PAINTING

written by: Taiwo Joseph

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface called the "matrix" or "support". The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and airbrushes, can be used. The final work is also called a painting.

Painting is an important form in the visual arts, bringing in elements such as drawing, gesture (gestural painting), composition, narration (narrative art), or abstraction (abstract art). Paintings can be still life or landscape painting, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature.

A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by religious art. Examples of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery, to Biblical scenes Sistine Chapel ceiling, to scenes from the life of Buddha or other images of Eastern religious origin.

In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. The support for paintings includes such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, pottery, leaf, copper and concrete, and the painting may incorporate multiple other materials including sand, clay, paper, plaster, gold leaf, as well as objects.

ELEMENT OF PAINTING

Colour And Tone

Color, made up of hue, saturation, and value, dispersed over a surface is the essence of painting, just as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music. Color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, white is. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe,Kandinsky,and Newton,have written their own color theory.

Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent. The word "red", for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a formalized register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music, such as F or C♯. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic (primary) and derived (complementary or mixed) colors (e.g, red, blue, green, brown, etc.).

Painters deal practically with pigments,so "blue" for a painter can be any of the blues: phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, Cobalt blue, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, means of painting. Colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music (e.g, a C note) is analogous to "light" in painting, "shades" to dynamics, and "coloration" is to painting as the specific timbre of musical instruments is to music. These elements do not necessarily form a melody (in music) of themselves; rather, they can add different contexts to it.

OTHER ELEMENT OF PAINTINGwill be treated in our next post

TYPE OF PAINTING

There are different types of painting styles but modern style of painting is the most sought after technique, it allows the artist to bringforth his/her ideas on the canvas with a mixture of modernism, abstract and surreal techiques. There are different styles of painting like abstract art, conceptual art, Hyperrealism, pop art, Futurism, Impressionism and so on. As artists you can focus on single styles or a combination of styles.

These types includes;

Oil painting

Watercolor painting;

Pastel painting;

Acrylic painting;

Digital painting;

Ink wash Painting or Literati painting - Chinese black ink;

Hot wax painting or Encaustic painting Spray Painting;

Fresco secco paintings - wall painting technique;

Gouache - opaque watercolor medium

Enamel paintings;

Tempera paintings (are very long lasting) Sand Painting.. etc.

1. Oil painting

Oil painting can be a difficult task for beginners. Oil painting is suitable for almost all kinds of styles. You get to work with smooth texture of paint and it has a wonderful scent to it. Oil paint uses some drying oil as a binder to the pigments, which gives the wonderful buttery feel to the paint. The most common drying oils used as a binder are walnut oil, linseed oil, poppy seed oil and many more. Oil painting was first used by Indian and Chinese artists in the 5th century, but it became popular only in the 15th century.

2. Watercolor painting

Watercolor painting is usually done on the paper. In this particuar type of painting, one uses water based solutions to mix the colors and hence the name water color painting. Compared to oil painting, watercolor painting is also similarly tough task. Nowadays you have plenty of artists trying out realistic looking portraits using watercolors. The mixing of colors is very crucial in this, since too much of anything, changes the shade of the colors. Watercolor Paintings

3. Pastel painting

Pastel sticks are normally used to create the pastel paintings. Using pastel sticks you can immediately start drawing and coloring, it uses the same binding pigments, except pastel sticks are a powder form which are bound together using a binding agent, and they are readymade. If you are looking for pure and deep colors, then it's highly recommended to use the pastel sticks. Pastel paintings can be done on canvas, so you can do beautiful layering of colors with pastels.

4. Acrylic painting

If you are looking for faster drying painting, then acrylic painting is the best. These are water soluble paints, yet once the painting is complete, it turns water resistant. Interesting fact isnt't it? Most hobbyists love to work with acrylic paints. For sculptures, moulding, facial features, many artists use acrylic painting. It is easier to clean the brushes after ise, since acrylic paints need only water to wash them off.

5. Digital painting

Digital painting is the art of creating artwork on a computer, which makes it resemble a watercolor painting, oil painting or even an acrylic painting. A digitally prepared oil painting and manually done oil painting will have plenty of differences, since you have access to plenty of other textures and instruments which are easily available on the system. Yes, you don't have to worry about paint spills a standing for long hours. You can do the same art in a relaxed manner, at the comfort of your homes.

6. Sand painting

Painting on sand can be quite messy and it's a temporary art. The sand painting can be captured on video using speed motion, to understand how the artist works on them. It's normally done with minimal light, but has a focus light under the table where the sand painting is being created. Sand painting is created using coloured sands, which is moved around on a fixed surface using hands. It is practised in many countries and is known by several names, in India it's known as kolam or rangoli.

7. Texture painting

Texture to Paint We all love to see the brush strokes on a painting, it gives a dramatic final effect. Texture paintings are mostly used with oil paints, since while working with acrylic paints, they effects are lost when the acrylics dry up. But oil paints tend to be expensive, so as a substitute one can use acrylic impasto which works amazing on textures. Apart from regular paint brushes, flat knifes, blunt objects are used to create texture painting.

8. Matte painting

Beautiful landscapes are usually created with the help of matte paintings. Matte paintings are widely used in the film and video game industry. In the film industries large sets are created after a matte painting of the locations are finalised. Sometimes the environments like fairytale, sci-fi are very expensive to build, in such cases matte paintings are used as background screen and merge with footage.

9. Spray Painting

Paint is usually administered from a spray bottle to achieve the desired results. Mostly spray paints are used on streets(street art), graffiti, canvas, wood, metal, glass, ceramic and more. If a large are of canvas requires the same pigment, spray painting technique is used to cover the areas for a faster turnout. See Spray Speed Painting Art by Ben Rabine

10. Graffiti Art

Graffiti art is mostly done on public buildings with/without permissions. Graffiti is not meant to be understood by the general public, it's a style of writing or drawing/scribbling which has no absolute meaning .The first graffiti artist was a highschool student in 1967, who used to write on walls to get his lady love's attention. Graffiti became a full fledged known painting technique in 1980, were many artists resorted to public walls to showcase their talent.

11. Ink wash Painting or Literati painting

Chinese black ink Ink Wash Painting is also known as Literati Painting. Chinese black ink is used to create these artworks. The chinese black ink is quite popular in the asian country since it's mostly used for calligraphy. Various shades of black are created by mixing water to the black ink to create the desired consistency.

12. Hot wax painting or Encaustic painting

Hot Wax Painting is also known as Encaustic painting. This painting technique uses beeswax which is melted and added to color pigments. Both cold wax and hot beeswax are used in this technique. Encaustic paintings are usually created on a wood canvas.

13. Fresco secco paintings

Wall painting technique Fresco secco paintings are usually created on a freshly created lime plaster. The color pigements are mixed water solution and directly applied on the lime plaster, thus creating a permament painting. Fresco secco paintings have been around since the renaissance period, one can view these paintings in the vatican walls and ceilings.

14. Gouache

opaque watercolor medium Gouache is an opaque watercolor medium used with other binding agents to create art. A white chalk or white color is added to the water color mixture to attain the opacity in the Gouache technique. The gouache cannot be applied directly onto a canvas, since it does not bind well, if you want to use it on canvas, then acrylic pigments have to be mixed. Take care not to dilute the acrylic colors, since the paintings may not have your desired look.

15. Tempera paintings

Long Lasting Painting Tempera paintings are known as egg tempera art. They are fast drying and the paint longs laster than others. Egg yolks are used as a binding medium with paints and since it's highly glutenous, they tend to dry faster. This is one of the oldest known painting techniques. Instead of eggs, sometimes, gum, glycerin, casein are used as a binding agent to the mixture of water and colors. 16. Enamel paintings

Art with Enamel Paint Enamel paints give a glossy or shiny look once they are dried completely.

17. Drip Painting

Paint Drips As the name suggests, paint is dripped on the canvas to create drip paintings.

18. Underpainting

Layer Painting A base paint is added to the canvas and more layers of colors are added to create beauting underpaintings.

19. Panel Painting

Multiple Parts Painting Panel paintings are created on multiple panels of wood and joined together.

20. Velvet Painting

Art on Velvet Material Velvet painting is usually created on a piece of velvet cloth.

21. Leaf Painting

Art on/with leaves A painting created on a leaf or creating leaf shapes with paintings is known as leaf painting.

22. Reverse Glass Painting