Category Art

A Lasting Impression

Sometimes artists leave out the details in a painting to create a feeling. Half-close your eyes and look at this painting. You can almost feel the sunshine poking through the treetops and warming the forest floor.

Now look at the picture closely. It does not show much detail. You cannot see the bark on the trees or even the kinds of trees in the forest. The artist has painted only an impression of the scene.

In the close-up photo above, you can see all the details of a forest. It looks as if the camera captured every pine needle! But when you see a forest in one quick look, you do not see all the detail. You see it as the painter did – a blurry impression of colour, light, and shade.

A painting does not always need lots of detail. The colours can make an impression of a scene without all the details that show up in a photo.

At first glance, this picture might look like streaks of colour splashed over the page. But the painter, Nazli Madkour, wanted to create more than a pretty pattern. She wanted to tell you about something that she saw. Let’s think about what it could be.

Look at the pale, cool colours. Maybe the colours are telling you about a special place. Could it be somewhere cool? 

The colours seem to rush here and there across one another.

See the splash of blue in the lower-right corner? Blue has a calming effect. Does the blue in this painting make you feel calm?

Now look at the dark lines and shapes. Do you see things in motion? Can you see a bird flying?

A painting should set you wondering and guessing. Maybe the artist painted the wind the way she did to make you think. She wanted you to see calm in the middle of motion. Perhaps she thought you would imagine how it would feel to be a bird in flight.

Picture Credit : Google

Tints and Shades

How would you describe the colour of the sky on a clear day? Most people would say it is blue. But perhaps the sky is not as blue as it was yesterday. Or maybe it is bluer than the sea or a river. There are so many kinds of blue! What makes one blue different from another?

If you have paints, try adding white to some colours. You’ll find that red turns pink, purple turns lavender, and dark blue turns light blue. Colours with white added are called tints.

Now try mixing your colours with a little black to see how they change. Black makes colours darker. These darker colours are called shades.

All colours – red, yellow, blue, orange, green, purple, and the colours in between – have many tints and shades. Blacks and whites even come in different tints and shades, with interesting names like Mars black or zinc white.

In the 1870’s in France, a group of painters called Impressionists invented a different style of painting. New kinds of packaging helped make this new style of painting possible. Lead tubes kept paint from drying out. Now painters could work outside their studios. They took their easels, canvases, and brushes, and painted outdoors.

Outdoors, in natural light, Impressionists noticed that objects cast coloured shadows. So they painted orange haystacks with blue shadows, red dresses with green shadows, and yellow pots with purple shadows.

The colours they were seeing in shadows are called complementary colours. They are like colour opposites. To help identify colours in light and shadow, many artists use colour charts. You can make your own chart of primary, secondary, and complementary colours.

Jars, Tubes, and Powders

Paints come in a rainbow of colours. Some paints are runny and come in jars. Other paints are oozy and come in tubes. Still other paints come in solids or powders. You have to add water before you can use them.

The kinds of paints you probably use most are water-colours, temperas, and powder paints. All these paints are made of pigments and binders. A pigment is a powder that gives the paint its colour. A binder makes the pigments stick together.

Water-colours are probably the easiest paints to use. They come in tubes or solid tablets. You add a little water if you want the paint’s colour to be strong, and more water if you want a thin paint with a delicate colour.

Tempera paints are also easy to use. They are thicker than water-colours. Temperas are ready to use and clean up easily with soap and water. But they cost more than other paints.

Powder paints may be thick or thin, depending on how much water you add. For a thick paint with a shiny finish, mix the powder with white glue. This shiny paint works well for finger painting.

Picture Credit : Google

Prehistoric Paintings

Imagine living more than 30,000 years ago. Writing has not been invented yet. But you want to keep track of the exciting things that happen to you. How do you do it?

Very early people used pictures to record their adventures. In 1956, Frenchman Henri Lhote discovered hundreds of paintings on cave walls in Algeria. Many of them show different kinds of animals. They also show people doing everyday things, such as hunting and herding animals.

Thousands of years ago, the native people of Australia painted pictures on bark. Their relatives, who live in Australia today, the Aborigines, still paint bark pictures. Most of these pictures tell stories that were passed down from parents to children for hundreds of years.

To make a bark picture, Aborigines cut bark from a eucalyptus tree. Next, they flatten and dry the bark.

Then they scratch a design into the bark and paint the design. They make their paint from crushed plants mixed with charcoal.

Picture Credit : Google