Painting is one of the oldest and most important arts. Since prehistoric times, artists have arranged paints on surfaces in way that express their idea about people and the world. The paintings that artists create have great value for humanity. They provide people with both enjoyment and information.
People enjoy painting for many reasons. They may think a painting in beautiful. People may like the colors that the painter used or the way the artist arranged the paint on the surface. Some paintings interest people because of the way the artist expresses some human emotion, such as fear, grief, happiness, or love. Other paintings are enjoyable because they skillfully portray nature. Even paintings of such everyday scenes as people at work and play and of such common objects as food and flowers can be a source of pleasure.
Paintings also teach. Some reveal what the artist felt about important subject, including death, love, religion, and social justice. Other paintings tell about the history of the period during which they were created. They provide information about the custom, goals, and interests of the people of past societies. Painting also tell about such things as the building, clothing, and tools of the past. Much of our knowledge about prehistoric and ancient times comes from painting and other arts, because many early societies left few or no written records. It would be hard to find a subject that no one has ever tried to paint. Artists paint the things they see around them-people, animals, nature, and nonliving objects. They also paint dreamlike scenes that exist only in the imagination. An artist can reach back into the past and paint a historical event, a religious story, or a myth. Some artists paint pictures that show no clear subject matter at all. Instead, they arrange the paint in some abstract way that expresses feeling or ideas that are important to them.
Since prehistoric times, many artists have painted the subjects that were most important to their societies. For example, religion was particularly important in Europe during the Middle Ages, and most of the paintings created then were religious. A prehistoric artist painted, the animal on a cave wall in France, about 15000 B.C. The artist lived at a time when animals served as the main source of food and clothing for human beings. The American artist Robert Bechtle painted the picture of a man and his automobile, called 60 F-Bird. The automobile is the most important means of transportation in modern American life. People have always been a favorite subject of painters. Artists have shown people intheir paintings in many different ways. All great paintings, regardless of subject matters, share a common feature. They do more than just reproduce with paint something that exists, existed, or can be imagined. They also expresses the painter's special view about a subject. Many artists turn to nature for their subject matter. They paint scenes called landscapes and seascapes that they try to capture the many moods of nature. Still-life are picture of objects. Still-life painters usually make no attempt to tell a story or express an idea. Instead, they are interested in the object themselves — their color, shape, surface, and the space within or around them. Artists often find their subject matter in the past. They paint pictures that record real events or myths of long ago. Many such paintings are instead to recall past deeds of glory or to teach a lesson. Many artists have used paintings to express political and social beliefs and to protest such things as war and poverty. Movements of social expression have appeared in painting throughout history.
The way that painters arrange colors, forms, or lines is called composition. Some painters use no recognizable subject matter. Instead, they stress composition for its own sake. Piet Mondrian's "Lozenge Composition in a Square" is an example.
Composition is also important in paintings that have recognizable subject matter. Fintoiettos "Saint Mark Rescuing a Slave" is as important for its composition as for the story it tells. Fintoretto place each figure perfectly to direct attention toward the floating figure of Saint Mark pointing to the slave on the ground. Viewers can enjoy the skillful composition even if they do not understand the story.
Many paintings have been created to decorate rooms or buildings. The subject matter of most of these paintings is less important than the painting's place within the total scheme of decoration. For example, the Kaiseraal, a room in a place in Wiirzbourg, Germany, has a number of outstanding paintings by Giovanni Battista Piepolo. But these paintings are no more important than the windows, columns, or imitation draperies in the room. Many artists and craftworkers created these objects, and each object became a part of the room's overall decoration. Paintings consist of many artistic elements. The most important elements include (1) color, (2) line, (3) mass, (4) space, and (5) texture. These artistic elements are as important to a painter as words are to an author. By stressing certain elements, a painter can make a picture easier to understand or bring out some particular mood or theme. For example , an artist can combine to produce an intensely emotional feeling. The same artistic elements can also be combined in a different way in order to produce a feeling of peace and relaxation.Color can help an artist tell a story, express an emotion, or- as in Picasso's “Mandolin and Guitar” —created a composition, Picasso did not color all his forms as they would appear in real life. Instead, he used strong primary colors — such as blue, red, and yellow — in the parts of balanced these colors with delicate black, brown, gray, tan, and white colors. The result is pleasing composition created largely by the painter's skillful arrangement of colors.
Line is the chief means by which most artists build up the forms in their pictures. By combining lines of different lengths and different directions, an artist makes the drawing a painting. In " Two Acrobats With Dog", Picasso used lines to show the edges of his figures. Some lines are thick and some are thin. The artist emphasized line to make the viewer aware of the roundness of the forms and the and the delicacy of the slender figures of the young boys and the figure of the dog.
Mass allows an artist to express the feeling of weight in a painting. Picasso created "Mother and Child"' largely in terms of mass. The bulky, solid appearance of figures in the painting impresses the viewer. The artist made the figure look as if they are made of stone or some other heavy materials. By stressing mass, Picasso made the figures seem like monuments that will last a long time.
Space. By arranging lines, colors, and light and dark areas in certain ways, painters can create an appearance of great space-even though they really paint on a small, flat surface. An artist can make an object look flat or solid, and either close or far away. In some paintings, space plays just as important a part as the solid forms. Picasso's “Seated Bather” shows a skillful use of space. The openings between the bonelike forms are just as expensive and interesting as the solid forms in the painting.
Texture refers to the appearance of the painting's surface. The paint of a picture maybe thick and rough or thin and smooth. In “Woman Weeping”, Picasso created a rough texture by using thick strokes of paint. This texture adds to the painful emotional feeling of the painting.
If to speak about techniques, we should start with fresco painting. Fresco painting is a technique in which the artists paints on a plastered wall while the plaster is still damp. Fresco artists decorate both inside and outside walls. Their works contribute greatly to the beauty of buildings and homes. Fresco painting is especially well suited to decorating large walls in churches, government buildings, and palaces. A fresco, unlike many other painting techniques, has no glossy shining. A shine would make a fresco difficult to see from certain angels. Fresco painting reached its greatest popularity from the 1200"s through the 1500's. Italy was the center of fresco painting during that period.
Leading fresco painters included Giotto , Andrea Mantegna, Masaccio, and Michelangelo. During the 1900's, Mexican artists revised fresco painting. They included Jose Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera . Mexican artists decorated many public buildings with large frescoes that show scenes from Mexican history.
Water color painting can be done in two major techniques, (1) transparent water color and (2) gouache. Transparent water color are paints made of pigments combined with a gum-Arabic binder. An artist using this technique lightens the color by adding water to them. In most other techniques, the artist adds white paint to lighten colors. The viewer can see the support through a layer of transparent water color. Gouache paint is also made with a gum arable binder. But during the manufacturing process, a little white pigment or chalk is added to make the paint opaque. Opaque means that the viewer cannot see through a layer of the color. An artist using the gouache technique makes the color lighter by adding white paint to them. Must styles of modern transparent and gouache water color painting grew out of techniques developed in England, France, and the Netherlands during the 1700's and 1800's. But water color paints had been used to decorate walls and ornamental objects in ancient Egypt and Asia, and in Europe during the Middle Ages.
Encaustic painting involves the use of melted wax as the binder. Pure beeswax is the best kind of wax for this purpose. Encaustic painting was widely used in Greece as early as the 400's B. C. But by about A. D. 800, the technique had been abandoned. During the 1800's, artists attempted to use wax paints for outdoor murals. Some painters of the 1900's have used the technique for easel picture.
Pastels are colored chalk sticks. They are made of pigment and a small amount of weak adhesive. Many artists who draw especially well like to work in pastel because they can use the stick like a pencil while producing brilliant effects of color.
Two French artists of the 1700's Jean Chardin and Maurice Quentin de La Tour, made excellent pastel portraits. Outstanding French artists of the 1800's, including Edouard Manet, Jean Francais Millet, and PierreAuguste Renoir, often worked in pastel. They captured the visual effects of light and atmosphere in pure pastel colors. Edgar Degas, another French artist of bather, dancers, and people working . Degas's well drawn, brilliantly colored works proved that pastel could be a major painting technique.
Tempera is a technique in which egg yolk is used as the binder. Most egg tempera paintings are done on wood.
A painter usually applies tempera in fine crisp strokes with a painted brush. The paint dries almost immediately into a thin, water-resistant coasting. Tempera dries quickly, and so the brushstrokes do not blend easily. Normally, the artist develops the tones of the picture through a series of thin strokes laid over each other. In a tempera painting, most shapes are sharp and clear. Tones are bright, and details are exact and strong.
An artist should not applies tempera paint too thickly because the paint cracks when applied in heavy layers. Tempera paintings require protection against dirt and scratching, and so he artist usually applies a coat of vanish to the finished picture.
The tempera technique achieved its greatest popularity between 1200 and 1500 in Europe. Beautiful tempera pictures were painted during the 1200's and 1300's in Siena, Italy, by Duccio di Buoninsegna and Simone Martini. Several modern American artists have used tempera skillfully. They include Ben Shahn, Mark Tobey, and Andrew Wyeth.
Oil paint is made by mixing powdered pigments with a binder of vegetable oil. Linseed oil is the most common binder. Certain feature of oil paint make it popular with artists who want to show the natural appearance of the world around them. Oil paint-even when applied thickly - does not crack so easily as does water paint or egg tempera. As a result, the painter can apply oil paint in varying thicknesses to produce a wide range of textures. Each artist develops his or her own method of working with oil paint.
Oil painting first became popular in Europe during the 1500's. By the 1700's it had become the most common painting technique. It remains the technique preferred by many artists today.
No one knows when people first painted pictures. Scholars date the oldest known paintings at about 20,000 B. C. The high quality of these works suggests that people began to paint pictures much earlier.
Egyptian painting. The ancient Egyptians began painting about 5.000 years ago. They developed one of the first definite traditions in the history of the art. Egyptian artists painted on the walls of temples and palaces, but much of their finest work appears in tombs. Like other early peoples, the Egyptians believed that art was a magical way of transporting things of this world into a world people entered after death. Egyptian artists decorated tombs with frescoes showing persons and objects related to the life of the dead. Egyptian artists painted according to strict rules that hardly changed for thousands of years. The figures they drew look stiff. The heads of people in the painting always face sideways. The shoulders and body face to the front, and the feet paint to the side. Important persons are larger than the other people.
Artists painted tombs only for the benefit of the gods and the souls of the dead. The tombs were scaled and beautifully colored frescoes were intended never again to be seen.
Cretan painting. About 3000 B. C. - while Egyptian civilization was flourishing - another great civilization was developing on the island of Crete. The Cretans, a seafaring people, often came into contact with the Egyptians. The Cretans adopted some elements of Egyptians art, including the Egyptian way of drawing human figure. But the Cretan style
did not have thestiffness of the Egyptian style Cretan paintings are lively, and the figures in them seem to float and dance. More important. Cretan painters, unlike the Egyptians, were interested in life in this world. They used paintings to decorate buildings instead of concealing the paintings in tombs. Thus, Cretan art became a bridge between Egyptian art, which emphasized death, and ancient Greek and Roman art, which dealt with life.
Greek painting. The ancient Greeks made greater achievements in architecture and sculpture than in painting. Nearly all surviving Greek paintings appear on pottery. The Greeks made beautifully shaped pottery and painted it with scenes from everyday life and from stories about their gods and heroes.
Greek artists of the late 600's and the 500's B. C. Painted black figures on naturally red pottery. This method became known as the black figure style. A painter named Exekias was a master of the style. About 530 B. C. Greek artists developed the red figure style, the reverse of the black figure style. These artists painted the background of their pottery in black and let natural red show through to form the figures. The red figure painters, like the Greek sculptors of the same period, created extremely lifelike figures. This “ideal style” became the chief quality of the so-called classical art of the Greek and Romans.
Greek sculptors made realistic figures and indicated emotion by facial expression or bodily pose. This was the style copied by Roman sculptors and relearned by Renaissance sculptors. It served as the basic style for European sculpture until the late 1800's. The Greeks thought of their gods as being like people, and sculptors portrayed gods as people in such works as the “Greek God Poseidon” or “Zeus”. They showed people as godlike beings. The earliest important classical sculpture appeared on the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. The high point of the classical style is generally considered to be the sculptures on the Parthenon in Athens. Sculptures decorated sarcophagi with reliefs. Portrait sculpture also began during this period.