painting

• Painting


  The expression of ideas and emotions, with the creation of certain aesthetic qualities, in a two-dimensional visual language
• Elements of painting's visual language

  • Shapes
  • Lines
  • Colours
  • Tones
  • Textures
• Purpose of painting's visual elements

  To produce sensations of volume, space, movement, and light on a flat surface
• Combining painting's visual elements

  1. Into expressive patterns

  2. To represent real or supernatural phenomena

  3. To interpret a narrative theme

  4. To create wholly abstract visual relationships
• Medium


  Tempera, fresco, oil, acrylic, watercolour or other water-based paints, ink, gouache, encaustic, or casein
• Form


  Mural, easel, panel, miniature, manuscript illumination, scroll, screen or fan, panorama, or any of a variety of modern forms
• Factors influencing an artist's choice of medium and form

  • Sensuous qualities
  • Expressive possibilities and limitations
• Realization of a unique visual image


  Combination of medium, form, and artist's technique
• Earlier cultural traditions' influence on painting


  • Controlled the craft, form, imagery, and subject matter
  • Determined its function (ritualistic, devotional, decorative, entertaining, or educational)
• Painters' earlier status


  Skilled artisans rather than creative artists
• Later development of the "fine artist"

  • In Asia and Renaissance Europe
  • Painters afforded the social status of scholars and courtiers
  • They signed their work, decided its design and often its subject and imagery
• Painters' later social position and patronage

  • Began to lose their social position and secure patronage
  • Some artists countered the decline in patronage support by holding their own exhibitions and charging an entrance fee
  • Others earned an income through touring exhibitions of their work
• Acrylics


  • The Beginner's Choice
  • Easy to use and do not require any special supplies
  • Suit beginners, easy cleanup, limited budget, experimenting with mixed media, sensitive to oil painting chemicals
  • Disadvantages: paint dries very fast, some colors darken as they dry
• Oils


  • The Master's Choice
  • Most widely used medium among professional artists
  • Versatile, can vary drying time and consistency, allows wide range of painting techniques
  • Oil paintings seem to be held in higher regard by art collectors compared to acrylic paintings
• Watercolors


  • The Untamed Beauty
  • Considered the most difficult to pick up due to the untamed nature of water and inability to rework errors
  • If mastered, can produce stunningly elegant paintings