Monday, July 28, 2008

Watercolor Painting

The Beauty and Versatility of Watercolor Painting

If you are considering a dive into the wonderful world of painting as a hobby, consider trying watercolors in your initial artistic endeavors. Although watercolor painting has received a bit of a bad rap as far as level of difficulty and frustration, it can actually be a wonderful way for a budding artist to create beautiful masterpieces.

There are many advantages to selecting watercolor over other mediums, but one of the best is that watercolor tends to be a fairly forgiving type of paint to try. In fact, many beautiful images have been created in watercolor painting by making the most of a happy accident. Through blending and washing, you can find many striking effects for in watercolor.

Reasons to Consider Giving Watercolor Painting a try

Another big advantage to watercolor painting is that it is quick. A painting can be completed in an hour in some cases. For the hobbyist with limited time, watercolor painting can be found to be quite satisfying, since projects can be completed in a short time frame. It does not require many supplies, which keeps the cost down when you are just beginning your hobby.

This type of painting is also very portable, making it easy for travel. Watercolor dries quickly, and you don’t have to worry about smudging or smearing like you do with pastels or charcoal sketches. The strokes and washes required to create a final product are much simpler to learn than one might think, and allow a new artist plenty of freedom to experiment and add a personal touch to pieces.

Techniques of Watercolor Painting

There are many different techniques that you can incorporate into your watercolor paintings. One of the more basic techniques is called a flat wash, and is used to cover large areas of your painting. It is done by dampening your canvas, and spreading your paint from the top to the bottom using a large brush to move the color quickly and in broad strokes. Another good technique is called the wet in wet, and requires wetting your canvas with a spray bottle before applying your watercolor.

You can achieve the opposite effect with a dry brush technique that uses a dry surface and a pigment. This technique can actually add texture to your watercolor painting. For best results, it is a good idea to combine a number of techniques into each watercolor painting to add focal points and create maximum impact.

If you are thinking that watercolor painting might be a fun hobby for you to try, your next step should be into your local art or craft store to find supplies and perhaps get advice from a professional as to how to get started. There are classes, books and instructional videos that can teach you the basics of watercolor painting. Unleash your artistic ability by creating a watercolor masterpiece today!

Painting Techniques

Painting Techniques: Add a New Dimension to Decorating

If you are looking for a way to jazz up your walls with a little bit of money and a lot of creativity, look no further than the faux painting techniques available. With a little paint and some know-how from books, websites and home improvement stores, you can create effects on your walls that will add color and texture to your rooms. Many of these painting techniques are very easy to learn and simple to accomplish if you are willing to take the time to do so. Others will be more successful with the aid of a class that instructs students on proper technique.

Sponges are not Just for Cleaning Anymore

Sponging is one of the easiest painting techniques to learn. It requires a base coat of one color that is painted over with another one. The second coat is applied with a sea sponge that is lightly dabbed randomly over the entire wall. Depending on the colors that you use and the way you handle your sponge, the effects that you can enjoy from this painting technique are nearly infinite.

There is really no right or wrong way to sponge paint, but there are a couple of rules of thumb to make your walls most pleasing to the eye. First, keep the touch of the sponge fairly light, so your effect is a subtle one. You also want to maintain an even tone to the walls, without lighter and darker spots in areas. It is a good idea to practice on a board or other sample material before taking the sponge to the walls of your room.

Comb Your Walls

Another painting technique that requires a little more practice is combing. This technique is done with a squeegee that has teeth like a comb. Just like sponging, combing begins with a base coat of one color that is allowed to dry thoroughly. Next, a second color is applied and the comb is drawn through the paint while it is still wet. The effect is a textured appearance that can look like straight lines, zigzags or waves. Painting techniques are usually very inexpensive, since the tools involved are simply two hues of paint and a squeegee comb.

For the Creatively Inclined

If sponging and combing seem too basic for your artistic flair, there are many other painting techniques that involve multiple colors and additional tools for application. There are techniques that can give you a faux marble or granite look by using special paints in three or more colors and a sea sponge for blending.

You can create a stencil border over your base coat using templates and stencil paint. You can even paint murals and stories across one wall that will serve as a focal point for a room. This technique works especially well in children’s areas. There are patterns available for murals as well. Decorating is no longer just about applying paint to walls. With the many faux finishes you can achieve through various painting techniques, you can give any room an artistic flair.

Painting Project

Painting Project: Monochrome Painting and Scribble Painting

There are many different topics that can be made the focus of a painting project and one such is monochrome painting which is used for more than under-painting to establish areas of light and dark and includes making moody paintings, as well.

This painting project underscores the point that it is used to demonstrate that tone is the equal in importance as is color for making a satisfactory painting. Among painters that are noted for making monochrome paintings, the name of French painter Yves Klein stands out.

Monochrome Painting and Single Color Usage

Monochrome painting is a challenging painting project as it entails painting with the use of just a single color. The subject is not the center of attention nor is the color though dark colors are most suited for monochrome painting. One can experiment with different colors to depict their associated moods and choose the color that best fits the subject of the painting project for the monochrome painting.

To create a desired tone, one may add some white or it can also be used to vary the thickness of the paint and thereby show the white of the paper or canvas. If the painter experiences difficulty in his or her painting project in setting the tone, trying a monochrome filter may be helpful or for those who are using a photo which one would like to paint, a photo-editing program would be able to change it to a black-and-white photo from its original color version.

Another point to remember with regard to the painting project in monochrome is that one is free to create tonal contrast in places that it does not exist in, to make the painting better. In nature, can be found elements and in colors and form for all pictures lies a keyboard that holds the notes of the music and the artist need only pick and choose and group all these elements to produce best results.

Another painting project one could try is scribble painting which is really putting down on paper what the eye perceives when studying objects that one desires to paint. This painting project may require the artist to be ready with many large sheets of paper and decide on the subject as well as set a timer and paint for the duration it is timed for.

One should remember that this painting project requires that the artist focus on the entire object and not on the outline and needs to also work big and scribble to the edges of the paper. Also, the artist should use different colors and for those that sketch very fast, they could change the colors every time their eyes sweep across the entire subject.

Painting

Painting: Putting Color on a Surface

The first painting known to man are the Grotte Chauvet in France that many historians claim are approximately thirty-two thousand years old and are engraved and painted with the help of red ochre and black pigment. These early paintings depict horses, rhinos, lions, buffalos as well as humans taking part in hunts. Also, many a cave painting had been found in France, China, Australia, Spain and Portugal.

Putting color to a surface that includes paper, canvas, glass and wood is known as painting. There is however, another meaning to painting that may, in an artistic sense, allude to it being used in conjunction with drawing and composition to express a concept as intended by the practitioner.

In any case, it is a way to represent as well as document and express different intents and there could be any subject that the painter may want to represent through his or her craft and these may include still life, landscape or abstract and even symbolism and emotional or political subjects.

Depicting Spiritual Needs of the Painter

Many a painting has its origins in the spiritual needs of the painter being expressed and they may depict mythological figures or biblical scenes or depictions of the human body itself. Important features of painting are color as well as tone and color that can have a deeply psychological effect on the beholder, though different cultures may see them in different light. Black may be associated with mourning in one culture while other cultures may not quite perceive it as such.

There are also many modern artists that practice painting as a collage that began with Cubism and may not be considered to be painting in a strict sense.

There are other painters that make use of many different materials including sand, straw, cement or wood for their texture. Nowadays, it is considered to be an art form that is dead for all purposes since it has changed course away from the historic values and moved more into depicting concepts rather than craft and documentation.

Modern and contemporary paintings include works by Die Brucke, Edvard Munch, Ernst Kirchner as well as Egon Schiele. Other painters who are famous from the post second world war era are Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein who have tried to incorporate popular and mass culture into fine art.

More recently, during the 60s and 70s, there was a reaction against painting and many accused it of having sold out to consumerism as well as commodification and artists such as Ad Reinhardt even announced the ‘death of painting.’ However, today it has an exalted position and it is an open playing field that is more united than ever before.

Oil Painting

Oil Painting: Process Varies From Artist to Artist

When pigments are ground as well as mixed in the medium of oil and in the case of modern Europe, in linseed oil, it is called oil painting.

There are many different oils used including poppyseed oil, walnut oil as well as safflower oil that have properties that include less yellowing as well as differences in drying times. These oils also differ in the sheen of the paint which is dependent on the oil used and it is not unusual for a painter to use different oils on the same painting.

Fat Over Lean

In oil paint application, the basic rule is to have fat over lean which means that each subsequent layer of paint applied should be correspondingly oilier than the previous one as this makes it easier to dry the paint properly.

In the traditional mold of painting techniques, the artist may often start off with paint that is mixed with turpentine. Also, with additional layers of paint, the paint becomes oilier and this makes it hard for the painting to crack or peel.

Among the many painting mediums that may be used for oil painting are cold wax, resins as well as varnishes and these mediums help the painter in adjusting the translucency of the paint.

It also aids in adjusting the paint’s sheen as well as the density of the paint’s body and also the ability of the paint in holding or concealing the visibility of the brushstroke. This allows the beholder to view the original oil painting and sense the choices that the painter made while applying the paint.

The first use of oil painting may have been in the Middle High Ages when surfaces such as shields were made more durable by applying oil painting to them. However, Renaissance sources attribute the northern European painters of the fifteenth century as inventors of the oil painting, especially on wood panels and a name most often mentioned in this regard is that of Jan van Eyck.

Oil painting processes vary from artist to artist though certain steps are common for all and these include preparing the surface, applying a ground to isolate the canvas and also sketching the outline of the subject before applying the pigment to the surface.

Through tradition, the artist has always mixed his or her own paints for all of his or her projects. Later, with the availability of oil paints in tubes, all this has changed and they may now mix colors quickly without the need of grinding their own pigments. Also, oil painting involves the use of brushes to apply the paint and the brushes may be made of many different fibers in order to get the desired effect.

Tips for Creating a Beautiful Landscape Painting

Tips for Creating a Beautiful Landscape Painting

Landscapes are a popular subject for many painters. One reason is that the scenes are often breathtaking, and an artist desires to take on the challenge of bringing that natural beauty to life through a paint medium.

Another more practical reason for the popularity of landscape paintings is that they sell very well. Many shoppers of art enjoy displaying natural scenery in their homes and offices. Whatever reason you have for wanting to create a masterpiece in a landscape painting, there are a few tips to keep in mind before grabbing your paints and canvas and heading for the hills.

Things to Include and What to Leave Out

The first rule of thumb in landscape painting in general is to avoid trying to include everything you see in the scene. Just because an element like a barn or a brook appear in the real thing, that doesn’t mean that the artist has to include it if it will distract the eye from the true focal point.

Select the parts of a scene that you think will work best in your landscape painting and work from the image that you see. By the same token, you can rearrange elements in a landscape painting, or you can combine parts of a couple of different scenes. Unless you are working on a well-known or easily identifiable scene of sorts, you can create any natural image that you choose.

Add Dimension to your Picture

A landscape painting is most interesting when it incorporates a foreground with a scenic background. By adding detail to the objects that are closer to the foreground, you will draw your viewer’s eye to the focal point that you are trying to create in the scene. Background items can be painted with less definition and detail so that they appear to fade in the distance.

Don’t Stop With Just one

Once you have found a landscape that you enjoy painting, it is fun to try to recreate that scene with different light and seasons. The shadows and colors of your landscape painting can vary considerably by looking at the area from different angles and at alternate times of the day and year. To continue to create art from a single scene, snap a photo of the area so that you have a consistent model for your work.

Landscape painting can be fun for an artist, because the possibilities are as infinite as nature and the benefit is in spending plenty of time in the fresh outdoors. If you have never tried your artistic hand at a landscape painting, why not grab your canvas and a few different shades of green paint to begin creating your natural masterpiece? Happy painting!

Interior Painting

Interior Painting Done Right: Techniques to Make Your Room Sparkle

Interior painting is a wonderful way to add color to any room. Depending on the shade you select, you can brighten, clean up or cozy up your space. You can make small rooms appear larger or large rooms seem more inviting. Paint is inexpensive, easy to apply and can serve as a beautiful backdrop to your space – provided that it is done right. Fortunately, there are some easy steps to follow that will ensure that your interior painted space will look great and last for many years.

Selecting the Right Paint for Your Interior Painting Job

The first step is to find the best paint for the room you want to work with. If you are painting an office or dining room, your choices will be very different than if you are looking at dressing up a kitchen, bathroom or kids’ area. For rooms that do not suffer from as much wear or tear, you can have your pick of a plethora of variety and shades.

If you are working with a room that sees frequent use, you will be better off if you choose a paint that is washable. In areas that see plenty of moisture, like your bathroom, a paint that will resist mildew is a good idea. If you have any questions about the best interior painting for your project, you can check the label on the paint can or ask a professional at the home improvement store that you are shopping at.

Preparing Your Walls for Interior Painting

A clean surface will take paint much better, so give yours walls a good scrub before beginning to paint. There are commercial cleaners available for walls and ceilings that do not require rinsing. If you don’t want to use one of the specialty products, you can give your walls a cleaning with good old-fashioned soap and water.

Just make sure that you rinse well and allow the surface to dry completely before applying paint. If you have stains on your walls or ceiling that you cannot get out, use a primer that is compatible with the paint that you will be using. Fill holes and nicks in the wall using a spackling compound. Large holes may require patching, and you can buy kits for this at your home improvement store.

Splash on the Color

Once preparation is complete, you are finally ready to begin adding your hue of choice to your room. Interior painting is generally done with roller brushes to the larger surfaces, and bristle brushes for the edges and trim. The order in which you do these two tasks is mostly a matter of personal preference. Depending on the color you are covering up, you may need a coat or three before your interior painting project is complete. The best method to cover a room is to start with the ceiling, work down to the walls, and finish off with the trim. After your interior painting project is complete, take time to enjoy the fruit of your labor. Congratulations! You have just transformed a room with minimum cost and maximum effect.