Egyptian art conforms to convention. Everything had to be in accordance with Ma’at (cosmic order), and has to reflect previous periods art styles, usually the Old Kingdom, this is known as archaism.
The Egyptians are big up on archaism as they liked to view the time of the Pyramids (the Old Kingdom) as the best period of Egypt, and would seek to match their current art to it. Quite often you’ll find that during the Late Period (c.2500 years after the end of the Old Kingdom) that while they look similar there are a lot of mistakes in the style (particularly with the addition of Amarna paunch stomachs, which the Egyptians had previously attempted to eradicate). In fact the Grid System that the Egyptians used to create their art for most of their history, was erroneously made larger during the Late Period, resulting in distorted figures.
Another deviation comes during the Middle Kingdom and the reigns of Senwosret (I, II, & III) where the statues of the Pharaohs go from this:
(Statue of Khafre and his wife - Image Source and resource on the Egyptian body in art)
to this:
(Senwosret III (aka: I has a sad) - Image source)
Khafre’s statue is indicative of the art convention following the laws of Ma’at which require the king to be constantly in control of the kingdom lest it fall to the enemy. The king is young, strong, powerful, and happy. This king is a good ruler and will serve the Egyptian people well and defeat their enemies. If the king projects this image of strength then Egypt will prosper, or so the convention says.
Senwosret’s statue is a break from the art convention, but not in the way one might expect. Instead of demonstrating happy and in charge, though the body itself still indicates strength, the face of Senwosret depicts a tired ruler, with a down turn mouth and ears that stick out. This is not a depiction of the king himself, but rather what he wants the Egyptian people to see i.e. a man who is weary from rule (works hard), mouth down turn (sad at the poor harvest during his reign), and sticky out ears to represent how he is listening to the Egyptian people. This is still in line with Ma’at, but does project a slightly dimmer view of the country as a whole.
Then you have the Amarna period in which the art changes drastically, for reasons Egyptologists still debate today. (Eg. Akhenaten just wanted to distance himself from convention, he was suffering from Marfan Syndrome etc). I’ll leave this link here to explain it further because that’s a whole clusterfuck of it’s own. But an example is:
(Image of Amarna princesses - Source)
So, overall, Egyptian representations of their Kings/Pharaohs are not really true to life.
As for the regular Egyptian, the conventions remain pretty much the same. Most depictions of the Egyptians on the walls are stylised, as again this is supposed to portray the idealised version of the deceased in the Afterlife. As I’ve said before in relation to depictions of offerings, the Egyptians believed that images were magic and could come to life thus a good image being beneficial and a bad image causing destruction (hence why Apep is always depicted as being stabbed so that he can’t come to life). So with this convention you have several things in evidence: men and women are painted either a deep brown (men - symbolising work outside) or a pale yellow (women - symbolising that they spent most of their time inside), a fishing and fowling scene, and depictions of the deceased farming or taking part in the job they held in life if it was a high enough office.
It should be noted that the painting of ‘skin colour’ is not indicative of the actual skin colour of the Egyptians in real life, but an idealised and religious depiction. Women were not pale yellow…seriously. But they do paint individuals from different countries with different skin colours, primarily to distinguish them, alongside hair and dress, from the Egyptians themselves. There is one example of an Egyptian self portrait of the tomb owner with his friends emerging from the reeds in a boat that’s a very small addition to the overall scene, where the tomb owner is painted stood up and light brown, one friend is a darker brown, and the other friends are much darker. This, most Egyptologists believe is an accurate depiction of the tomb owner as he has self inserted himself and his friends into the scene. I am very annoyed with myself that I cannot remember which tomb it is, but my research (over a couple of hours) I believe it’s the tomb of Ipuy from Deir el Medina:
Fishing scene from the tomb of Ipuy - Source)
Related to this are the most common scenes most of you will have seen if you like Ancient Egypt: Fishing and fowling scenes, and farming scenes. Fishing and fowling scenes are, on the surface, depictions of just that; fishing and fowling. However, it’s more complicated than that. Just as with the Pharaohs, these images are designed to keep Ma’at i.e. keeping order over chaos. Let’s look at this tomb scene from the tomb of Nebamun:
(Tomb of Nebamun - Source: The British Museum)
You can see while it’s chaos, it’s ordered chaos. Nebamun is fully in control of the scene, with even his cat helping to attack the birds. His wife and daughter are also present, which is not normal, and neither is the fact that they’re all wearing their finest clothes.
They even wear their finest clothes during the farming scenes:
(Tomb of Sennedjem - Source: Met Museum)
The tomb of Sennedjem was painted by the owner before he died, so it’s likely that his depictions of himself are truer to life than most, but he is still idealised.
Bottom line is most depictions of Egyptians in art are idealised depictions of themselves, often trying to show outwardly the image of themselves that society or religious conventions require, while also falling in line with the art conventions and archaism of the civilisation. Do they depict the real life Egyptians? In some instances, yes. But overall, these images are not truly what the real Egyptian populace or its Pharaohs looked like.