Portal:Painting Information

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The Painting Portal

The Mona Lisa (1503–1517) by Leonardo da Vinci is one of the world's most recognizable paintings.

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.

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 in the visual arts, bringing in elements such as drawing, composition, gesture (as in gestural painting), narration (as in narrative art), and abstraction (as in abstract art). Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in still life and 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 religious art. Examples of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery, to Biblical scenes on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, to scenes from the life of Buddha (or other images of Eastern religious origin). ( Full article...)

Selected general articles

  • 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...)
  • Filled-in child's coloring book, Garfield Goose (1953)


    A coloring book (British English: colouring-in book, colouring book, or colouring page) is a type of book containing line art to which people are intended to add color using crayons, colored pencils, marker pens, paint or other artistic media. Traditional coloring books and coloring pages are printed on paper or card. Some coloring books have perforated edges so their pages can be removed from the books and used as individual sheets. Others may include a story line and so are intended to be left intact. Today, many children's coloring books feature popular cartoon characters. They are often used as promotional materials for animated motion pictures. Coloring books may also incorporate other activities such as connect the dots, mazes and other puzzles. Some also incorporate the use of stickers. ( Full article...)
  • Archip Kuindshi, Moonlit Night on the Dnieper 1882.


    The depiction of night in paintings is common in Western art. Paintings that feature a night scene as the theme may be religious or history paintings, genre scenes, portraits, landscapes, or other subject types. Some artworks involve religious or fantasy topics using the quality of dim night light to create mysterious atmospheres. The source of illumination in a night scene—whether it is the moon or an artificial light source—may be depicted directly, or it may be implied by the character and coloration of the light that reflects from the subjects depicted. ( 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...)
  • Hiroshige, The moon over a waterfall

    The depiction of night in paintings is common in art in Asia. Paintings that feature the night scene as the theme are mostly portraits and landscapes. Some artworks which involve religious or fantasy topics use the quality of dim night light to create mysterious atmospheres. They tend to illustrate the illuminating effect of the light reflection on the subjects under either moonlight or artificial light sources. ( Full article...)
  • Xia Gui ( Song dynasty) – Mountain Market- Clear with Rising Mist, one of the 8 scenes of the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang, a favourite subject in the Chinese ink wash painting tradition, showing the variety of effects achievable with black ink.

    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 literati painting, that only uses black ink in various levels of dilution, is ink wash painting. This is used, especially for landscape painting, in Chinese painting, Japanese painting and Korean painting. ( Full article...)
  • The ISCC–NBS System of Color Designation is a system for naming colors based on a set of 12 basic color terms and a small set of adjective modifiers. It was first established in the 1930s by a joint effort of the Inter-Society Color Council, made up of delegates from various American trade organizations, and the National Bureau of Standards, a US government agency. As suggested in 1932 by the first chairman of the ISCC, the system’s goal is to be “a means of designating colors in the United States Pharmacopoeia, in the National Formulary, and in general literature ... such designation to be sufficiently standardized as to be acceptable and usable by science, sufficiently broad to be appreciated and used by science, art, and industry, and sufficiently commonplace to be understood, at least in a general way, by the whole public.” The system aims to provide a basis on which color definitions in fields from fashion and printing to botany and geology can be systematized and regularized, so that each industry need not invent its own incompatible color system.

    In 1939, the system’s approach was published in the Journal of Research of the National Bureau of Standards, and the ISCC formally approved the system, which consisted of a set of blocks within the color space defined by the Munsell color system as embodied by the Munsell Book of Color. Over the following decades the ISCC–NBS system’s boundaries were tweaked and its relation to various other color standards were defined, including for instance those for plastics, building materials, botany, paint, and soil. After the definition of the Munsell system was slightly altered by its 1943 renotations, the ISCC–NBS system was redefined in the 1950s in relation to the new Munsell coordinates. In 1955, the NBS published The Color Names Dictionary, which cross-referenced terms from several other color systems and dictionaries, relating them to the ISCC–NBS system and thereby to each other. In 1965, the NBS published Centroid Color Charts made up of color samples demonstrating the central color in each category, as a physical representation of the system usable by the public, and also published The Universal Color Language, a more general system for color designation with various degrees of precision from completely generic (13 broad categories) to extremely precise (numeric values from spectrophotometric measurement). In 1976, The Color Names Dictionary and The Universal Color Language were combined and updated with the publication of Color: Universal Language and Dictionary of Names, the definitive source on the ISCC–NBS system. ( Full article...)
  • Carved and inlaid Late Baroque supraporte in Toruń, Poland


    An "overdoor" (or "Supraporte" as in German, or "sopraporte" as in Italian) is a painting, bas-relief or decorative panel, generally in a horizontal format, that is set, typically within ornamental mouldings, over a door, or was originally intended for this purpose.

    The overdoor is usually architectural in form, but may take the form of a cartouche in Rococo settings, or it may be little more than a moulded shelf for the placement of ceramic vases, busts or curiosities. An overmantel serves a similar function above a fireplace mantel. ( Full article...)
  • Ceiling painting, by Jean-André Rixens. Salle des Illustres, Le Capitole, Toulouse, France

    A mural is any piece of graphic artwork that is painted or applied directly to a wall, ceiling or other permanent substrate. Mural techniques include fresco, mosaic, graffiti and marouflage. ( Full article...)
  • Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave, in Kalimantan, Indonesia, contains one of the oldest known figurative paintings, a 40,000 year-old depiction of a bull.

    The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts and artwork created by pre-historic artists, and spans all cultures. It represents a continuous, though periodically disrupted, tradition from Antiquity. Across cultures, continents, and millennia, the history of painting consists of an ongoing river of creativity that continues into the 21st century. Until the early 20th century it relied primarily on representational, religious and classical motifs, after which time more purely abstract and conceptual approaches gained favor.

    Developments in Eastern painting historically parallel those in Western painting, in general, a few centuries earlier. African art, Jewish art, Islamic art, Indonesian art, Indian art, Chinese art, and Japanese art each had significant influence on Western art, and vice versa. ( Full article...)
  • Annibale Carracci, Allegory of Truth and Time (1584–85), an allegorical history painting relying very little upon realism.

    A hierarchy of genres is any formalization which ranks different genres in an art form in terms of their prestige and cultural value.

    In literature, the epic was considered the highest form, for the reason expressed by Samuel Johnson in his Life of John Milton: "By the general consent of criticks, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions." Below that came lyric poetry, and comic poetry, with a similar ranking for drama. The novel took a long time to establish a firm place in the hierarchy, doing so only as belief in any systematic hierarchy of forms expired in the 19th century. ( Full article...)
  • The Jerwood Painting Prize was a prize for originality and excellence in painting in the United Kingdom, awarded and funded by the Jerwood Foundation. It was open to all artists born or resident in the UK, regardless of age or reputation. Winners of the prize include Craigie Aitchison, Patrick Caulfield, Prunella Clough and Maggi Hambling. The prize was instituted in 1994, and at £30,000 was the largest of its kind in Britain. The prize is no longer awarded. ( Full article...)
  • The conservation-restoration of panel paintings involves preventive and treatment measures taken by paintings conservators to slow deterioration, preserve, and repair damage. Panel paintings consist of a wood support, a ground (linen or parchment sized with glues, resin, and gesso), and an image layer ( encaustic, tempera, oil). They are typically constructed of two or more panels joined together by crossbeam braces which can separate due to age and material instability caused by fluctuations in relative humidity and temperature. These factors compromise structural integrity and can lead to warping and paint flaking. Because wood is particularly susceptible to pest damage, an IPM plan and regulation of the conditions in storage and display are essential. Past treatments that have fallen out of favor because they can cause permanent damage include transfer of the painting onto a new support, planing, and heavy cradling. Today's conservators often have to remediate damage from previous restoration efforts. Modern conservation-restoration techniques favor minimal intervention that accommodates wood's natural tendency to react to environmental changes. Treatments may include applying flexible battens to minimize deformation or simply leaving distortions alone, instead focusing on preventive care to preserve the artwork in its original state. ( Full article...)
  • Ancient Rome

    In art, a pendant is one of two paintings, statues, reliefs or other type of works of art intended as a pair. Typically, pendants are related thematically to each other and are displayed in close proximity. For example, pairs of portraits of married couples are very common, as are symmetrically arranged statues flanking an altar.

    Pendants may be the work of a single artist or of two artists, who in some instances might be in competition with one another. An example of the latter case is the pairing of the marble groups The Triumph of Faith over Idolatry by Jean-Baptiste Théodon and Religion Overthrowing Heresy and Hatred by Pierre Le Gros the Younger on the Altar of Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1695–1697/98), in the Church of the Gesù, Rome. ( Full article...)
  • The Golden Apple of Discord at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, Jacob Jordaens, 1633, 181 cm × 288 cm (71 in × 113 in), oil on canvas



    A figure painting is a work of fine art in any of the painting media with the primary subject being the human figure, whether clothed or nude. Figure painting may also refer to the activity of creating such a work. The human figure has been one of the constant subjects of art since the first stone age cave paintings, and has been reinterpreted in various styles throughout history.

    Unlike figure drawings which are usually nudes, figure paintings are often clothed depictions which may be either historically accurate or symbolic.
    Figure painting is not synonymous with figurative art, which may depict real objects of any kind (including humans and animals). ( Full article...)
  • A photo of the orange peel effect on a car door.

    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...)
  • The Idle Servant; housemaid troubles were the subject of several of Nicolaes Maes' works.


    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, 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.

    Rather confusingly, the normal meaning of genre, covering any particular combination of an artistic medium and a type of subject matter (as, for example, in the romance novel), is also used in the visual arts. Thus, genre works, especially when referring to the painting of the Dutch Golden Age and Flemish Baroque painting—the great periods of genre works—may also be used as an umbrella term for painting in various specialized categories such as still-life, marine painting, architectural painting, and animal painting, as well as genre scenes proper where the emphasis is on human figures. Painting was divided into a hierarchy of genres, with history painting at the top, as the most difficult and therefore prestigious, and still life and architectural painting at the bottom. But history paintings are a genre in painting, not genre works. ( Full article...)
  • Henri Matisse, The Dance I, 1909, Museum of Modern Art. One of the cornerstones of 20th-century modern art.

    20th-century Western painting begins with the heritage of late-19th-century painters Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and others who were essential for the development of modern art. At the beginning of the 20th century, Henri Matisse and several other young artists including the pre-cubist Georges Braque, André Derain, Raoul Dufy and Maurice de Vlaminck, revolutionized the Paris art world with "wild", multi-colored, expressive landscapes and figure paintings that the critics called Fauvism. Matisse's second version of The Dance signified a key point in his career and in the development of modern painting. It reflected Matisse's incipient fascination with primitive art: the intense warm color of the figures against the cool blue-green background and the rhythmical succession of the dancing nudes convey the feelings of emotional liberation and hedonism.

    Initially influenced by Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, and other late-19th-century innovators, Pablo Picasso made his first cubist paintings based on Cézanne's idea that all depiction of nature can be reduced to three solids: cube, sphere, and cone. With the painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907; see gallery) Picasso created a new and radical picture depicting a raw and primitive brothel scene with five prostitutes, violently painted women, reminiscent of African tribal masks and his own new proto-Cubist inventions. Analytic cubism, exemplified by Violin and Candlestick, Paris, was jointly developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque from about 1908 through 1912. Analytic cubism was followed by Synthetic cubism, characterized by the introduction of different textures, surfaces, collage elements, papier collé and a large variety of merged subject matter. ( Full article...)
  • Rear view of the Louvre's prime version of Antonio Canova's Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss, 1793

    In the art world, if an artwork exists in several versions, the one known or believed to be the earliest is called the prime version. Many artworks produced in media such as painting or carved sculpture which create unique objects are in fact repeated by their artists, often several times. It is regarded as a matter of some importance both by art historians and the art market to establish which version has "priority", that is to say was the original work. The presumption usually is that the prime version is the finest, and perhaps the most carefully done, though some later versions can be argued to improve on the originals.

    In many periods the later "repetitions" were often produced by the workshop of the master, with varying degrees of supervision and direct attention from him. This was especially the case with official portraits of monarchs and politicians, which in the Early Modern period were often ordered in large numbers of versions from the court artist as diplomatic gifts. "Prime version" is normally only used when there is another version by the same artist, or his workshop. Other versions by other artists are called copies. Sometimes "reduced versions" that are considerably smaller than the prime one are made. Especially in the case of 19th-century repetitions, the term autograph replica is used of repetitions by the original artist. ( Full article...)
  • Simon Hantaï (7 December 1922, Biatorbágy, Hungary – Paris, 12 September 2008; took French nationality in 1966) is a painter generally associated with abstract art. ( Full article...)
  • Tondo by Andrea della Robbia

    A tondo (plural "tondi" or "tondos") is a Renaissance term for a circular work of art, either a painting or a sculpture. The word derives from the Italian rotondo, "round." The term is usually not used in English for small round paintings, but only those over about 60 cm (two feet) in diameter, thus excluding many round portrait miniatures – for sculpture the threshold is rather lower.
    A circular or oval relief sculpture is also called a roundel. ( 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...)
  • Digital painting is a relatively new but an already established art form. It’s a medium that typically combines a computer, a graphics tablet, and software of choice. The artist uses painting and drawing techniques with the stylus that comes with the graphics tablet to create 2D paintings within a digital art software. There are multiple techniques and tools that are utilized by digital artists, the first being digital brushes. These come standard with all digital art programs but users can create their own, altering their shape, texture, size, and transfer. Many of these brushes are created to represent traditional styles like oils, acrylics, pastels, charcoal, and airbrushing, but not all. Other effective tools include layers, lasso tools, shapes, and masks. Digital painting has evolved to not just mimic traditional art styles but fully become its own technique.

    Digital painting is used by hobbyist and professional artists alike. Its use is particularly prevalent in commercial production studios that create games, television, and film. There are multiple reasons for this which also applies to the hobbyist artists as well. Digital painting enables artists to experiment with different techniques and colors easily as its use of layers, the undo function, and save files, make it a non-destructive work process. Artists can always return to an earlier state within the art piece so nothing is ever truly lost. This not only saves time but also materials while giving the artist more freedom to create. ( Full article...)
  • Inscape, in visual art, is a term especially associated with certain works of Chilean artist Roberto Matta, but it is also used in other senses within the visual arts. Though the term inscape has been applied to stylistically diverse artworks, it usually conveys some notion of representing the artist's psyche as a kind of interior landscape. The word inscape can therefore be read as a kind of portmanteau, combining interior (or inward) with landscape. ( Full article...)
  • Horatius Cocles, engraving by Hendrick Goltzius – an example of a Figura serpentinata

    Figura serpentinata (Italian for ‘ serpentine figure’) is a style in painting and sculpture, intended to make the figure seem more dynamic, that is typical of Mannerism. It is similar, but not identical, to contrapposto, and features figures often in a spiral pose. Early examples can be seen in the work of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo.

    Emil Maurer writes of the painter and theorist Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo (1538–1600): "The recommended ideal form unites, after Lomazzo, three qualities: the pyramid, the serpentinata movement and a certain numerical proportion, all three united to form one whole. At the same time, precedence is given to the "moto", that is, to the meandering movement, which should make the pyramid, in exact proportion, into the geometrical form of a cone." ( Full article...)

Selected painting techniques

  • Quentin Matsys: Virgin and Child with Saints Barbara and Catherine, c. 1515-25. National Gallery, London. This near-ruined example of glue-size technique is covered by an accumulated layer of surface dirt which cannot be wiped by restorers for fear of severe damage to the pigments.


    Glue-size is a painting technique in which pigment is bound ( sized) to cloth (usually linen) with hide glue, and typically the unvarnished cloth was then fixed to the frame using the same glue. Glue-size is also known as distemper, though the term " distemper" is applied variously to different techniques. Glue-size was used because hide glue was a popular binding medium in the 15th century, particularly among artists of the Early Netherlandish period, who used it as an inexpensive alternative to oil. Although a large number of works using this medium were produced, few survive today, mainly because of the high perishability of linen cloth and the solubility of hide glue. Well-known and relatively well-preserved — though substantially damaged — the most notable examples include Quentin Matsys' Virgin and Child with Saints Barbara and Catherine (c. 1515-25) and Dirk Bouts' Entombment (c. 1440-55). In German the technique is known as Tüchleinfarben, meaning “small cloth colours”, or Tüchlein, derived from the German words Tüch and Lein ("fabric" and "flax"). ( Full article...)
  • Drip painting is a form of abstract art in which paint is dripped or poured on to the canvas. This style of action painting was experimented with in the first half of the twentieth century by such artists as Francis Picabia, André Masson and Max Ernst, who employed drip painting in his works The Bewildered Planet, and Young Man Intrigued by the Flight of a Non-Euclidean Fly (1942). Ernst used the novel means of painting Lissajous figures by swinging a punctured bucket of paint over a horizontal canvas.

    Drip painting found particular expression in the work of the mid-twentieth-century artists Janet Sobel—who pioneered the technique—and Jackson Pollock. Pollock found drip painting to his liking, later using the technique almost exclusively. He used unconventional tools like sticks, hardened brushes and even basting syringes to create large and energetic abstract works. Pollock used house or industrial paint to create his paintings—Pollock's wife Lee Krasner described his palette as "typically a can or two of … enamel, thinned to the point he wanted it, standing on the floor besides the rolled-out canvas" and that Pollock used Duco or Davoe and Reynolds brands of house paint. House paint was less viscous than traditional tubes of oil paint, and Pollock thus created his large compositions horizontally to prevent his paint from running. His gestural lines create a unified overall pattern that allows the eye to travel from one of the canvases to the other and back again. ( Full article...)
  • Example of a theorem painting (c.1850) from the Metropolitan Museum of Art

    Theorem stencil, sometimes also called theorem painting or velvet painting, is the art of making stencils and using them to make drawings or paintings on fabric or paper.

    A vogue for theorem stencil painting began in England at the turn of the 18th century. The art was first taught to women in academies and boarding schools throughout colonial New England. It continued to be taught into the mid-1800s in many other areas. ( Full article...)
  • In two-dimensional works of art, such as painting, printmaking, photography or bas-relief, repoussoir (French:  [ʁəpuswaʁ], pushing back) is an object along the right or left foreground that directs the viewer's eye into the composition by bracketing ( framing) the edge. It became popular with Mannerist and Baroque artists, and is found frequently in Dutch seventeenth-century landscape paintings. Jacob van Ruisdael, for example, often included a tree along one side to enclose the scene (see illustration). Figures are also commonly employed as repoussoir devices by artists such as Paolo Veronese, Peter Paul Rubens and Impressionists such as Gustave Caillebotte. ( Full article...)
  • Ceiling of the Treasure Room of the Archaeological Museum of Ferrara ( Ferrara, Italy), painted in 1503–1506


    Trompe-l'œil ( /trɒmp ˈlɔɪ/ tromp LOY, French:  [tʁɔ̃p lœj]; French for 'deceive the eye') is an art technique that uses realistic imagery to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects exist in three dimensions. Forced perspective is a comparable illusion in architecture. ( Full article...)
  • Triumph of the Name of Jesus, by Giovanni Battista Gaulli, on the ceiling of the Church of the Gesu. The decorations of the vault over the nave date back to the 17th century. The fresco is the work of Giovanni Battista Gaulli, known as Baciccia. The stucco reliefs were executed by Ercole Antonio Raggi and Leonardo Reti, following the drawings of Baciccia who wanted to effect a real continuity between painting and sculpture.


    Illusionism in art history means either the artistic tradition in which artists create a work of art that appears to share the physical space with the viewer or more broadly the attempt to represent physical appearances precisely – also called mimesis. The term realist may be used in this sense, but that also has rather different meanings in art, as it is also used to cover the choice of ordinary everyday subject-matter, and avoiding idealizing subjects. Illusionism encompasses a long history, from the deceptions of Zeuxis and Parrhasius to the works of muralist Richard Haas in the twentieth century, that includes trompe-l'œil, anamorphosis, optical art, abstract illusionism, and illusionistic ceiling painting techniques such as di sotto in sù and quadratura. Sculptural illusionism includes works, often painted, that appear real from a distance. Other forms, such as the illusionistic tradition in the theatre, and Samuel van Hoogstraten's "peepshow"-boxes from the seventeenth century, combine illusionistic techniques and media. ( Full article...)
  • Raphael's La belle jardinière, showing the use of unione


    According to the theory of the art historian Marcia B. Hall, which has gained considerable acceptance, unione (Italian:  [uˈnjoːne]) is one of the canonical painting modes of the Renaissance; that is, one of four modes of painting colours available to Italian High Renaissance painters, along with sfumato, chiaroscuro and cangiante. Unione was developed by Raphael, who exemplified it in the Stanza della Segnatura.

    Unione is similar to sfumato, but is more useful for the edges of chiaroscuro, where vibrant colors are involved. As with chiaroscuro, unione conveys the contrasts, and as sfumato it strives for harmony and unity, but also for coloristic richness. Unione is softer than chiaroscuro in the search for the right tonal key. There should be the harmony between light and dark, without the excesses and accentuation of a chiaroscuro mode. ( Full article...)
  • The assembly and painting of models is a major aspect of the hobby of miniature wargaming.


    Figure painting, or miniature painting, is the hobby of painting miniature figures and/or model figures, either as a standalone activity or as a part of another activity that uses models, such as role-playing games, wargames, or military modeling.

    In addition to the painting of models, the creation of scenic basing for the model to be affixed to is also an important part of the hobby (although not all figure painters are concerned about the basing of their models). These can range from very simple applications of textured pastes, grit, and static grass for gaming bases, to larger scenic bases for display models, and even full dioramas depicting a scene of a single model or a group of models together in tableau to create a story in one moment. It can also include aspects of sculpting, for the purpose of creating additional details for models and bases, as a means of customizing the model to make them more unique, or to create entirely scratch built models for painting. Many figure painters also paint scale busts as part of the hobby, often in bigger scales than figures with a higher level of detail, and display bases and backdrops for them. ( Full article...)
  • Detail of the face of Mona Lisa showing the use of sfumato, particularly in the shading around the eyes.

    Sfumato (Italian:  [sfuˈmaːto], English: /sfjuːˈmeɪtoʊ/) is one of the canonical painting modes of the Renaissance, and is a painting technique for softening the transition between colours, mimicking an area beyond what the human eye is focusing on, or the out-of-focus plane. Leonardo da Vinci was the most prominent practitioner of sfumato, based on his research in optics and human vision, and his experimentation with the camera obscura. He introduced it and implemented it in many of his works, including the Virgin of the Rocks and in his famous painting of the Mona Lisa. He described sfumato as "without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane".

    According to the theory of the art historian Marcia B. Hall, which has gained considerable acceptance, sfumato is one of four modes of painting colours available to Italian High Renaissance painters, along with cangiante, chiaroscuro, and unione. ( Full article...)
  • Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way mural was made using stereochromy technique

    Mineral painting or Keim's process, also known as stereochromy, is a mural or fresco painting technique that uses a water glass-based paint to maximize the lifetime of the finished work.

    The name "stereochromy" was first used in about 1825 by Johann Nepomuk von Fuchs and Schlotthaurer. In the original technique, pigments were applied to plaster or stone and sealed with water glass to preserve and enhance the colors. The method was then improved in the 1880s by Adolf Wilhelm Keim and renamed mineral painting or Keim's process. ( Full article...)
  • Craquelure in the Mona Lisa, with a typical "Italian" pattern of small rectangular blocks

    Craquelure ( French: craquelé; Italian: crettatura) is a fine pattern of dense cracking formed on the surface of materials. It can be a result of drying, aging, intentional patterning, or a combination of all three. The term is most often used to refer to tempera or oil paintings, but it can also develop in old ivory carvings or painted miniatures on an ivory backing. Recently, analysis of craquelure has been proposed as a way to authenticate art.

    In ceramics, craquelure in ceramic glazes, where it is often a desired effect, is called "crackle"; it is a characteristic of Chinese Ge ware in particular. This is usually differentiated from crazing, which is a glaze defect in firing, or the result of aging or damage. ( Full article...)
  • Nōtan (濃淡) is a Japanese design concept involving the play and placement of light and dark elements as they are placed next to the other in the composition of art and imagery. ( Full article...)
  • 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. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist. ( Full article...)
  • Installation view of Irrational Geometrics 2008 by Pascal Dombis

    Generative art refers to art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system. An autonomous system in this context is generally one that is non-human and can independently determine features of an artwork that would otherwise require decisions made directly by the artist. In some cases the human creator may claim that the generative system represents their own artistic idea, and in others that the system takes on the role of the creator.

    "Generative art" often refers to algorithmic art (algorithmically determined computer generated artwork) and synthetic media (general term for any algorithmically-generated media), but artists can also make it using systems of chemistry, biology, mechanics and robotics, smart materials, manual randomization, mathematics, data mapping, symmetry, tiling, and more. ( Full article...)
  • The illusionistic perspective of Andrea Pozzo's trompe-l'œil dome at Sant'Ignazio (1685) creates an illusion of an actual architectural space on what is, in actuality, a slightly concave painted surface.


    Illusionistic ceiling painting, which includes the techniques of perspective di sotto in sù and quadratura, is the tradition in Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art in which trompe-l'œil, perspective tools such as foreshortening, and other spatial effects are used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on an otherwise two-dimensional or mostly flat ceiling surface above the viewer. It is frequently used to create the illusion of an open sky, such as with the oculus in Andrea Mantegna's Camera degli Sposi, or the illusion of an architectural space such as the cupola, one of Andrea Pozzo's frescoes in Sant'Ignazio, Rome. Illusionistic ceiling painting belongs to the general class of illusionism in art, designed to create accurate representations of reality. ( Full article...)
  • White lead pastiglia on an Italian casket, late 15th century, with Marcus Curtius at left, British Museum.

    Pastiglia [paˈstiʎʎa], an Italian term meaning "pastework", is low relief decoration, normally modelled in gesso or white lead, applied to build up a surface that may then be gilded or painted, or left plain. The technique was used in a variety of ways in Italy during the Renaissance. The term is mostly found in English applied to gilded work on picture frames or small pieces of furniture such as wooden caskets and cassoni, and also on areas of panel paintings, but there is some divergence as to the meaning of the term between these specialisms.

    On frames and furniture the technique is in origin a cheaper imitation of woodcarving, metalwork or ivory carving techniques. Within paintings, the technique gives areas with a three-dimensional effect, usually those representing inanimate objects, such as foliage decoration on architectural surrounds, halos and details of dress, rather than parts of figures. In white lead pastiglia on caskets, the subject matter is usually classical, with a special emphasis on stories from Ancient Roman history. ( Full article...)
  • Still Life: Vase with Pink Roses is an oil painting by Van Gogh in 1890 which makes extensive use of the impasto technique.

    Impasto is a technique used in painting, where paint is laid on an area of the surface thickly, usually thick enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Paint can also be mixed right on the canvas. When dry, impasto provides texture; the paint appears to be coming out of the canvas. ( Full article...)
  • Paasche F#1 Single-action external mix airbrush

    An airbrush is a small, air-operated tool that atomizes and sprays various media, most often paint but also ink and dye, and foundation. Spray painting developed from the airbrush and is considered to employ a type of airbrush. ( Full article...)
  • Detail from Seurat's Parade de cirque, 1889, showing the contrasting dots of paint which define Pointillism

    Pointillism ( /ˈpwæ̃tɪlɪzəm/, also US: /ˈpwɑːn-ˌ ˈpɔɪn-/) is a technique of painting in which small, distinct dots of color are applied in patterns to form an image.

    Georges Seurat and Paul Signac developed the technique in 1886, branching from Impressionism. The term "Pointillism" was coined by art critics in the late 1880s to ridicule the works of these artists, but is now used without its earlier pejorative connotation. The movement Seurat began with this technique is known as Neo-impressionism. The Divisionists used a similar technique of patterns to form images, though with larger cube-like brushstrokes. ( Full article...)
  • Xia Gui ( Song dynasty) – Mountain Market- Clear with Rising Mist, one of the 8 scenes of the Eight Views of Xiaoxiang, a favourite subject in the Chinese ink wash painting tradition, showing the variety of effects achievable with black ink.

    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 literati painting, that only uses black ink in various levels of dilution, is ink wash painting. This is used, especially for landscape painting, in Chinese painting, Japanese painting and Korean painting. ( Full article...)
  • U.S. President George W. Bush examines a Yirrkala bark painting during a tour of the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney on 6 September 2007.

    Bark painting is an Australian Aboriginal art form, involving painting on the interior of a strip of tree bark. This is a continuing form of artistic expression in Arnhem Land (especially among the Yolngu peoples) and other regions in the Top End of Australia, including parts of the Kimberley region of Western Australia. Traditionally, bark paintings were produced for instructional and ceremonial purposes and were transient objects. Today, they are keenly sought after by collectors and public arts institutions. ( Full article...)
  • Ombré: black to blue

    Ombré /ˈɒmbreɪ/ (literally "shaded" in French) is the blending of one color hue to another, usually moving tints and shades from light to dark. It has become a popular feature for hair coloring, nail art, and even baking, in addition to its uses in home decorating and graphic design.

    In contrast to ombré, sombré is a much softer and gradual shading of one color to another. ( Full article...)
  • Beach scene with bacterial strains expressing different kinds of fluorescent protein, from the laboratory of the Nobel Prize–winning biochemist Roger Tsien


    Microbial art, agar art, or germ art is artwork created by culturing microorganisms in certain patterns. The microbes used can be bacteria, yeast fungi, or less commonly, protists. The microbes can be chosen for their natural colours, or can be engineered to express fluorescent proteins and viewed under ultraviolet light to make them fluoresce in colour. ( Full article...)
  • A Chinoiserie Procession of Figures Riding on Elephants with Temples Beyond, oil on canvas verdaille by Jean-Baptiste Pillement


    Verdaille is a painting executed entirely or primarily in shades of green. Such a painting is described as having been painted "en verdaille".

    Verdaille has its roots in 12th century stained glass made for Cistercian monasteries, which prohibited the use of colored art in 1134. Such paintings are less common than paintings executed in grey ( grisaille) or in brown ( brunaille). ( Full article...)

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