Painting
definition
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface (support base). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used.
Mixed Media
Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct visual art media.
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface (support base). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used.
Mixed Media
Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct visual art media.
HISTORY OF PAINTING
Prehistoric Painting
Cave dwellers were the earliest artists. Colored drawings of animals, dating from about 30,000 to 10,000 B.C., have been found on the walls of caves in southern France and in Spain. Many of these drawings are amazingly well preserved because the caves were sealed up for many centuries. Early people drew the wild animals that they saw all around them. Very crude human figures, drawn in lifelike positions, have been found in Africa and eastern Spain.
The cave artists filled the cave walls with drawings in rich, bright colors. Some of the most beautiful paintings are in the Cave of Altamira, in Spain. One detail shows a wounded bison, no longer able to stand—probably the victim of a hunter. It is painted in reddish brown and outlined simply but skillfully in black. The pigments used by cave painters were earth ochers (iron oxides varying in color from light yellow to deep orange) and manganese (a metallic element). These were crushed into a fine powder, mixed with grease (perhaps animal fat), and put on with some sort of brush. Sometimes the pigments were used in sticks, like crayons. The grease mixed with the powdered pigments made the paint fluid and the pigment particles stick together. The cave dwellers must have made brushes out of animal hairs or plants, and sharp tools out of flint for drawing and scratching lines.
As far back as 30,000 years ago, people had invented the basic tools and materials for painting. Techniques and materials were refined and improved in the centuries following. But the discoveries of the cave dweller remain basic to painting.
Medieval Painting (500-1400)
The first part of the Middle Ages, from about the 6th to the 11th centuries A.D., is commonly called the Dark Ages. In this time of unrest, art was kept alive mainly in the monasteries. In the 5th century A.D. barbarian tribes from northern and central Europe roamed over the continent. For hundreds of years they dominated Western Europe. These people produced an art that has a strong emphasis on pattern. They were especially fond of designs of intertwining dragons and birds.
The best of Celtic and Saxon art is found in manuscripts of the 7th and 8th centuries. Book illumination and miniature painting, practiced since late Roman times, increased in the Middle Ages. Illumination is decoration of the text, the capital letters, and the margins. Gold, silver, and bright colors were used. A miniature is a small picture, often a portrait. Originally the term was used to describe the decorative block around the initial letters in a manuscript.
Charlemagne, who was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the early 9th century, tried to revive the classical art of the late Roman and early Christian periods. During his reign painters of miniatures imitated classical art, but they also conveyed personal feelings about their subjects.
Very little wall painting survives from the Middle Ages. There were several great series of frescoes painted in churches built during the Romanesque period (11th-13th centuries), but most of them have disappeared. Churches of the Gothic period (12th-16th centuries) did not have enough wall space for mural paintings. Book illustration was the main job of the Gothic painter.
Among the finest illustrated manuscripts were the books of hours--collections of calendars, devotional prayers, and psalms. A page from an Italian manuscript shows elaborately decorated initials and a finely detailed marginal scene of Saint George slaying the dragon. The colors are brilliant and jewel-like, as in stained glass, and gold shimmers over the page. Exquisitely delicate leaf and flower designs border the text. Artists probably used magnifying glasses to do such intricate work.
Italian Renaissance Painting
At the same time that van Eyck was working in the North, the Italians were moving into a golden age of art and literature. This period is called the Renaissance, which means rebirth, or revival. Italian artists were inspired by the sculpture of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Italians wanted to revive the spirit of classical art, which glorifies human independence and nobility. Renaissance artists continued to paint religious subjects. But they emphasized the earthly life and accomplishments of human beings.
The Renaissance in Flanders and Germany
The golden age of painting in Flanders (now part of Belgium and northern France) was the 15th century, the time of van Eyck. In the 16th century many Flemish artists had taken up the discoveries of Italian Renaissance painters. Some Flemings, however, continued the Flemish tradition of realism. They painted genre--scenes from everyday life, which were often charming and sometimes fantastic. Hieronymus Bosch (1450?-1516), who preceded the genre painters, had an unusually vivid imagination. He invented all sorts of weird, grotesque creatures for The Temptation of St. Anthony. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525?-69) also worked in the Flemish tradition but added perspective and other Renaissance characteristics to his genre scenes.
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Hans Holbein the Younger (1497?-1543), and Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) were the three most important German painters of the 16th century. They did much to soften the grim realism of earlier German painting. Dürer made at least one visit to Italy, where he was impressed with the paintings of Giovanni Bellini and other northern Italians. From this experience he brought to German painting a knowledge of perspective, a feeling for color and light, and a new understanding of composition. Holbein absorbed even more of the Italian achievements. His sensitive drawing and ability to select only the most important details made him a master portrait painter.
19th-Century Painting
The 19th century is sometimes regarded as the period during which modern art began to take shape. One important reason for the so-called revolution in the arts at this time was the invention of the camera, which forced artists to re-examine the purpose of painting.
A more important development resulted partly from the widespread use of manufactured paints. Before the 19th century, most artists or their assistants made their own paints by grinding pigment. Early commercial paints were inferior to handmade paints. Artists late in the 19th century found that the dark blues and browns of earlier paintings were turning black or gray within a few years. They began to use pure colors again. These artists used pure colors in order to preserve their work and sometimes because they were trying to capture the effects of sunlight in outdoor scenes more accurately.
20th-Century Painting
A number of artists soon became dissatisfied with impressionism. Artists such as Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) felt that impressionism did not describe the solidity of forms in nature. Cézanne liked to paint still lifes because they allowed him to concentrate on the shapes of fruits or other objects and their arrangements. Objects in his still lifes look solid because he reduced their forms to simple geometric shapes. His technique of placing patches of paint and short brushstrokes of rich color side by side shows that he learned much from the impressionists.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90) and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) reacted against the realism of the impressionists. Unlike the impressionists, who said that they were viewing nature objectively, Van Gogh cared little for accurate drawing. He frequently distorted objects in order to express his ideas more imaginatively. He used the impressionist device of putting contrasting colors next to each other. Sometimes he squeezed paint from the tubes right onto the canvas in thick ribbons, as in Field of Yellow Corn.
Gauguin did not care for the spotty color of the impressionists. He applied color smoothly in large flat areas, which he separated from one another by lines or dark edges. The colorful civilizations of the tropics provided much of his subject matter.
Cézanne's method of building up arrangements in space with simple geometric forms was further developed by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Georges Braque (1882-1963), and others. Their style became known as cubism. The cubists painted objects as if they could be seen from several angles at once, or as if they had been taken apart and reassembled on a flat canvas. Often the objects barely resemble anything in nature. Sometimes the cubists cut out shapes from cloth, cardboard, wallpaper, or other materials and pasted them on the canvas to make a collage. Textures were also varied by adding sand or other substances to the paint. Since Manet, the trend has been to put less emphasis on subject and more emphasis on composition and technique.
Cave dwellers were the earliest artists. Colored drawings of animals, dating from about 30,000 to 10,000 B.C., have been found on the walls of caves in southern France and in Spain. Many of these drawings are amazingly well preserved because the caves were sealed up for many centuries. Early people drew the wild animals that they saw all around them. Very crude human figures, drawn in lifelike positions, have been found in Africa and eastern Spain.
The cave artists filled the cave walls with drawings in rich, bright colors. Some of the most beautiful paintings are in the Cave of Altamira, in Spain. One detail shows a wounded bison, no longer able to stand—probably the victim of a hunter. It is painted in reddish brown and outlined simply but skillfully in black. The pigments used by cave painters were earth ochers (iron oxides varying in color from light yellow to deep orange) and manganese (a metallic element). These were crushed into a fine powder, mixed with grease (perhaps animal fat), and put on with some sort of brush. Sometimes the pigments were used in sticks, like crayons. The grease mixed with the powdered pigments made the paint fluid and the pigment particles stick together. The cave dwellers must have made brushes out of animal hairs or plants, and sharp tools out of flint for drawing and scratching lines.
As far back as 30,000 years ago, people had invented the basic tools and materials for painting. Techniques and materials were refined and improved in the centuries following. But the discoveries of the cave dweller remain basic to painting.
Medieval Painting (500-1400)
The first part of the Middle Ages, from about the 6th to the 11th centuries A.D., is commonly called the Dark Ages. In this time of unrest, art was kept alive mainly in the monasteries. In the 5th century A.D. barbarian tribes from northern and central Europe roamed over the continent. For hundreds of years they dominated Western Europe. These people produced an art that has a strong emphasis on pattern. They were especially fond of designs of intertwining dragons and birds.
The best of Celtic and Saxon art is found in manuscripts of the 7th and 8th centuries. Book illumination and miniature painting, practiced since late Roman times, increased in the Middle Ages. Illumination is decoration of the text, the capital letters, and the margins. Gold, silver, and bright colors were used. A miniature is a small picture, often a portrait. Originally the term was used to describe the decorative block around the initial letters in a manuscript.
Charlemagne, who was crowned emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in the early 9th century, tried to revive the classical art of the late Roman and early Christian periods. During his reign painters of miniatures imitated classical art, but they also conveyed personal feelings about their subjects.
Very little wall painting survives from the Middle Ages. There were several great series of frescoes painted in churches built during the Romanesque period (11th-13th centuries), but most of them have disappeared. Churches of the Gothic period (12th-16th centuries) did not have enough wall space for mural paintings. Book illustration was the main job of the Gothic painter.
Among the finest illustrated manuscripts were the books of hours--collections of calendars, devotional prayers, and psalms. A page from an Italian manuscript shows elaborately decorated initials and a finely detailed marginal scene of Saint George slaying the dragon. The colors are brilliant and jewel-like, as in stained glass, and gold shimmers over the page. Exquisitely delicate leaf and flower designs border the text. Artists probably used magnifying glasses to do such intricate work.
Italian Renaissance Painting
At the same time that van Eyck was working in the North, the Italians were moving into a golden age of art and literature. This period is called the Renaissance, which means rebirth, or revival. Italian artists were inspired by the sculpture of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Italians wanted to revive the spirit of classical art, which glorifies human independence and nobility. Renaissance artists continued to paint religious subjects. But they emphasized the earthly life and accomplishments of human beings.
The Renaissance in Flanders and Germany
The golden age of painting in Flanders (now part of Belgium and northern France) was the 15th century, the time of van Eyck. In the 16th century many Flemish artists had taken up the discoveries of Italian Renaissance painters. Some Flemings, however, continued the Flemish tradition of realism. They painted genre--scenes from everyday life, which were often charming and sometimes fantastic. Hieronymus Bosch (1450?-1516), who preceded the genre painters, had an unusually vivid imagination. He invented all sorts of weird, grotesque creatures for The Temptation of St. Anthony. Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525?-69) also worked in the Flemish tradition but added perspective and other Renaissance characteristics to his genre scenes.
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Hans Holbein the Younger (1497?-1543), and Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472-1553) were the three most important German painters of the 16th century. They did much to soften the grim realism of earlier German painting. Dürer made at least one visit to Italy, where he was impressed with the paintings of Giovanni Bellini and other northern Italians. From this experience he brought to German painting a knowledge of perspective, a feeling for color and light, and a new understanding of composition. Holbein absorbed even more of the Italian achievements. His sensitive drawing and ability to select only the most important details made him a master portrait painter.
19th-Century Painting
The 19th century is sometimes regarded as the period during which modern art began to take shape. One important reason for the so-called revolution in the arts at this time was the invention of the camera, which forced artists to re-examine the purpose of painting.
A more important development resulted partly from the widespread use of manufactured paints. Before the 19th century, most artists or their assistants made their own paints by grinding pigment. Early commercial paints were inferior to handmade paints. Artists late in the 19th century found that the dark blues and browns of earlier paintings were turning black or gray within a few years. They began to use pure colors again. These artists used pure colors in order to preserve their work and sometimes because they were trying to capture the effects of sunlight in outdoor scenes more accurately.
20th-Century Painting
A number of artists soon became dissatisfied with impressionism. Artists such as Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) felt that impressionism did not describe the solidity of forms in nature. Cézanne liked to paint still lifes because they allowed him to concentrate on the shapes of fruits or other objects and their arrangements. Objects in his still lifes look solid because he reduced their forms to simple geometric shapes. His technique of placing patches of paint and short brushstrokes of rich color side by side shows that he learned much from the impressionists.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-90) and Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) reacted against the realism of the impressionists. Unlike the impressionists, who said that they were viewing nature objectively, Van Gogh cared little for accurate drawing. He frequently distorted objects in order to express his ideas more imaginatively. He used the impressionist device of putting contrasting colors next to each other. Sometimes he squeezed paint from the tubes right onto the canvas in thick ribbons, as in Field of Yellow Corn.
Gauguin did not care for the spotty color of the impressionists. He applied color smoothly in large flat areas, which he separated from one another by lines or dark edges. The colorful civilizations of the tropics provided much of his subject matter.
Cézanne's method of building up arrangements in space with simple geometric forms was further developed by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), Georges Braque (1882-1963), and others. Their style became known as cubism. The cubists painted objects as if they could be seen from several angles at once, or as if they had been taken apart and reassembled on a flat canvas. Often the objects barely resemble anything in nature. Sometimes the cubists cut out shapes from cloth, cardboard, wallpaper, or other materials and pasted them on the canvas to make a collage. Textures were also varied by adding sand or other substances to the paint. Since Manet, the trend has been to put less emphasis on subject and more emphasis on composition and technique.
Painting techniques
impasto
This is the process or technique of laying on paint or pigment thickly so that it stands out from a surface. This is normally done using a palette knife using Acrylic or Oil paint