Modes of painting

The earliest paintings, paleolithic cave paintings, were usually made with any locally available substance that would leave a mark on the rock: charcoal from the fire in the case of the Chauvet (left) and Lascaux Caves but naturally occuring ochre in the case of Australian wall paintings. Coloring or filling in outlines was difficult with only a single color in each case. It took the discovery of color pigments from various sources. The application of those pigments to walls was fresco painting. Fresco paintings can be done in two ways: Buon fresco paintings are done on wet plaster, while a secco paintings are completed on dried plaster. In painting a fresco, the surface of a plastered wall is divided into areas roughly corresponding to the contours of the figures or the landscape, generally drawn on a rough underlayer of plaster, called the arriccio. Many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia. From this pigment, the underdrawing acquired its name, the sinopia. On top of this first, rough layer of plaster, a second layer is added, called the intonaco. This is the final layer, and would be smoothed and perfected as the painting surface. Buon fresco technique consists of painting in pigment mixed with water on wet, fresh, lime mortar or plaster (intenazo). Due to the chemical makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will be enough to bind the pigment to the wall. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster; after a number of hours, the plaster dries, and the pigment dries as well, a part of the wall. One of the first painters to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. Shown rightis Ilia Anossov using the Buon Fresco technique in Albuquerque, USA. A secco painting, in contrast, is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a binding medium, such as egg, to hold the pigment to the wall. Generally, buon fresco works are more durable than a secco works. Historically, the a secco technique was used more often for final touches or to touch-up mistakes made in a buon fresco work. Buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Generally, a layer of plaster will require ten to twelve hours to dry; ideally, an artist would begin to paint after one hour and continue until two hours before the drying time. Thus, an artist would need to know exactly how much he/she could paint in those hours, before the plaster dries: this area is called the giornata ("day's work"). Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done without removing the dried plaster from the wall-- a task usually requiring a crowbar or other sharp instrument-- and starting over. Hence the use of a secco to repair minor mistakes or to add finishing touches. In a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After centuries, these giornate (originally, nearly invisible) have become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes, these divisions are visible from the ground. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by a secco frescoing, which has since fallen off. Secco painting on plaser led to Tempera painting on a variety of surfaces.. The painting medium used consisted of tempera, a mixture composed of color pigments extracted from minerals, egg yolk used as an adhesive, and water to liquefy the paint. The distinctive qualities of this medium, which permits the placing of one layer upon another, are its opacity, produced by repeated coats of a single tone; it opalescence, produced by painting lighter tones over a dark, single tone; its transparency, produced by painting darker tones over a lighter, single tone. In the dark ages of religious painting, all the ofering were tempera on wooden boards. It was only when Oil painting first came into use around Antwerp, and was popularized by van Eyck in 1470 on, that tempera was virtually abanoned and painters could take their time in painting a little more slowly. In oil painting the egg of tempera was replaced by oil as the medium in which to mix the pigments - oil dries more slowly than egg. Shown on the left are pigments for sale in Venice but as Venice declined the main market for art supplies from the East became Antwerp where oil painting became the vogue. Now in Modern Times, paintings come in three modes, Oil Paintings as before, Water Colors and Acrylics. Gone are the days when acrylics were what artists allergic to the solvents in oil painting used. Acrylics have their own advantages, characteristics, and unique possibilities. Acrylics are extremely versatile, fast-drying paints. The fact that acrylic paints dry very fast means that you cannot put a lot of paint on an ordinary acrylic paint palette as it'll most likely dry out before you've finished. Various art supply companies have produced moisture-retaining acrylic palettes to solve this problem.