Painting: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

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. Humans have been painting for about 6 times as long as they have been using written language.

Drawing, by comparison, is the process of making marks on a surface by applying pressure from or moving a tool on the surface.

Painting is also the utilitarian painting of objects and buildings. This is often done to provide a protective coating or for aesthetic reasons. One possible process for decorative painting of the walls of a room is found in Work breakdown structure.

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.

History of Painting

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 occurring all over the world.

History of Painting

You can read more about the Origin of Art

Painting techniques include:

• Impasto
• Wash
• Glaze
• Grisaille
• Scumble
• Pointillism (aka divisionism, 'stippling')
• Sfumato
• Sumi-e
• New materials (painting)
• Computer painting (Digital)
• (Partially) destructive techniques like grattage and peinture brulée, with which e.g. Joan Miró experimented.

• Paper
• Canvas
• Panel
• Mural (Walls)

The medium is the vehicle that the pigment is suspended or embedded in. There is a certain amount of overlap in painting with media usually used in drawing as well.

Examples include:

• Oil, including the newer water-miscible oils
• Heat-set oils
• Acrylic
• Gouache
• Ink
• Pastel, including dry pastels, oil pastels, and pastel pencils
• Tempera
• Encaustic (wax)
• Watercolor
• Fresco
• Spray paint (Graffiti)

'Style' is used in two senses:

Individual style can refer to the distinctive visual elements, techniques and methods that typify a single mature artist's work. 'Style' can also refer to the movement or school that an artist is associated with. Additionally, this can stem from an actual group that the artist was consciously involved with or it can be a category in which art historians have placed the painter.

The word 'style' has fallen out of favour in discussions about contemporary painting, though it continues to be used in popular contexts.

Painting styles

• Realism
• Impressionism
• Pointillism
• Naive art
• Cubism
• Modernism
• Abstract
• Postmodernism
• Constructivism
• Hard-edge
• Graffiti

Painting idioms include:

• Allegory
• Bodegon
• Botanical
• Figure painting
• Illustration
• Industrial
• Landscape
• Portrait
• Still Life
• War

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

Here is a growing list of painters too big for this page.

Shortcuts to highly popular painters:

• Paul Cézanne, (1839-1906), French artist
• Salvador Dalí, (1904-1989), Catalan artist
• Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
• Michelangelo Buonarroti, (1475-1564), Italian sculptor and painter
• Amedeo Modigliani, (1884-1920), Italian sculptor and painter
• Claude Monet, (1840-1926), French impressionist painter
• Pablo Picasso, (1881-1973), Spanish cubist artist
• Jackson Pollock, (1912-1956), US abstract expressionist painter
• Rembrandt, (1606-1669), Dutch painter
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir, (1841-1919), French impressionist painter
• Peter Paul Rubens, (1577-1640), Belgian painter
• Leonardo da Vinci, (1452-1519), Italian painter, sculptor and inventor