CONTENTS GET INTO PAINTING MATERIALS AND COLORS WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH ONE COLOR WET-ON-WET WATERCOLORS CLOSE-UP VIEW TAKE A BREAK FROM REALITY SURFACE TEXTURES NO-BRUSH PAINTING HOW MANY POINTS MAKE A PAINTING PAINTING EN PLEIN AIR CREATE ART WITH LINES AND SHAPES THE PAINTED SELFIE GRAFFITI ART LEARNING MORE GLOSSARY INDEX AND ABOUT THE AUTHOR 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 31 32
GET INTO PAINTING Read this book with a sense of adventure It is designed to help you discover and unleash the creativity that exists within you a creativity that exists within all of us The projects in this book will help you to express your feelings your thoughts and your ideas through your art When learning to paint enjoy the process and don’t worry too much about the finished product Find your own individual style and run with it ABSTRACT REALIST Abstract art is art that can be made using lines shapes and colors that do not represent an actual form but show emotion Realistic or naturalistic art has a subject and the art tries to look like the real thing It can be very realistic or a only little but the subject is recognizable Common subjects of realistic art are still lifes portraits and landscapes MINI-BIOGRAPHIES Throughout the book you will find mini-biographies mini-biographies highlighting the work of well-known well-known artists You can learn a lot about painting techniques by looking at great paintings Experiment with the techniques the artists used Examine each artwork to see how its parts were put together and how the artist used symmetry types of lines and color 4 Wassily Kandinsky was one of the first to embrace abstract works This painting is called On White II Canada’s natural beauty inspired a group of artists in the 1920s to look for bold new ways to capture it Falls Montreal River was painted in 1920 by J E H MacDonald a member of the Group of Seven
Design elements When Painting What makes a painting visually interesting It depends on the creative use of the elements of design line shape texture and composition Line is the edge between two colors or shapes It does not have to be straight Lines can go in any direction and are drawn in any shape length or thickness Artists use lines to draw the viewer’s eye in the direction they want it to go Shape is any enclosed space in a painting A shape’s edges may be created by lines textures or colors Texture is created in two different ways Physical texture describes the way paint is applied thick or thin smooth or rough Optical texture is the way an artist creates the look of texture Look for textures around you to get inspiration for your art Composition is the arrangement of all the shapes lines colors spaces and textures in a painting Artists carefully place these elements so that the viewer’s eye will follow a path leading to the key or most important element or message of the work Artists divide a painting into three parts or planes to create a sense of depth The foreground of a painting is the part of the scene that is closest to the viewer Objects in the foreground appear to be larger They are often painted with brighter colors and many details The background of a painting is the farthest away It usually shows where the scene involving the main subject is taking place Features in the background are much smaller in size duller in color and sometimes even blurred because they are meant to appear farther away The middle ground is the space between the foreground and the background MONA LISA BY LEONARDO DA VINCI 1452 1519 Italy Her mysterious smile and the way her eyes seem to follow viewers around have made Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world It took years for Leonardo to add all the layers of light and shadow to the Mona Lisa Using a landscape in the background of a portrait was a new idea and Leonardo purposely blurred the edges showing the link between people and nature The composition technique of the painting makes it one of the most studied works in the history of art 5
