Sunday, November 24, 2019

Five Most Common Problems Beginner Painters Have

For people who are interested in learning how to paint with either acrylic or oil paint may experience a few common learning problems. These are the most common problems people have when they are learning how to paint. You can overcome these common problems with some basic knowledge and problem solving skills that will eventually get you past these difficulties.


There are five common problems beginner painters have:

1. Very little experience in drawing prior to learning how to paint.

You really need to have some knowledge or experience in beginning drawing before you ever pick up a paint brush. Using a pencil to draw is a lot easier skill than using a paint brush. You should have some basic knowledge about shapes, forms, lines, and values (shading) to enable you to understand how to manipulate colors in your paint. You need to take your time and not hurry through your drawing in order to get the composition of your picture placed in the most effective way in your picture. If you can draw out the picture in a sketch book prior to actually drawing it on your canvas; this will help to iron out any problems that may arise with your composition. Having some skill and practice at the drawing level will definitely help you have a more successful painting.

2. Not being organized from the beginning with how you set up your palette.

When you first learn how to paint you need to be organized with all your paint colors from the beginning. That means to set out your paints on your palette in the same order every time. Try to leave the most room on your palette for mixing your colors. You will have to mix just about every color you use to paint with so you need to have room on your palette for these color mixtures. As a beginner, you will be using trial and error to get the color you want and this will take time and practice to learn which colors you need to mix together to get what you want. If you put your paints out all over your palette with no apparent order, you will not have any room for mixing and will end up having to clean off your palette and starting with a clean palette.

3. Not putting enough paint on your palette the first time.

Many beginner painters will squeeze out a tiny bit of paint on their palette and find that they run out of that particular color rather rapidly and need to get more from the tube again. This can be a problem when you are using that particular color to mix with to make another color with. Don't be stingy with the paint, it is OK to squeeze out a generous amount of paint onto the palette. The paint will stay moist for several days (especially if you put it in the refrigerator) You will use up the paint eventually.

4. Brush work problems of over-doing the brush strokes,

Another common problem beginner painters have is they repeatedly paint over the same area inadvertently ending up with mud. There is a tendency to keep on stroking the same area in the hope it will magically change into something they are trying to do. Unfortunately painting doesn't work that way. Each paint stroke needs to be thought out carefully and done in a way that will not interfere with the other colors. Some of the color do not go together well and this may be the cause of the "mud" in the end. It is very frustrating for the beginner painter to encounter this problem. It is a matter of learning the color theory and learning more skill at handling the paint brush. This comes with time and experience.

5. Forgetting to clean the paint brush frequently and especially between colors.

It is vital to clean your brush frequently while you are painting. Especially when changing to a different color. For a beginning painter it is very easy to forget to clean the brush and accidentally contaminate one of your lighter colors with a previous darker color you were using. This can happen either on the palette or on the canvas. If it happens on the canvas it can sometimes be difficult to fix the area, you may have to just wipe the area off and start again. Even if you don't clean your brush off in the turp solvent, you can still just wipe it off on a paper towel or a rag and that will help.

For more information on learning how to paint with oil paints go to my website


Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Marilou_O'Loughlin/208858

Friday, November 8, 2019

History of Oil Paintings

Oil Paintings are the stuffs of a certain time and certain set, and art history of course tries to place these works in their superior setting. Any body learning western art, for instance, would study to be familiar with the styles of the Oil painting reproduction, Baroque, traditional, idealistic and Modern periods, and to know the complex interaction of consideration, support, civilization and monetary issues, which the oil paintings represent. It is to such a sympathetic that art critics refer when they insist that art today has to be comprised with contemporary issues.


The history of oil painting goes back to very old times when man endeavored to detain his world and knowledge in paint. It was profound in the grottos of Southern Europe when man assorted animal fats with earth and stain to form what could be measured as the first oil paints. The paint was then altered onto the walls of the grotto, with the prehistoric images of the hunters and the animals sought after becoming the earliest creative creations of humankind.

The oil painting medium developed when during the time of 15th century, Jan van Eyck the well known Belgian painter found that linseed oil and oil from nuts can be mixed with different colors to generate dazzling oil colors. Though there is proof that some English artists from the 13th Century made use of oils, van Eyck leftovers the discoverer and first advocate of oil painting technique, as we know it these days. In modern times, oil painting color is one of the most in style choices of appearance by artists globally, as it offers enormous variety & methods, strong depth of color vitality and durability that allow paintings to last thousands of years.

It is as well one of the most lenient mediums - the paint could be simply directed on the canvas and if you make a error you could always clean the color off the canvas (only with a cloth dipped in turpentine), due to the length of ventilation time. The amazing flexibility of oil color provides itself completely to the customary painting techniques of joining together and glazing, impasto and scumbling on a huge number of surfaces, giving the artist excellent results. These days oil painting reproduction is gaining more and more popularity.

Vijay is a Copywriter of Art reproductions He written many articles in various topics. For more information visit: Oil painting contact him at 1artclubpainting@gmail.com

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Vijay_Kanth/42438

Friday, November 1, 2019

History of Western Paintings - The Ancient Near East

Palaeolithic people led an unsettled life; this nomadic society of hunters and gatherers has little control over their food supply. Beginning around 8000 B.C. however, people began to grow their own food, raise their own animals, and organise into permanent communities. Although, like their Palaeolithic predecessors, the Neolithic people (from neos, meaning "new" in Greek) used stone to make basic weapons and tolls, organised agriculture and animal husbandry left more time and labour for other activities, including the production of clay vessels. Since their size and weight made them difficult to carry, clay vessels are characteristic of stationary communities.


Neolithic villages made their first appearance in the Near East, an area consisting roughly of modern-day Turkey, Iraq and Iran. A late example of Neolithic painted pottery from this region is a beaker from Susa (present day Shush in Iran) dating to c. 4000 B.C. The highly abstracted animal forms contained within patterned borders are common to many works of art from this area. Decoration takes precedence over naturalism to create designs with beautiful stylised animals, such as the thin band of elongated dogs beneath a frieze of graceful long necked birds around the top of the beaker, and the marvellous ibex with circular horns, it's body composed of two curved triangles, that dominates the large central portion. In contrast with Palaeolithic depictions of animals, which may represent attempts to control the animal kingdom, animals, now domesticated, seem simply to decorate this Neolithic vase.

The Paleolithic peoples who created cave paintings were monadic hunters and gathers. Neolithic culture (New Stone Age), which first appeared in the Near East c. 8000 B.C. is characterised by settled villages, domesticated plants and aminals, and the crafts of pottery and weaving. The highly abstracted, stylised animals forms, representative of the "Animal Style", and patterns decorating this Neolithic beaker from Iran are commonly found in workds from the ancient Near East. An ibex (wild coat), with enlarged, circular horns and a body consisting of two curved triangles, decorates the centre of this vessel. The top band contains skinny, long-necked birds, and, directly below, a band of elongated dogs encircle the beaker.

The early Neolithic agricultural communities gradually evolved into more complex societies, with systems of government, law, formal religion, and, perhaps most importantly, the first appearance of writing, thus marking the end of prehistory and the beginning of recorded history. The political structures alternated between conglomerations of independently ruled city-states and centralised governments under a single leader.

The city-states of the Near East frequently fought one another. In addition, the lack of natural barriers made the area particularly vulnerable to invasion. This almost constant warfare was a frequent subject of art. A further destabilising factor was the unpredictable climate; floods, drought, storms, and the like plagued the inhabitants of this region. This, they understandably tended to worry considerably about survival in this world - a world of invasions, political instability and natural catastrophes.

From about the fourth millennium B.C. the Sumerians inhabited southern Mesopotamia, a Greek place name meaning "the land between the rivers", that is the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. They invented the wheel and a form of writing in which a stylus, usually a length of reed cut at an angle, was used to impress characters on wet clay. Cuneiform, meaning "wedge shaped", which aptly describes the appearance of this writing, has been deciphered; our ability to read ancient Mesopotamian texts makes the ancient art of the region more accessible to the contemporary viewer than the art of prehistoric societies. Ancient near Eastern images usually have clearly structured compositions, ground-lines and readable narratives emphasising human beings, their history, and their relation to their gods and goddesses. All of these characteristics enable us to interpret the art more easily than the more elusive prehistoric cave paintings discussed earlier.

Neolithic village communities in the ancient Near East gradually developed into complex city-states, which were often politically unstable societies almost contstantly at war with east other and against invading peoples. War and victory are frequent subjects of ancient Near Eastern art. This image, an inlaid panel from the side of a box, may show an actual historical event, depicting the aftermath of war, with a victorious banquet scene in the top register. Historical narrative and a clear, formal composition distinguish this image from prehistoric cave paintings.

The various city states that comprised ancient Sumer were often at war with one another. The so called Standard of Ur is a box, the function of which is not known, that was found in a royal cemetery among daggers, helmets, and other military regalia. The box displays scenes of both war and peace, probably episodes of specific historical events. Stylistically, the depictions of human form in the Standard of Ur resemble those we will see in other ancient cultures. Frontal and profile views are combined in a single figure, emphasising the conceptual over the illusionistic, and the size of a figure directly corresponds to his importance; on the Standard of Ur, the seated, regal figure in the top row is bigger than this standing before him. Also typical is the arrangement of figures in the bands. There is little overlapping of forms, or any indication of a setting, resulting in a very two dimensional image. This straightforward, regimented presentation of figures contrasts markedly with the informal arrangement of imagery in prehistoric caves.
Priest Guiding a Sacrificial Bull

Among the most famous achievements of the Mesopotamians are the construction and decoration of the Ishtar Gate, originally one of the main entryways to the ancient city of Babylon (Iraq). Babylon had been the political and cultural capital of Mesopotamia under Hammurabi, and towards the end of the seventh century B.C. with the decline of the Assyrians - probably the most powerful people to dominate Mesopotamia and the surrounding regions - The Babylonians reasserted their power. The best known ruler of this Neo-Babylonian period was Nebuchadnezzar II (ruled 604-562 B.C.), the famed leader mentioned in the Old Testament who was responsible for building the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as well as the Ishtar Gate, now reassembled in Berlin. The Ishtar Gate and the walls lining the Processional Way (the street leading from the Gate) were faced with glazed brick. Sacred animals, also of glazed brick - among them, lions, associated with the Goddess Ishtar, and dragons, sacred to Marduk, the patron God of Babylon - and these geometric borders ornamented both the Gate and Processional Way. The somewhat stylized forms of these animals, and their rhythmic arrangement within the decorative borders, recall the Neolithic vase from Susa, with which we began our discussion of the art of the ancient Near East.

Colin Andrews is the Director of Aspect Art Ltd, an on-line exporter of the highest quality reproduction oil paintings, http://www.aspectart.com

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Colin_Andrews/143251