Art paintings were done even when cave paintings and murals were made. With time, the subject of art painting got a boost. Experimentations became the order of the day. Different materials or surfaces and different color combinations marked the painting turf of different centuries.
Oil paintings had caught the imagination of painters even in the pre-renaissance era. Making these paintings through a pigment tied to the dry oil medium was in itself a revelation then. These art paintings were largely practiced on canvas; though paper, wood, papyrus, vellum was also heard of. It used the boiled mixture of linseed and resin or frankincense to create the painting varnish. Such varnish or oil helped with the paintings.
Oil paintings gave a lot of importance to layering. The under layers were made with turpentine oil and on top of that many distinctive layers of oil paints were used to provide with the necessary contours. It used hog’s bristle for bold shots and Squirrel’s fur for mild brush strokes. We are talking about the brushes here.
Watercolor paintings also had its fair share of glory and is still running well. Art paintings that evolved through the use of watercolors found its feet largely in the post renaissance time. It used pigments which are dissoluble in water solvent vehicle. Watercolor paintings are largely done on paper. With the invention of far many compact combinations of colors, even the paper has become wove paper today. Today the water colors come in metal tubes or dried depressed cakes.
Europe denied the revolution its impetus when it started using aniline dyes in bright-colored medium. This got duly exposed in sunlight and left the surface. This had caused quite a stir and subsequent downfall of watercolor paintings.
Another genre of art paintings were the abstract paintings. These were the most contorted but the freest expressions of the subconscious. Any defined image using visual dynamics as an illusion for visual reality marked such paintings. These art paintings did not draw any inspiration from real world whatsoever. Abstract paintings got the necessary fillip through George Braque and Pablo Picasso when they came with the Baroque movement and Cubism respectively.
Few of the masters who have envisaged and equally implemented art paintings are:
Cubism- he came up with Cubism and defined the world from a vantage point as conceived by the painter and not as perceived by him.
Impressionism- Paul Cezanne’s movement was ably taken by Renoir. It dealt with pointed images; pointed staircases leading towards pointed houses. Such pointed; peaked houses have been psychologically inferred as being the result of years of Nazi oppression.
Dali’s Surrealism and other art paintings that evolved out of Impressionism and romanticism were equally brilliant and still hold value.