few or no pixels.

The image is anatomically consistent, to a modern day pathologist with 20th and 21st century technology, with someone who had been traumatized by scouring, wounded in the scalp as if by a cap or crown of thorns, and crucified. Death seems to have been by asphyxiation which is probable. The blood stains showing both artery and vein flow are pathologically correct. No medieval or pre-medieval artist would have had the knowledge to create such an image.

The image does not exist below blood stains. An artist would have needed to apply real blood first anticipating the exact placement of the image or to have created the image with reserved areas for the blood stains. The very idea of an artist doing so is preposterous.  

Dr. Walter McCrone, for a time a member of STURP, examined some of the sticky tape samples and found particles of iron oxide, cinnabar and a thin film on some of the fibers which he determined to be a binder for paint. He concluded that this was adequate evidence to declare that the Shroud was a painting. More specific research by others, including Dr. Alan Adler, demonstrated that there were insufficient amounts of any iron oxide, cinnabar or any other artist pigment in the image areas to cause any visible image. That there were some particles of paint can probably be
explained as contaminants. As Dr. Adler stated: "He simply has never accepted the work of other investigators showing this was a hasty judgment on his part and that his observations have alternate interpretations." Ian Wilson has suggested that the thin film McCrone discovered, in fact, may be the same as the bioplastic coating discovered by
Dr. Garza-Valdez and not a binder.

Dr. McCrone first gained fame for declaring the Vinland Map a forgery. He had discovered that the ink on the map contained substantial amounts of titanium dioxide, a chemical discovered in the early part of the twentieth century. However, in 1987, physicists at the University of California discovered that McCrone's claims for titanium dioxide were highly exaggerated and imprecise. Dr. McCrone's work on the Shroud is universally rejected by scientists and researchers who have studied the chemistry of the Shroud. However, his claims live on as result of a book he self-published entitled
Judgment Day for the Turin Shroud.

Dr. Emily A. Craig and Dr. Randall R. Bresee have presented a theory that the Shroud image is created using a dry powder transfer technique. It does provide nearly acceptable 3-dimensionality characteristics. They achieve this either by copying the Shroud image or by specially arranging lights around a model. This method, does not deal with the level of detail found on the Shroud, the blood stains, or the
fact that the microscopic and chemical evidence is completely contrary to anything their technique would produce.

In their book, The Jesus Conspiracy, Holger Kersten and Elmar Gruber describe a mechanism of coating a body with an herbal mixture and inducing sweating to produce an image. Since this is a contact method, it fails to produce a 3 dimensionally encoded image. There is no microscopic, chemical, or spectroscopic evidence for any of these herbal stains. As, with other artistic theories, Kersten and Gruber ignore the blood stains. 

Nicholas Allen has proposed the latest in a series of medieval photograph theories. Like with the other "forgery" theories, he fails to deal with the blood stains and the problem that there is no microscopic, chemical, or spectroscopic evidence for photo-sensitive chemicals or the expected products of their chemical reaction on the cloth. There is, too, the fact that a photograph, no matter how ingenious the method, is not a 3-dimensionally encoded chart of proximity.