Art and Design A comprehensive guide for creative artists - Aaltodoc

Scanty waters.
Acrylic painting
Size: 30cm × 50cm,
on a hard board.
CHAPTER FOUR
Painting
Painting is a method of executing artworks using colour
pigments known as paints on distinctive enduring surfaces.
By painting, artists can creatively decorate surfaces to make
them appear like differing objects or images and sometimes
both. Ssegantebuka (2003, 34) defines painting as “the art of
using colour to express ideas, feelings or mood in pictorial
forms.”
Elkins (1999, 193) uses a different explanation: “Painting is
a fine art: not merely because it“ allows painting artists to
depict artistic images like “trees and faces and lovely things
to see ...”using paint—owing to the fact that sometimes
such painted objects are taken to be approaches of a
freshman's painting.
More so than anything else, the first known African
paintings are believed to have been painted by the San
people. Curtis (2006, 196) affirms, “Rock paintings were
believed to be the first painted works of art mostly done by
the cave people. They painted using their fingers and soft
coloured clay on rock surfaces following examples of claw
marks made by animals.”
Clearly, then, a well-known ideal source of paint material
used on rocks came from coloured soils obtained from
organic (living matter) and inorganic (not from natural
growth). In other words, “red” paints were obtained from
“iron oxide, black paints were executed from inorganic
compounds such as manganese dioxide, as well as pine
carbons.” (Curtis 2006, 18)
Thus, the paints used by creative artists to produce painting
artworks can also be obtained by mixing ground colour
pigments and they may be added with various types
of cohesive substances such as gum to bind them on a
planned surface. In the same manner, fine powder colour
can be used to make paintings after mixing it with water
to be transformed into a proper consistence of paint (in a
paste mixture). Feisner (2006, 26) adds, “The various paint
pigments have different mixing properties and they require
diverse types of binders to transform them into workable
tools.”
Artists can creatively do painting by using local materials
such as solid dyes from natural or synthetic substances.
Such materials should be capable of causing colour (to
appear) on a preferred surface for example tea, squeezed
plants, roots or leaves. Almost always, “artificial pigments
can be obtained by dry distillation (burning) of various
substances such as charcoal, peat soil and fossils.” (Feisner
2006, 26)
Let us make our conclusion with Kyeyune's (2003, 47) brief
record of fact: “rock paintings found at Nyero and Kakoro
in eastern Uganda, as well as Lolui island in the east of
Lake Victoria“ are of undisputed origin that belong to the
past and “the significance of these paintings is yet to be
interpreted.” In general, the art of painting is considered to
be extant—it is the oldest and it is still surviving.
Uses of painting
As Jenkins (1980, 131) has remarked, “painting” is a
“special value to a child. It is “a form of relaxation” and it
is a “communication.” It can also be used as a means for
releasing emotions. Indeed, through painting we can
explain, interpret hidden meanings and information, words,
or actions represented as colourful images (of animals,
still-life and nature, symbols and signs, texts or words).
Here is a brief discussion about other benefits of painting:
• Painting attaches our daily life to the aesthetics of
colours.
• Through painting artists attain imitated creative
styles—to supplement with their attained skills of
colour use.
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