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Painting

Painting is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or medium) and a binding agent (a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas or a wall. This is done by a painter; this term is used especially if this is his or her profession.

One possible process for decorative painting of the walls of a room is found in Work breakdown structure. The word painting is used in the rest of this article with it's fine art meaning.

More specifically this article is about the painting of a surface for artistic reasons, considered by many to be among the most important of the art forms.

The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet[?] in France, dated at about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo and mammoth. There are examples of cave painting occuring all over the world.

Today, many of the world's most recognized works of art, such as the Mona Lisa, are paintings. There exists some slight controversy as to whether or not works of art produded in non-traditional ways, or with non-traditional materials, can properly be called paintings. In a general sense artists using sound, light, fireworks, ink-jet pigment, computer monitor pixels and even pastel or pencil all have the same intentions as the more expected water, oil, gouache or egg tempera painters. The resulting work of art is often referred to as a painting.

Paint can be composed of pigment, medium, binder and perhaps drying accelerants or retarders, texture enhancers, stablizers and other modifiers. When applied to canvas, a 'ground' (a primer coat - often gesso) is usually layed on first to improve adherance of the paint and reduce it's wicking into the canvas.

Painting techniques[?] include:

The medium is the vehicle that the pigment is suspended or embedded in. Examples include:

Oil painting, including the newer water-miscible oils
Heat-set oils
Acrylic paint
Gouache
Ink
Pastel
Tempera
wax
Watercolor painting

Painting Styles can be characterized by the method of application (loose or tight) or by referring to the art movement that most closely matches the predominant characteristics that the painting expresses. They include:

Tools of the painter include the various types of:

as well as charcoal, graphite pencil, rags or paper towel, mirror (an old painter's trick to force a review of a problem painting from a new perspective, as well as for self portraits), turpentine or oderless paint thinner (often used in a mixture with oil as the medium), a model or subject stand and possibly studio lighting.

You can read more about the Origin of Art and see a list of famous painters.

A proposed and yet-unrealised development in painting is four dimensional painting.

External links Art-related sites (sources of information for writing Wikipedia articles):

What are our priorities for writing in this area? To help develop a list of the most basic topics about painting, please see Painting basic topics.

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

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