Portal:Painting
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Painting is a visual art, which is characterized by 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, may be used.
In art, the term "painting" describes both the act and the result of the action (the final work is called "a painting"). 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, and even whole objects.
Painting is an important form of
A portion of the
Selected general articles
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Orange peel is a certain kind of finish that may develop on painted and cast surfaces. The texture resembles the surface of the skin of an orange, hence the name "orange peel".
Gloss paint sprayed on a smooth surface (such as the body of a car) should also dry into a smooth surface. However, various factors can cause it to dry into a bumpy surface. This is typically the result of improper painting technique, and is caused by the quick evaporation of thinner, incorrect spray gun setup (e.g., low air pressure or incorrect nozzle), spraying the paint at an angle other than perpendicular, or applying excessive paint. (Full article...) -
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In painting, staffage (French pronunciation: [stafaʒ]) are the human and animal figures depicted in a scene, especially a landscape, that are not the primary subject matter of the work. Typically they are small, and there to add an indication of scale and add interest.
Before the adoption of the word into the visual arts in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Staffage in German could mean "accessories" or "decoration". The word can be used in two senses: as a general term for any figures in a work, even when they are, at least ostensibly, the main subject, and as a descriptive term for figures to whom no specific identity or story is attached, included merely for compositional or decorative reasons. In the latter sense, staffage are accessories to the scene, yet add life to the work; they provide depth to the painting and reinforce the main subject, as well as giving a clear scale to the rest of the composition. (Full article...) -
A combine painting or Combine is an artwork that incorporates elements of both painting and sculpture. Items attached to paintings might include three-dimensional everyday objects such as clothing or furniture, as well as printed matter including photographs or newspaper clippings.
The term is most closely associated with the artwork of American artist Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) who coined the phrase Combine to describe his own artworks that explore the boundary between art and the everyday world. By placing them in the context of art, he endowed a new significance to ordinary objects. These cross-medium creations challenged the doctrine of medium specificity mentioned by modernist art critic Clement Greenberg. (Full article...) -
In art criticism of the 1960s and 1970s, flatness described the smoothness and absence of curvature or surface detail of a two-dimensional work of art. (Full article...)
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Signwriters design, manufacture and install signs, including advertising signs for shops, businesses and public facilities as well as signs for transport systems. (Full article...) -
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Sign painting is the craft of painting lettered signs on buildings, billboards or signboards, for promoting, announcing, or identifying products, services and events. Sign painting artisans are signwriters, although in North America they are usually referred to as sign painters. (Full article...) -
A problem picture is a genre of art popular in late Victorian painting, characterised by the deliberately ambiguous depiction of a key moment in a narrative that can be interpreted in several different ways, or which portrays an unresolved dilemma. It has some relation to the problem play. The viewer of the picture is invited to speculate about several different possible explanations of the scene. The genre has much in common with that of book illustration, then at its most popular, but with the text belonging to the illustration omitted.
The genre began to emerge in the second half of the nineteenth century, along with the development of book illustrations that depicted "pregnant" moments in a narrative. One of the earliest problem pictures is John Everett Millais' Trust Me, which depicts an older man demanding that a young woman hand him a letter she has received. Either character might be uttering the words. The significance and content of the letter is left to the imagination. Their relationship is also unclear; in view of their ages, they might be a married couple, or a father and daughter. (Full article...) -
dyes contained in the pigments. Historic paint analysis also identifies the pigments' media of suspension such as (water, oil, or latex and the paints' associated substrate. A variety of techniques are used to identify and analyze the pigment layers and finish exposure, including Finish Exposure, optical microscopy, fluorescent light microscopy, polarized light microscopy, and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy. (Full article...)
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Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, work, and street scenes. Such representations (also called genre works, genre scenes, or genre views) may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Some variations of the term genre art specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on.
The following concentrates on painting, but genre motifs were also extremely popular in many forms of the decorative arts, especially from the Rococo of the early 18th century onwards. Single figures or small groups decorated a huge variety of objects such as porcelain, furniture, wallpaper, and textiles. (Full article...) -
Incised painting is a technique used to decorate stone surfaces. First, a channel is scratched in the stone. Then, a thick paint or stucco plaster is laid across the surface. Last, the paint is scraped off the surface of the stone, leaving paint in the incision. This technique was used in decorating the Taj Mahal. (Full article...)
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Selected painting techniques
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Graffiti (plural; singular graffiti or graffito, the latter rarely used except in archeology) is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written "monikers" to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions. (Full article...) -
Fresco-secco (or a secco or fresco finto) is a wall painting technique where pigments mixed with an organic binder and/or lime are applied onto dry plaster. The paints used can e.g. be casein paint, tempera, oil paint, silicate mineral paint. If the pigments are mixed with lime water or lime milk and applied to a dry plaster the technique is called lime secco painting.
The secco technique contrasts with the fresco technique, where the painting is executed on a layer of wet plaster.
Because the pigments do not become part of the wall, as in buon fresco, fresco-secco paintings are less durable. The colors may flake off the painting as time goes by, but this technique has the advantages of a longer working time and retouchability. In Italy, the fresco technique was reintroduced around 1300 and led to an increase in the general quality of mural painting. This technological change coincided with the realistic turn in Western art and the changing liturgical use of murals. (Full article...) -
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Marouflage is a technique for affixing a painted canvas (intended as a mural) to a wall, using an adhesive that hardens as it dries, such as plaster or cement. (Full article...)
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Speed line is the art technique which uses streaks to convey the impression of speed. The French artist Ernest Montaut is usually credited with its invention. He used the technique freely in his posters which were produced at a time when auto racing, speedboat racing and aircraft races were in their infancy. The effect is similar to the blur caused by panning in still photography.
Speed lines are frequently used in Japanese manga and anime, of which Speed Racer is a classic example. (Full article...) -
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A wash is a term for a visual arts technique resulting in a semi-transparent layer of colour. A wash of diluted ink or watercolor paint applied in combination with drawing is called pen and wash, wash drawing, or ink and wash. Normally only one or two colours of wash are used; if more colours are used the result is likely to be classified as a full watercolor painting.
The classic East Asian tradition of ink wash painting uses black ink in various levels of dilution. Historically associated with the four arts of the scholar-officials, the technique was often applied to landscapes in traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean painting. (Full article...) -
Spray painting is a painting technique in which a device sprays coating material (paint, ink, varnish, etc.) through the air onto a surface. The most common types employ compressed gas—usually air—to atomize and direct the paint particles.
Spray guns evolved from airbrushes, and the two are usually distinguished by their size and the size of the spray pattern they produce. Airbrushes are hand-held and used instead of a brush for detailed work such as photo retouching, painting nails, or fine art. Air gun spraying uses generally larger equipment. It is typically used for covering large surfaces with an even coating of liquid. Spray guns can be either automated or hand-held and have interchangeable heads to allow for different spray patterns. (Full article...) -
Silk painting refers to paintings on silk. They are a traditional way of painting in Asia. Methods vary, but using traditional supplies of 100% silk fabric, stretched in a frame, and applying textile paints or dyes are the beginnings of the process of making textile art. (Full article...) -
In two-dimensional works of art, such asImpressionists such as Gustave Caillebotte. (Full article...)
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soluble in water. These types of paint eliminate the need for turpentine and gesso, and can be applied directly onto canvas. Aside from painting with concentrated color paints, acrylics can also be watered down to a consistency that can be poured or used for glazes. (Full article...)
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mural painting and describes how much painting can be done in a single day of work. This amount is based on the artist's past experience of how much they can paint in the many hours available while the plaster remains wet and the pigment is able to adhere to the wall. (Full article...)
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A panel painting is a painting made on a flat panel of wood, either a single piece or a number of pieces joined together. Until canvas became the more popular support medium in the 16th century, panel painting was the normal method, when not painting directly onto a wall (fresco) or on vellum (used for miniatures in illuminated manuscripts). Wood panels were also used for mounting vellum paintings. (Full article...) -
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Intonaco is an Italian term for the final, very thin layer of plaster on which a fresco is painted. The plaster is painted while still wet, in order to allow the pigment to penetrate into the intonaco itself. An earlier layer, called arriccio, is laid slightly coarsely to provide a key for the intonaco, and must be allowed to dry, usually for some days, before the final very thin layer is applied and painted on. In Italian the term intonaco is also used much more generally for normal plaster or mortar wall-coatings in buildings.
Intonaco is traditionally a mixture of sand (with granular dimensions less than two millimeters) and a binding substance. (Full article...) -
Wet-on-wet, or alla prima (Italian, meaning at first attempt), direct painting or au premier coup, is a painting technique in which layers of wet paint are applied to previously administered layers of wet paint. Used mostly in oil painting, the technique requires a fast way of working, because the work has to be finished before the first layers have dried. (Full article...) -
Zen Buddhist monks in the 14th century. Some Western scholars divide Chinese painting (including ink wash painting) into three periods: times of representation, times of expression, and historical Oriental art. Chinese scholars have their own views which may be different; they believe that contemporary Chinese ink wash paintings are the pluralistic continuation of multiple historical traditions.)
In China, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Korea, ink wash painting formed a distinct stylistic tradition with a different set of artists working in it than from those in other types of painting. In China especially it was a gentlemanly occupation associated with poetry and calligraphy. It was often produced by the scholar-official or literati class, ideally illustrating their own poetry and producing the paintings as gifts for friends or patrons, rather than painting for payment. (Full article... -
Reverse painting on glass is an art form consisting of applying paint to a piece of glass and then viewing the image by turning the glass over and looking through the glass at the image. Another term used to refer to the art of cold painting and gilding on the back of glass is verre églomisé, named after the French decorator Jean-Baptiste Glomy (1711–86), who framed prints using glass that had been reverse-painted. In German it is known as Hinterglasmalerei.
This art form has been around for many years. It was widely used for sacral paintings since the Middle Ages. The most famous was the art of icons in the Byzantine Empire. Later the painting on glass spread to Italy, where in Venice it influenced its Renaissance art. Since the middle of the 18th century, painting on glass became favored by the Church and the nobility throughout Central Europe. A number of clock faces were created using this technique in the early-to-mid-19th century. Throughout the 19th century painting on glass was widely popular as folk art in Austria, Bavaria, Moravia, Bohemia and Slovakia. Unfortunately, during the inter-war period (1914–1945) this traditional "naive" technique fell nearly to a complete oblivion and its methods of paint composition and structural layout had to be re-invented by combining acrylic and oil paints. A new method of reverse painting emerged using polymer glazing methods that permitted the artworks to be painted direct to an acrylic UV coating on the glass. The unique under glass effect retains a curious depth even though the layered painting on the glass was bonded to a final linen support and now stretcher bar mounted after being carefully removed from the original 'glass easel'. Current glass painting may disappear with the advent of using aerospace mylar as a preliminary support. (Full article...)
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General images
The following are images from various painting-related articles on Wikipedia.-
Cueva de las Manos (Spanish for Cave of the Hands) in the Santa Cruz province in Argentina, c. 7300 BC (from History of painting)
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Warring States period, from Zidanku Tomb no. 1 in Changsha, Hunan Province (from History of painting)
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Giotto's Bell Tower in Florence, Italy
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Honoré Daumier, The Painter (1808–1879), oil on panel with visible brushstrokes (from Painting)
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White Angel (fresco, c. 1235), Mileševa monastery, Serbia (from Painting)
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The Walters Art Museum (from Painting)
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Maurice Quentin de La Tour, Portrait of Louis XV of France (1748), pastel (from Painting)
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Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and a pioneer of the movement (from History of painting)Bharat Mata by
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Joan Miró, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower, 1920, abstract Surrealism, Philadelphia Museum of Art (from History of painting)
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Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (from Painting)
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Jean Metzinger, La danse (Bacchante) (c. 1906), oil on canvas, 73 x 54 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum (from Painting)
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rock painting, Drakensberg, South Africa (from History of painting)
- Baptism of Christ on a medieval
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Francisco de Zurbarán, Still Life with Pottery Jars (Spanish: Bodegón de recipientes) (1636), oil on canvas, 46 x 84 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid (from Painting)
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Wayang beber, 17th century (from History of painting)
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Kimberley region of Western Australia c. 15,000 BC (from History of painting)
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Lascaux, Horse (from History of painting)
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Jean de Court (attributed), painted Limoges enamel dish in detail (mid-16th century), Waddesdon Bequest, British Museum (from Painting)
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Book of Hours (from History of painting)
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Mother Goddess A miniature painting of the Pahari style, dating to the eighteenth century. Pahari and Rajput miniatures share many common features. (from History of painting)
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The Night (Die Nacht), 1918–1919, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (from History of painting)
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Petroglyphs, from Sweden, Nordic Bronze Age (painted) (from History of painting)
- Khan Bahadur Khan with Men of his Clan, c. 1815, from the Fraser Album, Company Style (from
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Mona Lisa (1503–1517) by Leonardo da Vinci is one of the world's most recognizable paintings. (from Painting)
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Sesshū Tōyō, Landscapes of the Four Seasons (1486), ink and light color on paper (from Painting)
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rock painting, Stone Age, India (from History of painting)
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A Chinese painted jar from theWestern Han Era (202 BCE – 9 CE) (from History of painting)
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Mary Cassatt (from History of painting)Young Mother Sewing,
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19th Century Mysore Painting of GoddessSaraswathi (from Painting)
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Muromachi period, Shingei (1431–1485), Viewing a Waterfall, Nezu Museum, Tokyo. (from History of painting)
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Bulls (from History of painting)Spanish cave painting of
- Hand stencils in the "Tree of Life" cave painting in Gua Tewet,
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An artistic depiction of a group ofrhinos was painted in the Chauvet Cave 30,000 to 32,000 years ago. (from Painting)
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rock painting, Stone Age, India (from History of painting)
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Prehistoric cave painting of aurochs (French: Bos primigenius primigenius), Lascaux, France (from Painting)
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Pettakere Cave are more than 44,000 years old, Maros, South Sulawesi, Indonesia (from History of painting)
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Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, c. 1500 BCE (from History of painting)
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Lascaux, Bulls and Horses (from History of painting)
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Reza Abbasi, Two Lovers (1630) (from Painting)
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Ray Burggraf, Jungle Arc (1998), acrylic paint on wood (from Painting)
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Rembrandt van Rijn, The Jewish Bride, ca. 1665–1669 (from History of painting)
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Loquats and Mountain Bird, anonymous artist of theSouthern Song dynasty; paintings in leaf album style such as this were popular in the Southern Song (1127–1279). (from History of painting)
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Qiu Ying (1494–1552 AD) (from History of painting)Spring Morning in the Han Palace, by Ming-era artist
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Man, Controller of the Universe), originally created in 1934, Mexican muralism movement (from History of painting)
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Otto Marseus van Schrieck, A Forest Floor Still-Life (1666) (from Painting)
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Nihâl Chand, master of Kishangarh school of Rajput Painting (from Painting)Krishna and Radha, might be the work of
- A fresco from
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Hades and Persephone riding in a chariot, from the tomb of Queen Eurydice I of Macedon at Vergina, Greece, 4th century BC (from History of painting)A fresco showing
- Rudolf Reschreiter, Blick von der Höllentalangerhütte zum Höllentalgletscher und den Riffelwandspitzen, Gouache (1921) (from
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)The
- Two Scribes Seated with Books and a Writing Table Fragment of a decorative margin Northern India (Mughal school), ca. 1640–1650 (from
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American Scene painting (from History of painting)
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Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave in Indonesia. It was painted 40,000–52,000 years ago or earlier. (from Painting)The oldest known figurative painting is a depiction of a bull that was discovered in the
- Female painter sitting on a campstool and painting a statue of
- The Eternal Father Painting the Virgin of Guadalupe. Attributed to Joaquín Villegas (1713 – active in 1753) (Mexican) (painter,
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Francis Picabia, (Left) Le saint des saints c'est de moi qu'il s'agit dans ce portrait, 1 July 1915; (center) Portrait d'une jeune fille americaine dans l'état de nudité, 5 July 1915: (right) J'ai vu et c'est de toi qu'il s'agit, De Zayas! De Zayas! Je suis venu sur les rivages du Pont-Euxin, New York, 1915 (from History of painting)
- Encaustic icon from
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Ethiopian illuminated Evangelist portrait of Mark the Evangelist, from the Ethiopian Garima Gospels, 6th century AD, Kingdom of Aksum (from History of painting)An
In the news
- 5 May 2024 –
- With the closing performance of the Celebration Tour at Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, American singer Madonna attracts 1.6 million people in a free concert and breaks the record for the most attended stand-alone concert by any artist, and the all-time highest attended concert by a female artist. (Billboard)
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