Painting in our Life.

Painting is one of the oldest and most important arts. Since prehistoric times, artists have arranged paints on surfaces in way that express their idea about people and the world. The paintings that artists create have great value for humanity. They provide people with both enjoyment and information.

People enjoy painting for many reasons. They may think a painting in beautiful. People may like the colors that the painter used or the way the artist arranged the paint on the surface. Some paintings interest people because of the way the artist expresses some human emotion, such as fear, grief, happiness, or love. Other paintings are enjoyable because they skillfully portray nature. Even paintings of such everyday scenes as people at work and play and of such common objects as food and flowers can be a source of pleasure.

Paintings also teach. Some reveal what the artist felt about important subject, including death, love, religion, and social justice. Other paintings tell about the history of the period during which they were created. They provide information about the custom, goals, and interests of the people of past societies. Painting also tell about such things as the building, clothing, and tools of the past. Much of our knowledge about prehistoric and ancient times comes from painting and other arts, because many early societies left few or no written records. It would be hard to find a subject that no one has ever tried to paint. Artists paint the things they see around them-people, animals, nature, and nonliving objects. They also paint dreamlike scenes that exist only in the imagination. An artist can reach back into the past and paint a historical event, a religious story, or a myth. Some artists paint pictures that show no clear subject matter at all. Instead, they arrange the paint in some abstract way that expresses feeling or ideas that are important to them.

Since prehistoric times, many artists have painted the subjects that were most important to their societies. For example, religion was particularly important in Europe during the Middle Ages, and most of the paintings created then were religious. A prehistoric artist painted, the animal on a cave wall in France, about 15000 B. C. The artist lived at a time when animals served as the main source of food and clothing for human beings. The American artist Robert Bechtle painted the picture of a man and his automobile, called 60 F-Bird. The automobile is the most important means of transportation in modern American life. People have always been a favorite subject of painters. Artists have shown people intheir paintings in many different ways. All great paintings, regardless of subject matters, share a common feature. They do more than just reproduce with paint something that exists, existed, or can be imagined. They also expresses the painter's special view about a subject. Many artists turn to nature for their subject matter. They paint scenes called landscapes and seascapes that they try to capture the many moods of nature. Still-life are picture of objects. Still-life painters usually make no attempt to tell a story or express an idea. Instead, they are interested in the object themselves — their color, shape, surface, and the space within or around them. Artists often find their subject matter in the past. They paint pictures that record real events or myths of long ago. Many such paintings are instead to recall past deeds of glory or to teach a lesson. Many artists have used paintings to express political and social beliefs and to protest such things as war and poverty. Movements of social expression have appeared in painting throughout history.

The way that painters arrange colors, forms, or lines is called composition. Some painters use no recognizable subject matter. Instead, they stress composition for its own sake. Piet Mondrian's "Lozenge Composition in a Square" is an example.

Composition is also important in paintings that have recognizable subject matter. Fintoiettos "Saint Mark Rescuing a Slave" is as important for its composition as for the story it tells. Fintoretto place each figure perfectly to direct attention toward the floating figure of Saint Mark pointing to the slave on the ground. Viewers can enjoy the skillful composition even if they do not understand the story.Many paintings have been created to decorate rooms or buildings. The subject matter of most of these paintings is less important than the painting's place within the total scheme of decoration. For example, the Kaiseraal, a room in a place in Wiirzbourg, Germany, has a number of outstanding paintings by Giovanni Battista Piepolo. But these paintings are no more important than the windows, columns, or imitation draperies in the room. Many artists and craftworkers created these objects, and each object became a part of the room's overall decoration. Paintings consist of many artistic elements. The most important elements include (1) color, (2) line, (3) mass, (4) space, and (5) texture. These artistic elements are as important to a painter as words are to an author. By stressing certain elements, a painter can make a picture easier to understand or bring out some particular mood or theme. For example , an artist can combine to produce an intensely emotional feeling. The same artistic elements can also be combined in a different way in order to produce a feeling of peace and relaxation.Color can help an artist tell a story, express an emotion, or- as in Picasso's “Mandolin and Guitar” —created a composition, Picasso did not color all his forms as they would appear in real life. Instead, he used strong primary colors — such as blue, red, and yellow — in the parts of balanced these colors with delicate black, brown, gray, tan, and white colors. The result is pleasing composition created largely by the painter's skillful arrangement of colors.

Line is the chief means by which most artists build up the forms in their pictures. By combining lines of different lengths and different directions, an artist makes the drawing a painting. In " Two Acrobats With Dog", Picasso used lines to show the edges of his figures. Some lines are thick and some are thin. The artist emphasized line to make the viewer aware of the roundness of the forms and the and the delicacy of the slender figures of the young boys and the figure of the dog.

Mass allows an artist to express the feeling of weight in a painting. Picasso created "Mother and Child"' largely in terms of mass. The bulky, solid appearance of figures in the painting impresses the viewer. The artist made the figure look as if they are made of stone or some other heavy materials. By stressing mass, Picasso made the figures seem like monuments that will last a long time.

Space. By arranging lines, colors, and light and dark areas in certain ways, painters can create an appearance of great space-even though they really paint on a small, flat surface. An artist can make an object look flat or solid, and either close or far away. In some paintings, space plays just as important a part as the solid forms. Picasso's “Seated Bather” shows a skillful use of space. The openings between the bonelike forms are just as expensive and interesting as the solid forms in the painting.

Texture refers to the appearance of the painting's surface. The paint of a picture maybe thick and rough or thin and smooth. In “Woman Weeping”, Picasso created a rough texture by using thick strokes of paint. This texture adds to the painful emotional feeling of the painting.

If to speak about techniques, we should start with fresco painting. Fresco painting is a technique in which the artists paints on a plastered wall while the plaster is still damp. Fresco artists decorate both inside and outside walls. Their works contribute greatly to the beauty of buildings and homes. Fresco painting is especially well suited to decorating large walls in churches, government buildings, and palaces. A fresco, unlike many other painting techniques, has no glossy shining. A shine would make a fresco difficult to see from certain angels. Fresco painting reached its greatest popularity from the 1200"s through the 1500's. Italy was the center of fresco painting during that period.