Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium[1] to a solid 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.
Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture (as
in gestural painting), composition, narration (as in narrative art), or abstraction (as in abstract art),
among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the
practitioner.[2] Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in a still life or landscape
painting), photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic (as in Symbolist art), emotive (as
in Expressionism), or political in nature (as in Artivism).
A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by spiritual motifs
and ideas. Examples of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on
pottery, to Biblical scenes rendered on the interior walls and ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, 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, clay, leaf, copper and
concrete, and the painting may incorporate multiple other materials including sand, clay, paper,
plaster, gold leaf, as well as objects. The term painting is also used outside art as a common
trade among craftsmen and builders.

Contents
[hide]

 1Elements of painting
o 1.1Color and tone
o 1.2Non-traditional elements
o 1.3Rhythm
 2History
 3Aesthetics and theory
 4Painting media
o 4.1Oil
o 4.2Pastel
o 4.3Acrylic
o 4.4Watercolor
o 4.5Ink
o 4.6Hot wax or encaustic
o 4.7Fresco
o 4.8Gouache
o 4.9Enamel
o 4.10Spray paint
o 4.11Tempera
o 4.12Water miscible oil paint
o 4.13Digital painting
 5Painting styles
o 5.1Western
 5.1.1Modernism
 5.1.1.1Impressionism
 5.1.1.2Abstract styles
 5.1.1.3Outsider art
 5.1.1.4Photorealism
  5.1.1.5Surrealism
o 5.2Far Eastern
o 5.3Islamic
o 5.4Indian
o 5.5African
o 5.6Contemporary art
o 5.71950s
o 5.81960s
o 5.91970s
o 5.101980s
o 5.111990s
o 5.122000s
 6Types of painting
o 6.1Allegory
o 6.2Bodegón
o 6.3Figure painting
o 6.4Illustration painting
o 6.5Landscape painting
o 6.6Portrait painting
o 6.7Still life
o 6.8Veduta
 7See also
 8Notes
 9Further reading

Elements of painting[edit]
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Chen Hongshou (1598–1652), Leaf album painting (Ming Dynasty)

Color and tone[edit]

Color and tone are the essence of painting 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,[3] Kandinsky,[4] and Newton,[5] 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 (like red, blue, green, brown, etc.).
Painters deal practically with pigments,[6] so "blue" for a painter can be any of the
blues: phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, 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 (like 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.

Circus Sideshow (French: Parade de cirque), Georges Seurat, 1887–88

Non-traditional elements[edit]
Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one
example, collage, which began with Cubism and is not painting in the strict sense. Some modern
painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture.
Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer. There is a growing community
of artists who use computers to "paint" color onto a digital "canvas" using programs such as Adobe
Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if
required.

Rhythm[edit]
Rhythm is important in painting as it is in music. If one defines rhythm as "a pause incorporated into
a sequence", then there can be rhythm in paintings. These pauses allow creative force to intervene
and add new creations—form, melody, coloration. The distribution of form, or any kind of information
is of crucial importance in the given work of art, and it directly affects the aesthetic value of that
work. This is because the aesthetical value is functionality dependent, i.e. the freedom (of
movement) of perception is perceived as beauty. Free flow of energy, in art as well as in other forms
of "techne", directly contributes to the aesthetical value.
History[edit]
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help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources.
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2013) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Main article: History of painting

Cave painting of aurochs, (French: Bos primigenius primigenius), Lascaux, France, an example of prehistoric
art

The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, which some historians believe are
about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment, and
they show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth, abstract designs and what are possibly
partial human figures. However, the earliest evidence of the act of painting has been discovered in
two rock-shelters in Arnhem Land, in northern Australia. In the lowest layer of material at these sites,
there are used pieces of ochre estimated to be 60,000 years old. Archaeologists have also found a
fragment of rock painting preserved in a limestone rock-shelter in the Kimberley region of North-
Western Australia, that is dated 40,000 years old.[7] There are examples of cave paintings all over the
world—in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, China, Australia, Mexico,[8] etc. In Western cultures, oil
painting and watercolor painting have rich and complex traditions in style and subject matter. In the
East, ink and color ink historically predominated the choice of media, with equally rich and complex
traditions.
The invention of photography had a major impact on painting. In the decades after the
first photograph was produced in 1829, photographicprocesses improved and became more widely
practiced, depriving painting of much of its historic purpose to provide an accurate record of the
observable world. A series of art movements in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—
notably Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, and Dadaism—
challenged the Renaissance view of the world. Eastern and African painting, however, continued a
long history of stylization and did not undergo an equivalent transformation at the same time.[citation
needed]

Modern and Contemporary Art has moved away from the historic value of craft and documentation in
favour of concept, leading some to say, in the 1960s, that painting as a serious art form is
dead.[clarification needed] This has not deterred the majority of living painters from continuing to practice
painting either as whole or part of their work. The vitality and versatility of painting in the 21st century
defies the previous "declarations" of its demise. In an epoch characterized by the idea of pluralism,
there is no consensus as to a representative style of the age. Artists continue to make important
works of art in a wide variety of styles and aesthetic temperaments—their merits are left to the public
and the marketplace to judge.
Aesthetics and theory[edit]
Main article: Theory of painting

Apelles or the Art of painting (detail), relief of the Giotto's Bell Tower in Florence, Italy, Nino Pisano, 1334–1336

Aesthetics is the study of art and beauty; it was an important issue for 18th- and 19th-century
philosophers such as Kant and Hegel. Classical philosophers like Plato and Aristotle also theorized
about art and painting in particular. Plato disregarded painters (as well as sculptors) in his
philosophical system; he maintained that painting cannot depict the truth—it is a copy of reality (a
shadow of the world of ideas) and is nothing but a craft, similar to shoemaking or iron casting.[9] By
the time of Leonardo, painting had become a closer representation of the truth than painting was
in Ancient Greece. Leonardo da Vinci, on the contrary, said that "Italian: La Pittura è cosa mentale"
("English: painting is a thing of the mind").[10] Kant distinguished between Beauty and the Sublime, in
terms that clearly gave priority to the former.[citation needed] Although he did not refer to painting in
particular, this concept was taken up by painters such as J.M.W. Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.
Hegel recognized the failure of attaining a universal concept of beauty and, in his aesthetic essay,
wrote that painting is one of the three "romantic" arts, along with Poetry and Music, for its symbolic,
highly intellectual purpose.[11][12] Painters who have written theoretical works on painting
include Kandinsky and Paul Klee.[13][14] In his essay, Kandinsky maintains that painting has a spiritual
value, and he attaches primary colors to essential feelings or concepts, something that Goethe and
other writers had already tried to do.
Iconography is the study of the content of paintings, rather than their style. Erwin Panofsky and
other art historians first seek to understand the things depicted, before looking at their meaning for
the viewer at the time, and finally analyzing their wider cultural, religious, and social meaning.[15]
In 1890, the Parisian painter Maurice Denis famously asserted: "Remember that a painting—before
being a warhorse, a naked woman or some story or other—is essentially a flat surface covered with
colors assembled in a certain order."[16] Thus, many 20th-century developments in painting, such
as Cubism, were reflections on the means of painting rather than on the external world—nature—
which had previously been its core subject. Recent contributions to thinking about painting have
been offered by the painter and writer Julian Bell. In his book What is Painting?, Bell discusses the
development, through history, of the notion that paintings can express feelings and ideas.[17] In Mirror
of The World, Bell writes:[? clarification needed]
A work of art seeks to hold your attention and keep it fixed: a history of art urges it onwards,
bulldozing a highway through the homes of the imagination.[18]

Painting media[edit]
Different types of paint are usually identified by the medium that the pigment is suspended or
embedded in, which determines the general working characteristics of the paint, such
as viscosity, miscibility, solubility, drying time, etc.

Oil[edit]

Honoré Daumier (1808–79), The Painter. Oil on panel with visible brushstrokes.

Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments that are bound with a medium of drying oil, such
as linseed oil, which was widely used in early modern Europe. Often the oil was boiled with a resin
such as pine resin or even frankincense; these were called 'varnishes' and were prized for their body
and gloss. Oil paint eventually became the principal medium used for creating artworks as its
advantages became widely known. The transition began with Early Netherlandish painting in
northern Europe, and by the height of the Renaissance oil painting techniques had almost
completely replaced tempera paints in the majority of Europe.

Pastel[edit]

Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Portrait of Louis XV of France. (1748) Pastel.

Pastel is a painting medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a
binder.[19] The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media,
including oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation. The color effect of pastels is
closer to the natural dry pigments than that of any other process.[20] Because the surface of a pastel
painting is fragile and easily smudged, its preservation requires protective measures such as framing
under glass; it may also be sprayed with a fixative. Nonetheless, when made with permanent
pigments and properly cared for, a pastel painting may endure unchanged for centuries. Pastels are
not susceptible, as are paintings made with a fluid medium, to the cracking and discoloration that
result from changes in the color, opacity, or dimensions of the medium as it dries.

Acrylic[edit]

Jungle Arc by Ray Burggraf. Acrylic paint on wood. (1998)

Acrylic paint is fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic
paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry. Depending on how much the
paint is diluted (with water) or modified with acrylic gels, media, or pastes, the finished acrylic
painting can resemble a watercolor or an oil painting, or have its own unique characteristics not
attainable with other media. The main practical difference between most acrylics and oil paints is the
inherent drying time. Oils allow for more time to blend colors and apply even glazes over under-
paintings. This slow drying aspect of oil can be seen as an advantage for certain techniques, but
may also impede the artist's ability to work quickly.

Watercolor[edit]

Manfred on the Jungfrau (1837), John Martin. Watercolor painting

Watercolor is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-
soluble vehicle. The traditional and most common support for watercolor paintings is paper; other
supports include papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum or leather, fabric, wood and canvas. In East
Asia, watercolor painting with inks is referred to as brush painting or scroll painting.
In Chinese, Korean, and Japanese painting it has been the dominant medium, often in monochrome
black or browns. India, Ethiopiaand other countries also have long traditions. Finger-painting with
watercolor paints originated in China. Watercolor pencils (water-soluble color pencils) may be used
either wet or dry.

Ink[edit]
Landscapes of the Four Seasons(1486), Sesshū Tōyō. Ink and light color on paper.

Ink paintings are done with a liquid that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface
to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing with a pen, brush, or quill. Ink can be a
complex medium, composed of solvents, pigments, dyes, resins, lubricants,
solubilizers, surfactants, particulate matter, fluorescers, and other materials. The components of inks
serve many purposes; the ink’s carrier, colorants, and other additives control flow and thickness of
the ink and its appearance when dry.

Hot wax or encaustic[edit]

Encaustic Angel (2009), Martina Loos. Beeswax crayons, encaustic iron and hotpen.

Encaustic painting, also known as hot wax painting, involves using heated beeswax to which colored
pigments are added. The liquid/paste is then applied to a surface—usually prepared wood,
though canvas and other materials are often used. The simplest encaustic mixture can be made
from adding pigments to beeswax, but there are several other recipes that can be used—some
containing other types of waxes, damar resin, linseed oil, or other ingredients. Pure, powdered
pigments can be purchased and used, though some mixtures use oil paints or other forms of
pigment. Metal tools and special brushes can be used to shape the paint before it cools, or heated
metal tools can be used to manipulate the wax once it has cooled onto the surface. Other materials
can be encased or collaged into the surface, or layered, using the encaustic medium to adhere it to
the surface.

Fresco[edit]
White Angel, a fresco from Mileševa, Serbia

Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, done on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word
fresco comes from the Italian word affresco [afˈfresːko], which derives from the Latin word for fresh.
Frescoes were often made during the Renaissance and other early time periods. Buon
frescotechnique consists of painting in pigment mixed with water on a thin layer of wet, fresh lime
mortar or plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster, intonaco, is used. A secco painting, in
contrast, is done on dry plaster (secco is "dry" in Italian). The pigments require a binding medium,
such as egg(tempera), glue or oil to attach the pigment to the wall.

Gouache[edit]
Gouache is a water-based paint consisting of pigment and other materials designed to be used in an
opaque painting method. Gouache differs from watercolor in that the particles are larger, the ratio of
pigment to water is much higher, and an additional, inert, white pigment such as chalk is also
present. This makes gouache heavier and more opaque, with greater reflective qualities. Like all
watermedia, it is diluted with water.[21]

Enamel[edit]
Enamels are made by painting a substrate, typically metal, with frit, a type of powdered glass.
Minerals called color oxides provide coloration. After firing at a temperature of 750–850 degrees
Celsius (1380–1560 degrees Fahrenheit), the result is a fused lamination of glass and metal.
Enamels have traditionally been used for decoration of precious objects,[22] but have also been used
for other purposes. In the 18th century, enamel painting enjoyed a vogue in Europe, especially as a
medium for portrait miniatures.[23] In the late 20th century, the technique of porcelain enamel on metal
has been used as a durable medium for outdoor murals.[24]

Spray paint[edit]
Aerosol paint (also called spray paint) is a type of paint that comes in a sealed pressurized container
and is released in a fine spray mist when depressing a valve button. A form of spray
painting, aerosol paint leaves a smooth, evenly coated surface. Standard sized cans are portable,
inexpensive and easy to store. Aerosol primer can be applied directly to bare metal and many
plastics.
Speed, portability and permanence also make aerosol paint a common graffiti medium. In the late
1970s, street graffiti writers' signatures and murals became more elaborate and a unique style
developed as a factor of the aerosol medium and the speed required for illicit work. Many now
recognize graffiti and street art as a unique art form and specifically manufactured aerosol paints are
made for the graffiti artist. A stencil protects a surface, except the specific shape to be painted.
Stencils can be purchased as movable letters, ordered as professionally cut logos or hand-cut by
artists.

Tempera[edit]
Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of
colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium (usually a glutinous material such as egg
yolk or some other size). Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera
paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the first centuries CE still exist. Egg tempera was
a primary method of painting until after 1500 when it was superseded by the invention of oil painting.
A paint commonly called tempera (though it is not) consisting of pigment and glue size is commonly
used and referred to by some manufacturers in America as poster paint.

Water miscible oil paint[edit]

Water miscible oil paints (also called "water soluble" or "water-mixable") is a modern variety of oil
paint engineered to be thinned and cleaned up with water, rather than having to use chemicals such
as turpentine. It can be mixed and applied using the same techniques as traditional oil-based paint,
but while still wet it can be effectively removed from brushes, palettes, and rags with ordinary soap
and water. Its water solubility comes from the use of an oil medium in which one end of
the molecule has been altered to bind loosely to water molecules, as in a solution.

Digital painting[edit]
Main article: digital painting
Digital painting is a method of creating an art object (painting) digitally and/or a technique for making
digital art in the computer. As a method of creating an art object, it adapts traditional painting
medium such as acrylic paint, oils, ink, watercolor, etc. and applies the pigment to traditional
carriers, such as woven canvas cloth, paper, polyester etc. by means
of computer software driving industrial robotic or office machinery (printers). As a technique, it refers
to a computer graphics software program that uses a virtual canvas and virtual painting box of
brushes, colors and other supplies. The virtual box contains many instruments that do not exist
outside the computer, and which give a digital artwork a different look and feel from an artwork that
is made the traditional way. Furthermore, digital painting is not 'computer-generated' art as the
computer does not automatically create images on the screen using some mathematical
calculations. On the other hand, the artist uses his own painting technique to create the particular
piece of work on the computer.[25]

Painting styles[edit]
Main article: Style (visual arts)
Style is used in two senses: It can refer to the distinctive visual elements, techniques and methods
that typify an individual artist's work. It can also refer to the movement or school that an artist is
associated with. This can stem from an actual group that the artist was consciously involved with or
it can be a category in which art historians have placed the painter. The word 'style' in the latter
sense has fallen out of favor in academic discussions about contemporary painting, though it
continues to be used in popular contexts. Such movements or classifications include the following:

Western[edit]
Modernism[edit]
Modernism describes both a set of cultural tendencies and an array of associated cultural
movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western societyin the
late 19th century and early 20th century. Modernism was a revolt against the conservative values
of realism.[26][27] The term encompasses the activities and output of those who felt the "traditional"
forms of art, architecture, literature, religious faith, social organization and daily life were becoming
outdated in the new economic, social and political conditions of an emerging fully industrialized
world. A salient characteristic of modernism is self-consciousness. This often led to experiments with
form, and work that draws attention to the processes and materials used (and to the further tendency
of abstraction).[28]
Impressionism[edit]
The first example of modernism in painting was impressionism, a school of painting that initially
focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors (en plein air). Impressionist paintings
demonstrated that human beings do not see objects, but instead see light itself. The school gathered
adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners, and became increasingly
influential. Initially rejected from the most important commercial show of the time, the government-
sponsored Paris Salon, the Impressionists organized yearly group exhibitions in commercial venues
during the 1870s and 1880s, timing them to coincide with the official Salon. A significant event of
1863 was the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings
rejected by the Paris Salon.
Abstract styles[edit]
Abstract painting uses a visual language of form, colour and line to create a composition that may
exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.[29][30]Abstract
expressionism was an American post-World War II art movement that combined the emotional
intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the
European abstract schools—such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism and the image of
being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic.[31]
Action painting, sometimes called gestural abstraction, is a style of painting in which paint is
spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully
applied.[32] The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential
aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist. The style was widespread from the 1940s until the
early 1960s, and is closely associated with abstract expressionism (some critics have used the
terms "action painting" and "abstract expressionism" interchangeably).
Other modernist styles include:

 Color Field
 Lyrical Abstraction
 Hard-edge painting
 Expressionism
 Cubism
 Pop art
Outsider art[edit]
The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art
brut (French: [aʁ bʁyt], "raw art" or "rough art"), a label created by French artistJean Dubuffet to
describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art
by insane-asylum inmates.[33] Outsider art has emerged as a successful art marketing category (an
annual Outsider Art Fair has taken place in New York since 1992). The term is sometimes
misapplied as a catch-all marketing label for art created by people outside the mainstream "art
world," regardless of their circumstances or the content of their work.
Photorealism[edit]
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather
information and then from this information, creating a painting that appears to be very realistic like
a photograph. The term is primarily applied to paintings from the United States art movement that
began in the late 1960s and early 1970s. As a full-fledged art movement, Photorealism evolved
from Pop Art[34][35][36] and as a counter to Abstract Expressionism.
Hyperrealism is a genre of painting and sculpture resembling a high-
resolution photograph. Hyperrealism is a fully fledged school of art and can be considered an
advancement of Photorealism by the methods used to create the resulting paintings or sculptures.
The term is primarily applied to an independent art movement and art style in the United States and
Europe that has developed since the early 2000s.[37]