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The Painting Portal
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 visual art, bringing in elements such as drawing, composition, gesture, narration, and abstraction. 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
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Genre painting (or petit genre), a form of genre art, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. One common definition of a genre scene is that it shows figures to whom no identity can be attached either individually or collectively, thus distinguishing it from history paintings (also called grand genre) and portraits. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known person—a member of his family, say—as a model. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have been intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist. Because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class.
Genre subjects appear in many traditions of art. Painted decorations in ancient Egyptian tombs often depict banquets, recreation, and agrarian scenes, and Peiraikos is mentioned by Pliny the Elder as a Hellenistic panel painter of "low" subjects, such as survive in mosaic versions and provincial wall-paintings at Pompeii: "barbers' shops, cobblers' stalls, asses, eatables and similar subjects". Medieval illuminated manuscripts often illustrated scenes of everyday peasant life, especially in the Labours of the Months in the calendar section of books of hours, most famously the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. (Full article...) -
Image 2A 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...) -
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In the visual arts, style is a "... distinctive manner which permits the grouping of works into related categories" or "... any distinctive, and therefore recognizable, way in which an act is performed or an artifact made or ought to be performed and made". Style refers to the visual appearance of a work of art that relates to other works with similar aesthetic roots, by the same artist, or from the same period, training, location, "school", art movement or archaeological culture: "The notion of style has long been historian's principal mode of classifying works of art".
Style can be divided into the general style of a period, country or cultural group, group of artists or art movement, and the individual style of the artist within that group style. Divisions within both types of styles are often made, such as between "early", "middle" or "late". In some artists, such as Picasso for example, these divisions may be marked and easy to see; in others, they are more subtle. Style is seen as usually dynamic, in most periods always changing by a gradual process, though the speed of this varies greatly, from the very slow development in style typical of prehistoric art or Ancient Egyptian art to the rapid changes in Modern art styles. Style often develops in a series of jumps, with relatively sudden changes followed by periods of slower development. (Full article...) -
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Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel or copper for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of the world. The advantages of oil for painting images include "greater flexibility, richer and denser colour, the use of layers, and a wider range from light to dark". But the process is slower, especially when one layer of paint needs to be allowed to dry before another is applied.
The oldest known oil paintings were created by Buddhist artists in Afghanistan and date back to the 7th century AD. Oil paint was used by Europeans for painting statues and woodwork from at least the 12th century, but its common use for painted images began with Early Netherlandish painting in Northern Europe, and by the height of the Renaissance, oil painting techniques had almost completely replaced the use of egg tempera paints for panel paintings in most of Europe, though not for Orthodox icons or wall paintings, where tempera and fresco, respectively, remained the usual choice. (Full article...) -
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In painting, a pentimento (Italian for 'repentance'; from the verb pentirsi, meaning 'to repent'; plural pentimenti) is "the presence or emergence of earlier images, forms, or strokes that have been changed and painted over". Sometimes the English form "pentiment" is used, especially in older sources. (Full article...) -
Image 6Historic paint analysis, or architectural paint research, is the scientific analysis of a broad range of architectural finishes, and is primarily used to determine the color and behavior of surface finishes at any given point in time. This helps us to understand the building's structural history and how its appearance has changed over time.
Historic paint analysis shares a common methodology with the conservation and restoration of paintings used to conserve and restore two- and three dimensional works of art. This involves the identification of components such as organic or inorganic pigments and 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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Live painting is a form of visual performance art in which artists complete a visual art piece in a public performance, often at a bar, music concert, wedding reception, or public event, accompanied by a DJ or live music. The artwork which is created live may be planned or improvisational. This live art form is often contrasted with more studied fine art compositions from the same artists, which are generally executed in an artist studio or other private space.
Artists in a number of genres have performed live painting, including LeRoy Neiman creating a painting during the 1976 Summer Olympics. In the 1990s and 2000s, live painting became a hallmark of street art and graffiti artists. (Full article...) -
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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...) -
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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...) -
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Letras y figuras (Spanish, "letters and figures") is a genre of painting pioneered by José Honorato Lozano during the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines. The art form is distinguished by the depiction of letters of the alphabet using a genre of painting that contoured shapes of human figures, animals, plants, and other objects called Tipos del País popularized by Damián Domingo. The letters depicted spell out a phrase or a name, usually that of the patron who commissioned the work. The paintings were done with watercolor on Manila paper. The earliest example of this art form dates from 1845; the latest existing specimens were completed during the latter portion of the American period in the 1930s during the administration of the Commonwealth of the Philippines.
In 1995, an album of José Honorato Lozano's paintings were auctioned at Christie’s at the starting bid of £300,000. (Full article...) -
Image 11A 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...) -
Image 12Inscape, 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...)
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Pinxit (from Latin: 'one painted') is a stylized amendment added to the signature depiction of the name of the person responsible for a work of art, found conventionally in the Late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is sometimes abbreviated P, PIN, or PINX, as in some paintings by Raphael. The locution me pinxit is found on a 12th-century crucifix, not in a sense connected to individual authorship but rather as a more impersonal devotional statement, a "pious [formula] appropriate for liturgical gifts".
Its use by Duccio c. 1255–1260 – c. 1318–1319) on the Maestà in Siena Cathedral is seen as an "audacious" claim by the author, who asserts an individual status on a par with that of the city. By the Late Middle Ages in Venice and elsewhere pinxit (or other forms of pingere, in Gothic lettering) had become customary, and was often found on a cartellino, "any form of fictive paper carrying an inscription", established in Venice by the 1440s. Other verbs used to establish authorship include conjugations of facere ("to make"; fecit ("made by") was frequently used by Titian) or fingere ("to conceive"). (Full article...) -
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Raking light, the illumination of objects from a light source at an oblique angle or almost parallel to the surface, provides information on the surface topography and relief of the artefact thus lit. It is widely used in the examination of works of art. (Full article...) -
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Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also aquarelle (French: [akwaʁɛl]; from Italian diminutive of Latin aqua 'water'), is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. Watercolor refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork. Aquarelles painted with water-soluble colored ink instead of modern water colors are called aquarellum atramento (Latin for "aquarelle made with ink") by experts. However, this term has now tended to pass out of use.
The conventional and most common support — material to which the paint is applied—for watercolor paintings is watercolor paper. Other supports or substrates include stone, ivory, silk, reed, papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum, leather, fabric, wood, and watercolor canvas (coated with a gesso that is specially formulated for use with watercolors). Watercolor paper is often made entirely or partially with cotton. This gives the surface the appropriate texture and minimizes distortion when wet. Watercolor papers are usually cold-pressed papers that provide better texture and appearance with a weight at least 300 gsm (140 lb). Under 300 gsm (140 lb) is commonly not recommended for anything but sketching. Transparency is the main characteristic of watercolors. Watercolors can also be made opaque by adding Chinese white. This is not a method to be used in "true watercolor" (traditional). (Full article...) -
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The ISCC–NBS System of Color Designation is a system for naming colors based on a set of 13 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 (ISCC), made up of delegates from various American trade organizations, and the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), 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. (Full article...) -
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Abstract art uses visual language of shape, form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world.
Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an attempt to reproduce an illusion of visible reality. By the end of the 19th century many artists felt a need to create a new kind of art which would encompass the fundamental changes taking place in technology, science and philosophy. The sources from which individual artists drew their theoretical arguments were diverse, and reflected the social and intellectual preoccupations in all areas of Western culture at that time. (Full article...) -
Image 18Volume solid is the volume of paint after it has dried. This is different than the weight solid. Paint may contain solvent, resin, pigments, and additives. Many paints do not contain any solvent. After applying the paint, the solid portion will be left on the substrate. Volume solid is the term that indicates the solid proportion of the paint on a volume basis. For example, if the paint is applied in a wet film at a 100 μm thickness and the volume solid of paint is 50%, then the dry film thickness (DFT) will be 50 μm as 50% of the wet paint has evaporated. Suppose the volume solid is 100%, and the wet film thickness is also 100 μm. Then after complete drying of the paint, the DFT will be 100 μm because no solvent will be evaporated.
This is an important concept when using paint industrially to calculate the cost of painting. It can be said that it is the real volume of paint. (Full article...) -
Image 19The paint and sip industry is a set of experience-based businesses that hire professional artists to provide step-by-step instructions to reproduce a pre-selected work of art while they drink wine or other beverages. When class attendees finish, they get to keep their creations. (Full article...)
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A house painter and decorator is a tradesperson responsible for the painting and decorating of buildings, and is also known as a decorator, or house painter. The purpose of painting is to improve the appearance of a building and to protect it from damage by water, corrosion, insects and mould. House painting can also be a form of artistic and/or cultural expression such as Ndebele house painting. (Full article...) -
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En plein air (pronounced [ɑ̃ plɛ.n‿ɛʁ]; French for 'outdoors'), or plein-air painting, is the act of painting outdoors.
This method contrasts with studio painting or academic rules that might create a predetermined look. The theory of 'En plein air' painting is credited to Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819), first expounded in a treatise entitled Reflections and Advice to a Student on Painting, Particularly on Landscape (1800), where he developed the concept of landscape portraiture by which the artist paints directly onto canvas in situ within the landscape. (Full article...) -
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Painterliness is a concept based on German: malerisch ('painterly'), a word popularized by Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin (1864–1945) to help focus, enrich and standardize the terms being used by art historians of his time to characterize works of art.
A painting is said to be painterly when there are visible brushstrokes in the final work – the result of applying paint in a manner that is not entirely controlled, generally without closely following carefully drawn lines. Any painting media – oils, acrylics, watercolors, gouache, etc. – can produce either linear or painterly work. Some artists whose work could be characterized as painterly are Pierre Bonnard, Francis Bacon, Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt, Renoir, John Singer Sargent, and Andrew Wyeth (his early watercolors). The Impressionists, Fauvists and the Abstract Expressionists tended strongly to be painterly. (Full article...) -
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Industrial paint robots have been used for decades in automotive paint applications.
Early paint robots were hydraulic versions, which are still in use today but are of inferior quality and safety to the latest electronic offerings. The newest robots are accurate and deliver results with uniform film builds and exact thicknesses. (Full article...) -
Image 24A range-finder painting, sometimes called range-finding painting, is a large landscape painting produced as a training device to help gunners improve their accuracy. Historically, the best-documented use of such paintings was in the United States during World War I. (Full article...)
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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...)
Selected painting techniques
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Rose-painting, rosemaling, rosemåling or rosmålning is a Scandinavian decorative folk painting that flourished from the 1700s to the mid-1800s, particularly in Norway. In Sweden, rose-painting began to be called dalmålning, c. 1901, for the region Dalecarlia where it had been most popular and kurbits, in the 1920s, for a characteristic trait, but in Norway the old name still predominates beside terms for local variants. Rose-painting was used to decorate church walls and ceilings. It then spread to wooden items commonly used in daily life, such as ale bowls, stools, chairs, cupboards, boxes, and trunks. Using stylized ornamentation made up of fantasy flowers, scrollwork, fine line work, flowing patterns and sometimes geometric elements give rose-painting its unique feel. Some paintings may include landscapes and architectural elements. Rose-painting also utilizes other decorative painting techniques such as glazing, spattering, marbleizing, manipulating the paint with the fingers or other objects. Regional styles of rose-painting developed, and some varied only slightly from others, while others may be noticeably distinct. (Full article...) -
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Drybrush is a painting technique in which a paint brush that is relatively dry, but still holds paint, is used to create a drawing or painting. Load is applied to a dry support such as paper or primed canvas. The resulting brush-strokes have a characteristic scratchy and textured look that lacks the smooth appearance that washes or blended paint commonly have. This technique can be used to achieve a blurred or soft appearance.
The technique of drybrush painting can be achieved with both water-based and oil-based media. With water-based media such as inks, acrylic paints, tempera-paints, or watercolor-paints, the brush is usually dry or squeezed dry of all water. The brush is loaded with paint that is highly viscous or thick and then applied to a dry support. With other water-based media, the brush is loaded with paint and then squeezed dry. When using oil-based media, such as oil-paint, similar techniques are used, although instead of water, the brush is used dry or any oil or solvent is removed. Because oil-paint has a longer drying-time than water-based media, brushing over or blending drybrush strokes is often avoided to preserve the distinctive look of the drybrush-painting-technique. (Full article...) -
Image 4Shaped canvases are paintings that depart from the normal flat, rectangular configuration. Canvases may be shaped by altering their outline, while retaining their flatness. An ancient, traditional example is the tondo, a painting on a round panel or canvas: Raphael, as well as some other Renaissance painters, sometimes chose this format for madonna paintings. Alternatively, canvases may be altered by losing their flatness and assuming a three-dimensional surface. Or they can do both. That is, they can assume shapes other than rectangles, and also have surface features that are three-dimensional. Arguably, changing the surface configuration of the painting transforms it into a sculpture. But shaped canvases are generally considered paintings.
Apart from any aesthetic considerations, there are technical matters, having to do with the very nature of canvas as a material, that tend to support the flat rectangle as the norm for paintings on canvas. (Full article...) -
Image 5Giornata is an art term, originating from an Italian word which means "a day's work." The term is used in Buon fresco 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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In art, craft, and engineering, masking is the use of materials to protect areas from change, or to focus change on other areas. This can describe either the techniques and materials used to control the development of a work of art by protecting a desired area from change; or a phenomenon that (either intentionally or unintentionally) causes a sensation to be concealed from conscious attention.
The term is derived from the word mask, in the sense that it hides the face from view. (Full article...) -
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Grisaille (/ɡrɪˈzaɪ/ or /ɡrɪˈzeɪl/; French: grisaille, lit. 'greyed' French pronunciation: [ɡʁizaj], from gris 'grey') is a painting executed entirely in shades of grey or of another neutral greyish colour. It is particularly used in large decorative schemes in imitation of sculpture. Many grisailles include a slightly wider colour range.
A grisaille may be executed for its own sake, as an underpainting for an oil painting (in preparation for glazing layers of colour over it) or as a model from which an engraver may work (as was done by Rubens and his school). Full colouring of a subject makes many demands of an artist, and working in grisaille was often chosen as it may be quicker and cheaper than traditional painting, although the effect was sometimes deliberately chosen for aesthetic reasons. Grisaille paintings resemble the drawings, normally in monochrome, that artists from the Renaissance on were trained to produce; as with drawings, grisaille can betray the hand of a less-talented assistant more easily than would a fully coloured painting. (Full article...) -
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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...) -
Image 9In art, prestezza is a painting technique that utilizes rapid brushstrokes to make impressions of faces and objects as opposed to painting them out in detail. The technique allows for faster painting and makes the undercoat an integral part of the painting itself. (Full article...)
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Image 10Marouflage 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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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...) -
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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...) -
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Polychrome is the "practice of decorating architectural elements, sculpture, etc., in a variety of colors." The term is used to refer to certain styles of architecture, pottery, or sculpture in multiple colors.
When looking at artworks and architecture from antiquity and the European Middle Ages, people tend to believe that they were monochrome. In reality, the pre-Renaissance past was full of colour, and all the Greco-Roman sculptures and Gothic cathedrals, that are now white, beige, or grey, were initially painted in bright colours. As André Malraux stated, "Athens was never white but her statues, bereft of color, have conditioned the artistic sensibilities of Europe... the whole past has reached us colorless." Polychrome was and is a practice not limited only to the Western world. Non-Western artworks, like Chinese temples, Oceanian Uli figures, or Maya ceramic vases, were also decorated with colours. (Full article...) -
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Generative art is post-conceptual art that has been created (in whole or in part) 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 generative art using systems of chemistry, biology, mechanics and robotics, smart materials, manual randomization, mathematics, data mapping, symmetry, and tiling. (Full article...) -
Image 15Brain painting is a non-invasive P300-based brain-computer interface (BCI) that allows painting without the use of muscular activity. The technology combines electroencephalography, signal processing algorithms and visual stimulation on a monitor to detect where the user focuses his attention, allowing him to voluntarily trigger commands to a painting software. The research project aims at assisting people afflicted with the Locked-in syndrome due to neurological or neuromuscular disease (e.g. amyotrophic lateral sclerosis ALS), who are severely restricted in communication with their environment, and therefore cut off from the possibility of creative expression. (Full article...)
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Image 16Haboku (破墨) and Hatsuboku (溌墨) are both painting techniques employed in suiboku (ink-wash painting) in China and Japan, as seen in landscape paintings, involving an abstract simplification of forms and freedom of brushwork. The two terms are often confused with each other in ordinary use. Generally, haboku relies on a layered contrast black, gray and white, whereas hatsuboku utilizes "splashes" of ink, without leaving clear contours or outlines. The style apparently started in the Tang Dynasty China with the painter Wang Qia (王洽, fl. 785-805, also known as Wang Mo), but unfortunately none of his paintings remains. According to Zhu Jingxuan:
During the Song Dynasty, some landscapes of Mu Qi's paintings on the Xiao and Xiang rivers exhibit many of its characteristics, and were highly praised in Japan. It was with Yu Jian (玉澗) in China when we have the first paintings in the style, for example Evening Market. In Japan, these styles of painting were spread by the Japanese painter Sesshū Tōyō. Later, the Kano school of painting also made many paintings in this style. (Full article...)Whenever he wanted to paint a picture, Wang Mo would first drink wine, and when he was sufficiently drunk, would splash the ink onto the painting surface. Then, laughing and singing all the while, he would stamp on it with his feet and smear it with his hands, besides swashing and sweeping it with the brush. The ink would be thin in some places, rich in others; he would follow the shapes which brush and ink had produced, making these into mountains, rocks, clouds and mists, wash in wind and rain, with the suddenness of Creation. It was exactly like the cunning of a deity; when one examined the painting after it was finished he could see no traces of the puddles of ink.
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Image 17Nōtan (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...)
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Image 18
Fresco (pl. frescos or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting becomes an integral part of the wall. The word fresco (Italian: affresco) is derived from the Italian adjective fresco meaning "fresh", and may thus be contrasted with fresco-secco or secco mural painting techniques, which are applied to dried plaster, to supplement painting in fresco. The fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting.
The word fresco is commonly and inaccurately used in English to refer to any wall painting regardless of the plaster technology or binding medium. This, in part, contributes to a misconception that the most geographically and temporally common wall painting technology was the painting into wet lime plaster. Even in apparently buon fresco technology, the use of supplementary organic materials was widespread, if underrecognized. (Full article...) -
Image 19
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...) -
Image 20
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...) -
Image 21Electrostatic coating is a manufacturing process that employs charged particles to more efficiently paint a workpiece. Paint, in the form of either powdered particles or atomized liquid, is initially projected towards a conductive workpiece using normal spraying methods, and is then accelerated toward the work piece by a powerful electrostatic charge.
An addition to the electrostatic coating (or e-coating) process is dipping electrically conductive parts into a tank of paint that is then electrostatically charged. The ionic bond of the paint to the metal creates the paint coating, in which its thickness is directly proportional to the length of time the parts are left in the tank and the time the charge remains active. Once the parts are removed from the paint tank, they are rinsed off to remove any residual paint that is not ionically bonded, leaving a thin film of electrostatically bonded paint on the surface of the part. (Full article...) -
Image 22
The Gambier Parry process is a development of the classical technique of fresco for painting murals, named for Thomas Gambier Parry.
True fresco is the technique of painting on fresh lime plaster whereby the pigments are fixed by the carbonatation of the lime (calcium hydroxide). The technique requires no other binding medium and the fixing process produces a durable crystalline paint layer. However, only a limited range of pigments are suitable for true frescoes and the technique requires careful application under controlled conditions, and relatively low humidity thereafter. In some environments, conventional fresco colours can rapidly accumulate dirt and grime. The decoration of the new Houses of Parliament in the mid-nineteenth century saw an embarrassing failure of true fresco in England but had generated a revival in mural painting. (Full article...) -
Image 23
A fore-edge painting is a scene painted on the edges of book pages. There are two basic forms, including paintings on fanned edges and closed edges. For the first type, the book's leaves must be fanned, exposing the pages' edges for the picture to become visible. For the second, closed type, the image is visible only while the book is closed.
The fundamental difference between the two fore-edge styles is that a painting on the closed edge is painted directly on the book's surface (the fore-edge being the opposite of the spine side). In contrast, the fanned fore-edge style has watercolor applied to the top or bottom margin (recto or verso) of the page/leaf and not to the actual "fore"-edge itself. (Full article...) -
Image 24
Pen painting is a painting technique used by seventeenth-century artists from the Dutch Republic. First the artist grounds a canvas with white oil paint before drawing on it with blue India ink. The invention of the technique is commonly attributed to Willem van de Velde the Elder. (Full article...) -
Image 25
Protoquadro is a painting technique conceived using digital supports to produce objects that will stand into a space as paintings used to. It pertains to the realm of Generative art.
Protoquadro objects have some characteristics of a painting and some of a totally new class of objects, therefore the name, formed by the Greek term "protos" (first) and the Italian "quadro" (painting). (Full article...)
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General images
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Image 1Spring Morning in the Han Palace, by Ming-era artist Qiu Ying (1494–1552 AD) (from History of painting)
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Image 2Two Scribes Seated with Books and a Writing Table Fragment of a decorative margin Northern India (Mughal school), ca. 1640–1650 (from History of painting)
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Image 3An artistic depiction of a group of rhinos was painted in the Chauvet Cave 30,000 to 32,000 years ago. (from Painting)
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Image 8Marcel Duchamp, Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, 1912, Philadelphia Museum of Art (from History of painting)
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Image 11The Eternal Father Painting the Virgin of Guadalupe. Attributed to Joaquín Villegas (1713 – active in 1753) (Mexican) (painter, Museo Nacional de Arte. (from History of painting)
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Image 13The oldest known figurative painting is a depiction of a bull that was discovered in the Lubang Jeriji Saléh cave in Indonesia. It was painted 40,000–52,000 years ago or earlier. (from Painting)
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Image 14Francisco 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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Image 17Pettakere Cave are more than 44,000 years old, Maros, South Sulawesi, Indonesia (from History of painting)
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Image 19Gwion Gwion rock paintings found in the north-west Kimberley region of Western Australia c. 15,000 BC (from History of painting)
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Image 20Joan Miró, Horse, Pipe and Red Flower, 1920, abstract Surrealism, Philadelphia Museum of Art (from History of painting)
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Image 21Hand stencils in the "Tree of Life" cave painting in Gua Tewet, Kalimantan, Indonesia (from History of painting)
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Image 23An Ethiopian illuminated Evangelist portrait of Mark the Evangelist, from the Ethiopian Garima Gospels, 6th century AD, Kingdom of Aksum (from History of painting)
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Image 24Muromachi period, Shingei (1431–1485), Viewing a Waterfall, Nezu Museum, Tokyo. (from History of painting)
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Image 29Hellenistic Greek terracotta funerary wall painting, 3rd century BC (from History of painting)
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Image 32Loquats and Mountain Bird, anonymous artist of the Southern 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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Image 33Diego Rivera, Recreation of Man at the Crossroads (renamed Man, Controller of the Universe), originally created in 1934, Mexican muralism movement (from History of painting)
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Image 34Khan Bahadur Khan with Men of his Clan, c. 1815, from the Fraser Album, Company Style (from Painting)
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Image 35Mother 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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Image 36Jean de Court (attributed), painted Limoges enamel dish in detail (mid-16th century), Waddesdon Bequest, British Museum (from Painting)
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Image 37Sesshū Tōyō, Landscapes of the Four Seasons (1486), ink and light color on paper (from Painting)
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Image 39Rudolf Reschreiter, Blick von der Höllentalangerhütte zum Höllentalgletscher und den Riffelwandspitzen, Gouache (1921) (from Painting)
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Image 40Krishna and Radha, might be the work of Nihâl Chand, master of Kishangarh school of Rajput Painting (from Painting)
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Image 41Silk painting depicting a man riding a dragon, painting on silk, dated to 5th–3rd century BC, Warring States period, from Zidanku Tomb no. 1 in Changsha, Hunan Province (from History of painting)
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Image 43Pictographs from the Great Gallery, Canyonlands National Park, Horseshoe Canyon, Utah, c. 1500 BCE (from History of painting)
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Image 44Andreas Achenbach, Clearing Up, Coast of Sicily (1847), The Walters Art Museum (from Painting)
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Image 46The Sakyamuni Buddha, by Zhang Shengwen, 1173–1176 AD, Song dynasty period. (from History of painting)
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Image 47Francis 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)
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Image 51Bharat Mata by Abanindranath Tagore (1871–1951), a nephew of the poet Rabindranath Tagore, and a pioneer of the movement (from History of painting)
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Image 52Honoré Daumier, The Painter (1808–1879), oil on panel with visible brushstrokes (from Painting)
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Image 54Jean Metzinger, La danse (Bacchante) (c. 1906), oil on canvas, 73 x 54 cm, Kröller-Müller Museum (from Painting)
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Image 55Cueva 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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Image 56Barnett Newman, Untitled Etching 1 (First Version), 1968, Minimalism (from History of painting)
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Image 57Max Beckmann, The Night (Die Nacht), 1918–1919, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (from History of painting)
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Image 59A fresco showing 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)
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Image 62Mona Lisa (1503–1517) by Leonardo da Vinci is one of the world's most recognizable paintings. (from Painting)
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Image 64Nino Pisano, Apelles or the Art of painting in detail (1334–1336); relief of the Giotto's Bell Tower in Florence, Italy
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Image 75Piet Mondrian, Composition en rouge, jaune, bleu et noir (1921), Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (from Painting)
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Image 79Prehistoric cave painting of aurochs (French: Bos primigenius primigenius), Lascaux, France (from Painting)
In the news
- 3 July 2024 –
- Scientists announce the discovery of the world's oldest cave painting, depicting three people gathered around a large red pig, estimated to be at least 51,200 years old, in Leang Karampurang cave in the Maros-Pangkep region, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. (Al Jazeera)
- 20 June 2024 – Vandalism of Stonehenge
- The orange powder paint sprayed on Stonehenge by Just Stop Oil activists yesterday is removed with a handheld blower fan, leaving no visible damage. (BBC News)
- 20 June 2024 –
- Two Just Stop Oil activists film themselves cutting through a metal fence and spraying orange paint on two private jets at Stansted Airport in Essex, England, United Kingdom. Police arrest the activists for criminal damage. (BBC News)
- 19 June 2024 – Vandalism of Stonehenge
- Two Just Stop Oil environmental protesters are arrested after damaging three standing stones of the Stonehenge prehistoric megalithic structure with orange powder paint. (BBC News)
Categories
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Topics
General painting topics
- 20th-century Western painting
- Abstract art
- Accidentalism
- Animal-made art
- Architectural painting
- Binder
- Boston Expressionism
- Boston School
- Cabinet painting
- Coloring book
- Combine painting
- Conservation and restoration of paintings
- Conservation and restoration of panel paintings
- Digital painting
- En plein air
- Figura serpentinata
- Figure painting
- Flatness
- French standard sizes for oil paintings
- Genre art
- Genre painting
- Ghost sign
- Grand manner
- Hierarchy of genres
- Historic paint analysis
- House painter and decorator
- Incised painting
- Inscape
- ISCC–NBS system
- Jerwood Painting Prize
- Letras y figuras
- Live painting
- Local color
- Mixed media
- Mural
- Night in paintings (Eastern art)
- Night in paintings (Western art)
- Nocturne
- Nude
- Oil painting
- Oil painting reproduction
- Orange peel
- Overdoor
- Paint and sip industry
- Paint Dancing
- Paint robot
- Painterliness
- History of painting
- Panoramic painting
- Peintres de la Réalité
- Pendant painting
- Pentimento
- Picture frame
- Pinxit
- Pliage
- Portrait painting
- Prime version
- Problem picture
- Raking light
- Range-finder painting
- Scottish genre art
- Self-portrait
- Sign painting
- Signwriter
- Staffage
- Style
- Tenebrism
- Theory of painting
- Tondo
- Volume solid
- Wash
- Watercolor painting
- Western painting
Painting techniques
- Acrylic painting techniques
- Action painting
- Airbrush
- Al-Qatt Al-Asiri
- Atelier
- Bark painting
- Brain painting
- Brunaille
- Buon fresco
- Cangiante
- Carnation
- Ceramic glaze
- China painting
- Cobweb art
- Cobweb painting
- Craquelure
- Distemper
- Double-sided painting
- Drip painting
- Drybrush
- Electrostatic coating
- Encaustic painting
- Fat over lean
- Figure painting
- Fingerpaint
- Fore-edge painting
- Freehand brush work
- Fresco
- Fresco-secco
- Gambier Parry process
- Generative art
- Giornata
- Glaze
- Glue-size
- Gongbi
- Graffiti
- Graining
- Grisaille
- Haboku
- Illusionism
- Illusionistic ceiling painting
- Impasto
- Imprimatura
- Industrial painting
- Ink wash painting
- Intonaco
- Keim's process
- Lacquer painting
- Leaf painting
- Licked finish
- Lining of paintings
- Maki-e
- Marouflage
- Masking
- Matte painting
- Microbial art
- Mineral painting
- Mischtechnik
- Mold painting
- Mouth and foot painting
- Nocturne
- Notan
- Oil sketch
- Ombré
- Overpainting
- Overspray
- Paint by number
- Painting
- Panel painting
- Papier collé
- Pastiglia
- Pen painting
- Pinstriping
- Pointillism
- Polychrome
- Powder painting
- Prestezza
- Protoquadro
- Quadratura
- Quadro riportato
- Repoussoir
- Reverse glass painting
- Rosemåling
- Rotational bell painting
- Sandpainting
- Sfumato
- Shaped canvas
- Shigajiku
- Silk painting
- Speed line
- Speed painting
- Spray painting
- Tempera
- Texture
- Theorem stencil
- Trompe-l'œil
- Underdrawing
- Underpainting
- Unione
- Velvet painting
- Verdaccio
- Verdaille
- Vitreography
- Wash
- Watercolor painting
- Wet-on-wet
- Working in layers
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