'Style' is used in two senses: It can refer to the distinctive visual elements, techniques and methods that typify an individual artist's work. It can also refer to the movement or school that an artist is associated with. 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' in the latter sense has fallen out of favour in academic discussions about contemporary painting, though it continues to be used in popular contexts.
Is colour a simple notion? What role does it play in painting?
Why do they say painting is innate to humans?
What is collage?
Why do some people say that art is dead?
Is drawing different from painting?
What is style?
DRAWING
Drawing is a means of making an image, using any of a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface. Common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Most drawing media are either dry (e.g. graphite, charcoal, pastel, Conté, silverpoint), or water-based (marker, pen and ink). Watercolor pencils can be used dry like ordinary pencil, then moistened with a wet brush to get various painterly effects. Very rarely, artists have drawn with (usually decoded) invisible ink. Digital tools which simulate the effects of these are also used.
The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending.
Ink drawings typically use hatching, which consists of groups of parallel lines. Cross-hatching uses hatching in two or more different directions to create a darker tone. Broken hatching, or lines with intermittent breaks, is used to form lighter tones, and by controlling the density of the breaks a graduation of tone can be achieved. Finally stippling, or random placement of dots on a page, can also be used to produce a texture or shade.
Shading is the technique of varying the tonal values on the paper to represent the shade of the material as well as the placement of the shadows. Careful attention to reflected light, shadows, and highlights can result in a very realistic rendition of the image.
Blending uses an implement to move the drawing material on the paper so as to hide the original drawing strokes. This can only be done when drawing with a material such as graphite or charcoal that is not permanently attached once applied.
Drawing is generally considered distinct from painting, in which colored pigments are suspended in a liquid medium and usually applied with a brush. Etching is similar to drawing but differs in that the tool digs into the surface, which is then used to make prints on a separate surface.
One standard for differentiating drawing from painting is that it does not permit the artist to mix colors before applying them; colors can only be blended on the drawing surface, usually by overlaying one upon the other or by putting them close enough together that the eye "mixes" them.
These distinctions are somewhat arbitrary and subject to change; some artists refer to fully-rendered pastel and colored-pencil compositions as "paintings", and in nineteenth century usage "drawing" also encompassed the use of watercolors.
Prior to working on an image, the artist will likely want to gain an understanding of how the various media will work. The different drawing implements can be tried on practice sheets to see what type of pattern they create, and how to apply the implement in order to produce varying tones.
An artist who excels in drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman.
1. What is drawing?
2. What media is used in drawing?
3. What techniques used in drawing can you name?
4. What is shading used for? What is blending? What is etching?
5. What is the principal distinction of drawing from painting?
6. Is the distinction strict?
7. what does an artist do before drawing?
A Great Painting Enriches
Our Experience of Life
Just as a Great Poem Does or a Great
Musical Piece
To begin with I'd like to say that I fully agree with this statement and that I personally have become quite an experienced art-lover after such a profound study of West European and English painters at the lessons of English. I have never thought that the great painters of the past had been so closely connected by ideas, schooling and their perception of art and beauty. I have also realized that without learning the primitivism and flatness of medieval times one would never be able to appreciate Hogarth's renowned vivid realism and total rejection of idealization, an approach, which was revolutionary at that time.
I have learned that the English artists of the 17lh-19"' centuries have been greatly influenced by the Flemish celebrities such as Sir Antony Van Dyck. His models can be easily recognized by their spotless armour, a steady gaze and a regal demeanour. It is apparent that they are all men of great importance. As painter to Charles I, the artist was commissioned to convey the King's majesty to all who saw it. After studying with Peter Paul Rubens in
Antwerp, Van Dyck went to London and then to Italy. There he adopted a more elegant manner o[ painting, which he kept all his life. It was in Italy, too, that Van Dyck created a style that began the great tradition of English portrait painting. These works were usually of noblemen with proud postures and slim figures. He was often accused of flattering his sitters, but not all were pleased. For example, The Countess of Sussex reacted to his portrait by saying she felt "very ill-favored,and quite out of love with herself."
Henry Fielding once said: "It has been a vast recommendation of a painter to say that figures seem to breath, but surely it is much greater and nobler applause, that they appear to think." And in this connection the portraits o[ Sir Joshua Reynolds inevitably come to my mind. He is best known for the manner in which he married the Grand Style of the great Italian masters with portraits of the English aristocracy. I seemed to comprehend the message Reynolds was trying to leave to the next generations. Grandeur and formality are minimized in his pictures. Human feelings and emotions are in the centre. For example in his portrait of "The Countess Spencer with her daughter Georgiana" the background elements of the column, drapery and brooding clouds are the last thing we pay our attention to. It is the loving face of the mother and the innocence of a five-year girl that really astonish. I seemed to understand that mothers will always be so anxious, caring and generous, no matter whether they wear an intricate lace and finest silk or a denim shirt or jeans. The ability to implement this message to the people really makes the master. That explains the fact why Reynolds is credited with having elevated portrait painting in Britain to a height equaling that of the great Italian masters. His status during the reign of George III was such that when the King formed the Royal Academy in 1768, Reynolds was appointed its first President.
Miguel de Cervantes said: "Good painters imitate nature, bad ones vomit it." One can't but think about English landscapists percepting the universal wisdom of the saying. 1 was deeply impressed by Thomas Gainsborough's "Mr and Mrs Andrews". A peaceful provincial couple is resting after an afternoon of shooting. To the right, their estate extends far into the distance. The sheaves of corn tell us it is autumn, and Mr Andrew's dog and shotgun imply that he has been hunting. It was quite an experience when almost instinctively I started looking for a pheasant shot by this elegant English gentleman. I felt authentic pity that Gainsborough never completed the painting. His wife's beautifully executed blue satin dress is unfinished — the outline of a bird is visible on her lap. Robert Andrews and Frances Carter were married in November 1748 and it is thought that this portrait was painted as a celebration of this event. It's fantastic how sensitive we become while dealing with a real masterpiece. I saw that both of them are not very young and the words from a Russian song, where autumn is compared to a person's age came to my mind. The song persuaded us to treasure every season of our lite, like the Andrews were enjoying the last sun of late autumn. The years made them wiser, happier and brought peace and stability into their hearts.
I seemed to understand that not only the intuitive sense of style and color and the superb handling of paint make him one of the artistic geniuses of eighteenth century Europe, but the ability to put verse and music into every single stroke of brush.