LESSONLESSON 11 The Art of Painting

You may know that paints can be chal- pigment is applied to a wall spread with wet plas- lenging. Paint can run and drip, and may ter. The paint is applied while the plaster is smudge if touched while still wet. Then still fresh, or “wet.” Once the plaster dries, the there’s the matter of combining colors. More painting becomes part of the wall. than one professional artist has had the ex- In fresco painting, the plaster itself is the perience of mixing red with green—and end- binder. Water is the solvent. This art form was ing up with mud! revived in the twentieth century by Mexican In this lesson you will learn all about the muralist Diego Rivera (dee-ay-goh ruh-vehr- media of painting. In later lessons you will uh). Figure 9–2 shows one of these works. experiment with using several of these. Typical of his frescoes, this one is filled with images of hard-working people. PAINTING MEDIA The media of painting include the tools of painting and the paint itself. The tools, as noted in Chapter 4, include brushes, palette knives, and even fingers. The paint has three ingredients. Two of these are pigment (pow- dered color) and binder (a liquid to which pigment is added.) The third component, sol- vent, is used to thin out paint that is overly thick. Solvent is also used for correcting mis- takes in a painting and for cleanup afterward. Many of the paints used today trace their roots to early times. Because artists are always looking for new means of self-expression, however, new media continue to appear.

Encaustic One of the oldest known painting tech- niques is encaustic (en-kaw-stik). This is a paint- ing medium in which pigment is mixed into melted wax. The wax, which is the binder, is kept liquid by heat. Heat is the “solvent.” Works that are painted with encaustic seem to glow with light. Figure 9–2 Notice that the people in this fresco are working together. Like other paintings by Rivera, this one Fresco emphasizes the importance of cooperation among people. Another painting technique developed Diego Rivera. Pan-American Unity. The Creative Genius of the South Growing from Religious Fervor and a Native Talent for long ago is fresco. Italian for “fresh,” fresco Plastic Expression (one of ten panels). 1940. Fresco. 674.4 1 (fres-koh) is a painting medium in which 2,227.6 cm (22 1 ⁄2 73 1 ) (Top five panels: 14 9 sq., bottom 1 five panels: 74 ⁄2 sq.) Mural at City College of San Francisco, San Francisco, California.

168 Chapter 9 Painting Figure 9–3 Note the soft textures the artist was able to achieve using this medium. Compare and contrast this painting with the one in Figure 9–1. How does each artist use the art elements of color and space? How are these works similar? How are they different?

3 1 Andrew Wyeth. Chambered Nautilus. 1956. Tempera on panel. 62.9 122.6 cm (24 ⁄4 48 ⁄4). Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Gift from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Montgomery. 1979.168.

Tempera Watercolor Another very old medium is tempera Once used only for sketches, watercolor (tem-puh-ruh). This is a painting medium in has become a favorite medium of serious which pigment mixed with egg yolk and water is painters. Watercolor is a painting medium in applied with tiny brushstrokes. Tempera does which pigment is blended with gum arabic and not spread or blend well. Because of this, water. Watercolor takes its name from its sol- transparent, or clear, layers of color must be vent. For best results, watercolors are applied built up little by little. This can take time. to good quality white paper. Blended colors Once dry, tempera is waterproof. are usually mixed on a palette before paint- Tempera allows a painter to capture the ing. A palette can be any tray or plate on which details of a subject. Look at the painting in paints are mixed before use. A white palette Figure 9–3. Observe how the medium en- allows you to see what color mixtures will abled the artist to capture the transparency look like against white paper before painting. of the gauzy canopy. A piece of white scrap paper can also be used Be aware that this kind of tempera is not to test colors for value and intensity before the same medium as the tempera paint you painting on good quality paper. use in school. The paint you use in your work Watercolor can give a light, misty feel to is school tempera. This paint gives an paintings or can be intense and brilliant. Look opaque, matte finish. Opaque (oh-payk) at Figure 9–7 on page 172. The artist, Dong means that it does not let light pass through. Kingman, has allowed the white of his paper School tempera has a special chemical emul- to act as his white color. The work seems to sion for its binder. This emulsion, unlike egg glow with sunshine because he has allowed yolk, does not go sour. so many areas of white to represent the light.

Lesson 1 The Art of Painting 169 Figure 9–4 The artist, Jacob Lawrence, was a leading African American artist of the twentieth century. Analyze and compare relationships, such as meaning and subject matter, in this painting and the one in Figure 9–2. Jacob Lawrence. Cabinet Makers. 1946. Gouache with pencil underdrawing on 1 paper. 55.9 76.4.cm (22 30 ⁄16). Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966. © 2003 Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Gouache with light by building up layers of glaze. Compare the painting in Figure 9–4 with Look at Figure 9–5. Notice how the artist ap- the one in Figure 9–7. Would you guess that plied paint heavily in some areas, and thinly the two works use closely related media? in others. On the cat, for example, there are They do. Both are made with watercolor. The areas of thin paint where the texture of the work in Figure 9–4 was created with gouache canvas shows through. On the paws, how- (gwahsh), an opaque water-based paint. Also ever, there is a thick layer of white paint. known as “body paint,” gouache has a higher ratio of binder to pigment than ordinary wa- tercolor. It produces a less wet-looking and more strongly colored picture. Because gouache does not undergo a chemical change when dry, it can be rewetted.

Oil Paint Oil paint is paint with an oil base. Oil paint was first used in the 1400s and has continued to be one of the most popular media used today. Linseed oil is the binder for oil paint, and its solvent is turpentine. Oil paint dries slowly. This allows artists to blend colors right on the canvas. Oil paint can be applied in thick, buttery lay- ers, called impasto (im-pas-toh), to make in- teresting textures. When applied thickly, oil paint is opaque. It can also be applied in a Figure 9–5 Notice that the artist uses different values thin, transparent layer, called a glaze. A glaze of the same hue to suggest shadow and depth. How many allows dry color underneath to show values of orange can you find in the table covering? through. Some artists make their works glow Alfred Chadbourn. Cat and Flowers on Studio Table. Oil on canvas. 1983. 76.2 76.2 cm (30 30). Private collection.

170 Chapter 9 Painting Acrylic Advances in technology in the twentieth century have given artists new media choices. Synthetic paints are manufactured paints with Alma Thomas (1891Ð1978) plastic binders. They came onto the scene in Have you ever seen a field of flowers the 1930s. seem to dance as they moved in the One of the most widely used paints today breeze? Georgia-born artist Alma Thomas is acrylic (uh-kril-ik). This is a quick-drying saw this frequently in her own garden. water-based synthetic paint. Acrylic paint first She also recorded this effect in the many appeared in the 1950s. One advantage of abstract floral paintings she did. Thomas acrylic is the wide range of pure, intense col- graduated from Howard University’s Fine ors it offers. (See Figure 9–6.) Another is that Arts program. She spent most of her life as acrylic is versatile. Like oil paint, it can be ap- a schoolteacher in Washington, D.C. and plied both thickly and in thin glazes. Acrylic painted in her free time. After retiring from paints can even be diluted enough to be the classroom in the 1960s, she turned her sprayed in a thin mist. Acrylic is less messy to attention to gardening. Then she noticed the use than oil paint. This is because the solvent “flower dance,” and attempted to capture it for acrylic is water. visually.“I got some watercolors and some crayons, and I began dabbling,” she once told an interviewer. “Little dabs of color that spread out very free . . . that’s how it all began.”

Check Your Understanding 1. What are the three main ingredients of paint? 2. How is encaustic different from fresco? How is it different from tempera? 3. How is oil paint different from watercolor? How is it different from acrylic? 4. What is impasto? What is a glaze? 5. What is a synthetic paint? When did synthetic paints first appear?

Figure 9–6 The strong colors in the bands move up and down as well as across. Compare and contrast the use of the art element color in this painting to the way color is used in Figures 9–4 and 9–5. Alma Thomas. Iris, Tulips, Jonquils, and Crocuses. 1969. Acrylic on canvas. 152.4 127 cm (60 50). National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. Gift of Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay.

Lesson 1 The Art of Painting 171