I truly believe that an artist could spend a lifetime exploring color and the results of color mixing, there are just so many possibilities and results. Color mixing is something beginners often shy away from. Don’t, rather learn the few fundamentals, embrace the challenge and get mixing. At worst you’ll produce mud colors; if you don’t want to waste the paint by throwing it away, use it with some white to do a tonal exercise, or underpainting. Here are some tips to help you with color mixing that I wish I’d known far earlier than I did.

• Use mixtures rather than colors straight from the tube for more interesting color. For example, mix blue and yellow to make green or add other colors to tube green to modify the color.

• Most color-mixing problems come from overmixing. Mix very lightly on the palette or directly on the support to prevent this, and once the color is down, leave it alone.
• Some books tell you to use no more than three colors in a mixture, but the problem isn’t usually concerned with the number of colors; it’s a matter of which colors you use. Paint characteristics and your choices of colors determine how they will mix. Refer to the article on Split-Primary Color Mixing to learn how to mix clean, bright color every time.
• Complements (opposites on the color wheel) create color vibrations and enhance each other when placed side by side. When mixed, they neutralize each other.
• To lower the intensity of a color, mix it with its complement or Burnt Sienna rather than black, gray or sepia. These colors tend to deaden mixtures.
• For high-intensity mixtures avoid the third primary. The third primary is the complement of the mixture of any two other primaries and will lower the intensity of this mixture. For example, you know that red and blue make violet; however, a warm red (which has yellow in it) makes a dull, low-intensity violet when mixed with blue, because yellow is the complement of violet.

History

Photography is an expansive art form that includes more than just portraiture, landscape or glamor photography. Both professional and amateur photographers may favor specific types of photography over others. While a professional photographer may work in photojournalism, an amateur may be particularly interested in macro-photography. Read on to learn more about the various types of photography.

Equipment

1) Use a 35mm single lens reflex (SLR) camera or a digital 4-megapixel or higher camera, manual or automatic with manual override and 50-55mm lens or zoom lens. Read your instructions!

2) Use a sturdy tripod with tilt and rotation and a cable release or self-timer to reduce risk of camera shake.

3) Shoot indoors with two 500-watt photo flood lamps (3200K) mounted in reflectors.

4) For slides, I use 3200K tungsten Ektachrome Professional films, ISO 100, which can be processed in 3 hours. If I need to re-shoot, I can often do it the same day. For prints indoors with lights, I use an 80A conversion filter and ISO 200-400 film. For digital I set the white balance for tungsten lighting.

Procedures:

1)Fasten art to a flat, black background with double-stick tape, tacks or use a black mat. Place on the wall or on an easel. The art must be parallel to the camera lens, the center of the lens pointing at the center of the art. Use a bubble level to be sure camera and art are level. Tape a gray/color scale next to the art if your slides are for reproduction.

2)Lamps should be 4-5 feet away from the art, behind the camera at 45 degree angle on each side and at the same height as the camera. Check to be sure there are no hot spots, shadows or shine reflecting off the art. (An artist on the Internet says he places plastic wrap over the painting so he can check for hot spots. He removes it before shooting his slides.) The room should be completely dark when you shoot. Cover the windows and turn out the lights. For textured work like collage try raking the light, using just one light from the side and adjusting the exposure accordingly.

3) Fill the viewfinder or LCD (digital) with the IMAGE ONLY, centered and absolutely square to the sides, top and bottom. Move the camera or zoom lens, not the art.

4) Focus carefully in the center of the art.

5) Take a meter reading using an 18% gray card or a large piece of 18% gray mat board. Set the f-stop at f8-f16 and adjust the speed according to the instructions with your camera to get the best exposure. When you shoot a picture, take three exposures (bracket exposures), one at the setting, one a half-stop above and one a half-stop below. Take three shots at each exposure and you should have 3-6 good slides to choose from. Record the settings for each slide as you take them, so you can tell which ones work best. In my experience with my equipment, watercolors or light-value artwork need to be slightly overexposed for better color saturation.

6) The best combination for me is a slow speed setting (1/8, 1/15, 1/30 sec.) with a high f/stop (f11 or f16) for color saturation and sharp image. Since my digital camera has only an f8 stop, I can’t photograph at such a low speed.

7) Check camera batteries and make sure ISO setting matches film. If your digital has ISO settings, use a lower setting for less &noise&. Load your film or your media card.

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INTRODUCTION

An eye-catching novel digital photographic artform called Photomosaics[TM] was born in 1996 by Robert Silvers, then a 26 year-old student at MIT who founded Runaway Technology in 1998, a commercial enterprise providing patent protection for his process, proprietary software and the source of stock and assignment images for sale. He was inspired by Ken Knowlton, a gifted pioneer artist who explored computer creation of mosaic-like images. Silvers was able to refine the innovation by drafting an algorithm for a supercomputer to access extensive photographic archives.

Merriam-Webster’s College Dictionary, 10th Edition, 1997, defines the word photomosaic, vintage 1942, as “a photographic mosaic; especially one composed of aerial or orbital photographs.” The closest germane word was photomontage, vintage 1931, describing a montage using photographic images. Going further, montage describes the “process of making a composite picture by bringing together into a single composition a number of different pictures or parts of pictures and arranging these … so they form a blended whole while remaining distinct.” But, the word mosaic is apropos and describes “the process of making pictures … by inlaying small bits … in mortar.”

PHOTOMOSAIC ARTISTRY

DTG defines photo mosaics as photographic images or pictures made up of many, usually hundreds, of smaller photographic images. Viewed very closely, the small tile images can be recognized as individual photos, but at a distance, the composite of these images make up an entirely different image.

This exciting branch of art has been going on for quite some time now and has gained a wide interest from all over the world. The meaning of these artworks has a profound effect on anyone who sees it. It can be a powerful medium of expression that conveys strong emotions. I myself was very moved upon seeing a photo mosaic of US president George Bush made up of all the servicemen that have died in Iraq. Just imagine the many soldiers making up that picture and you’ll see why it brought out a lot of emotions for all who’ve seen it.

This type of art is a very effective tool to convey different types of meaning whatever the artist likes. It allows you to make the viewer make connections and this connections will serve as the medium where you communicate to them whatever it is that you want them to know.

PRINCIPLES that are essential to create good photo mosaics:

1)The large image MUST look good without too much jaggedness or color distortion. To achieve this use more and smaller tiles, use duplicates, modify the tile images or add another photo collection.

(2) The small tile images should be sufficiently large to view comfortably in the renderings final form. If this is a display on a computer monitor or a 8×10 print, you will need to use as few tiles as possible and still satisfy rule(1). If it is a poster size printout you can get by with over a thousand tiles.

(3) If duplicate use of the small tiles is needed, they must not be placed near to each other.

(4) If the small tile images need to be modified to achieve 1-3, it should be as little as possible.

(5) The target image and the small tile pictures should as much as possible have some coherent theme or connection.

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface (support base). In art, the term describes both the act and the result, which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, clay or concrete. Paintings may be decorated with gold leaf, and some modern paintings incorporate other materials including sand, clay, and scraps of paper.

Painting is a mode of expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, composition or abstraction and other aesthetics may serve to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Paintings can be naturalistic and representational (as in a still life or landscape painting), photographic, abstract, be loaded with narrative content, symbolism, emotion or be political in nature.

A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by spiritual motifs and ideas; examples of this kind of painting range from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to Biblical scenes rendered on the interior walls and ceiling of The Sistine Chapel, to scenes from the life of Buddha or other scenes of eastern religious origin.

History of Painting

The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, claimed by some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth or humans often hunting. However the earliest evidence of painting has been discovered in two rock-shelters in Arnhem Land, in northern Australia. In the lowest layer of material at these sites there are used pieces of ochre estimated to be 60,000 years old. Archaeologists have also found a fragment of rock painting preserved in a limestone rock-shelter in the Kimberley region of North-Western Australia, that is dated 40 000 years old. There are examples of cave paintings all over the world—in France, Spain, Portugal, China, Australia, and India.

In Western cultures oil painting and watercolor painting are the best known media, with rich and complex traditions in style and subject matter. In the East, ink and color ink historically predominated the choice of media with equally rich and complex traditions.

Frederick Ronald (Fred) Williams OBE (23 January 1927 - 22 April 1982) was an Australian painter and printmaker. He was one of Australia’s most important artists, and one of the twentieth century’s major painters of the landscape. He had more than seventy solo exhibitions during his career in Australian galleries, as well as the exhibition Fred Williams - Landscapes of a Continent at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1977.

Fred Williams was born in 1927 in Melbourne. From 1943 to 1947 he studied at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, at first part-time and then full-time from 1945 at the age of 16. The Gallery School was traditional and academic, with a long and prestigious history. He also began lessons under George Bell the following year, who had his own art school in Melbourne. This continued until 1950. Bell was a conservative modern artist but a very influential teacher.

Between 1951 and 1956, Williams studied part-time at the Chelsea School of Art, London (now Chelsea College of Art and Design) and in 1954 he did an etching course at the Central School of Arts and Craft. He subsidised his art practice by working in a picture-framer’s shop. He returned to Melbourne in 1957.

He had work included in the ‘Recent Australian Painting’ exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, and ‘Australian Painting: Colonial, Impressionism, Modern’ at the Tate Gallery.

He married Lyn Watson in 1960, and they had three daughters: Isobel, Louise and Kate. In 1963 the couple moved to Upwey, Victoria in the Dandenong Ranges outside Melbourne, a location that would have a decisive impact on his work. In 1964 they travelled through Europe on a Helena Rubenstein Scholarship. In 1969 Williams moved to Hawthorn, an inner suburb of Melbourne.

In 1976 he was named an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), and awarded a Doctorate of Law (Honoris Causa) by Monash University in 1980.

Williams won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting twice; in 1966 with Upwey Landscape and in 1976 with Mt. Kosciusko.

His painting Upwey Landscape (1965) sold for $1,987,700 in one of the final auctions of Christie’s in Australia in April 2006, which was the second highest price for an Australian work. The previous highest price for one of Williams’ paintings was $5,875,000 for You Yangs Landscape in 1963.

He died in 1982, in Hawthorn from lung cancer at age 55.

How do we decide what colours we mix to achieve the required colour. Do we do it by instinct, a bit of this colour, a little of that ? Here are some tips to help you put a little more science into the art of colour mixing.

Don’t Use More Than Three Colours in a Mixture. The more pigments you mix together, the muddier your colours will become. To keep your mixes looking fresh and clean use just two colours (You can add white if necessary).

Use a Key Colour in all Mixes. Add a small amount of the same colour to all your mixes. For example, try adding a small amount of burnt umber to all your mixes. Take this approach across the whole painting and you’ll create a painting with a keyed colour range. Each colour will therefore have a least a little in common with its neighbours and (hopefully) this will pull your painting together.

Use a Coloured Ground for your Painting. Before you start to paint, give your canvas a coat or a stain of another colour. This will affect your painting in two ways: Firstly, the underpainting will unify all the coloours you place on top. Secondly, as you add colours over the top, the colour underneath will inevitably show through and change the colour perceived by the viewer. For example, a light wash of viridian green and burnt sienna will give a dark leafy greenness to a forest scene.

Use a Limited Set of Colours. Try using a very limited palette of colours. Try using the earth colours (yellow ochre, olive green, venetian red, raw umber, burnt sienna, raw sienna) and maybe french ultramarine. You’ll be amazed at the range of colours you can achieve, but just as importantly, the colours you mix will be more ‘together’.

Use Complementary Colours Side-by-side. Complementary colours are ‘opposite’ colours. For example, the opposite or red is green, the opposite of blue is orange. Place two opposite colours next to each other on your canvas and the eye will perceive both colours as more intense. Don’t just think of this phenomenon in terms of bright, primary colours, try it in subtle tints and shades. For example, I recently contrasted a pale blue shirt against a white background by adding a little cadmium orange to the white mixture. The effect was to ‘lift’ the blue shirt slightly and move it away from the very slightly orangey background.

Mix Complementary Colours to Make Darks. Mix cadmium red with pthalo green to get a colour that is very near to black, but twice as interesting. Add white to get a beautiful grey. Or try mixing ultramarine with burnt umber to give a fantastic dark that can be warm (add more umber) or cool (add more ultramarine).

Use a Lighter Tone to Separate Two Colour Areas. A trick used by some artists is to slightly lighten the of a colour at the border with another. For example, look closely at ‘The Geographer’ by Vermeer. At the edge of the blue gown Vermeer adds a little white to the colour of the distant wardrobe. This has the effect of intensifying the blue colour and putting distance between the figure and his background, opening up a three dimensional space the brings the nearby figure into sharper relief.

Use warm and cool colours to introduce depth. The mantra is “warm colours advance and cool colours recede”. Its boring (and perhaps a cliché) but it does work!

Use complementary colours to model shapes. Rather than using shadow colours to suggest the gentle curve of someone’s cheek in a portrait, mix a little ultramarine or viridian green into the flesh colour mix. The effect will be more subtle.

Practice Your Colour Mixes. Don’t experiment with colour mixes on your best pictures, paint colour swatches instead. For example, mix pure ultramarine with pure viridian green and paint a stripe on a cheap, throwaway surface. Then add a little white to the mixture and paint another stripe next to the first. Gradually introduce more white into the mixture until the mixture is almost white.

Finally, Remember to Forget the Rules! Be prepared to forget everything you ever learnt about colours and colour mixing. Okay, so warm colours advance and cool colours recede? Try painting a sunset.

Juan Luna y Novicio (October 23, 1857 – December 7, 1899) was one of the great heroes of the Philippine Revolution and one of the first internationally-recognized Philippine painters. A native of Badoc, Ilocos Norte, Juan Luna was the third among the seven children of Joaquin Luna de San Pedro y Posada and Laureana Novicio y Ancheta. Both parents were from families that were well-off, thus each brought to the family a modest fortune.

Personal Background

In 1861, the Luna family left the north for Manila, believing that in this progressive city their children would receive a good education. Juan Luna was sent to Ateneo Municipal de Manila where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree (equivalent to the present-day high school diploma). His parents seemed to have envisioned him entering an ecclesiastical career; however, Juan had shown early interest in painting and drawing, influenced by his brother, Manuel Luna, who, according to Dr. José Rizal, was a better painter than Juan himself.

Luna later enrolled at Escuela Nautica (Academia Naval) and became a sailor. With Manuel, he sailed the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean and saw the picturesque views and scenic places in Hongkong, Amoy, Singapore, Batavia, and Colombo. Nevertheless, Luna’s passion for the arts continued. Whenever he was anchored in Manila Bay, he took drawing lessons under the illustrious painting teacher of Ermita, Manila, Lorenzo Guerrero. He also enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts (Academia de Dibujo y Pintura) in Manila where he was influenced and taught how to draw by the Spanish artist Agustin Saez. Unfortunately, Luna’s vigorous brush strokes displeased the maestro, and this probably was the reason why Luna was discharged from the Academia. However, Guerrero was impressed by his skill and urged Luna’s parents to send him to Spain for further study.

Juan Luna as an Artist

Probably it was in 1883 when Luna started the painting demanded of him by the Ayuntamiento. But it was some years before he would complete it. In May 1884, he shipped the large canvas of the Spoliarium to Madrid for the year’s Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes. There, he was the first recipient of the three gold medals awarded in the concourse. Luna’s triumph in this exposition heightened the spirit of the Filipino community in Madrid, and Luna gained recognition among the connoisseurs and art critics present. On 25 June 1884, the Filipinos organized an event celebrating the victorious Luna, attended by about seventy people, Filipinos and Spaniards alike. That night, Rizal prepared a speech for his friend, stressing two significant things: (1) the glorification of genius; and (2) the grandeur of the fatherland.

Luna developed a friendly relationship with the King of Spain and was later commissioned by the Spanish Senate to undertake a large canvas, the La Batalla de Lepanto, which greatly challenged him. He moved to Paris in 1885 and opened his own studio at No. 65 Boulevard Arago, near that of Felix Resurreccion Hidalgo. A year after, he finished the piece El Pacto de Sangre in accordance with the agreement he had with the Ayuntamiento of Manila. Depicted in this piece was the blood compact ceremony between Datu Sikatuna and Miguel Lopez de Legaspi. It now adorns the Malacañang Palace. He also sent two other paintings in addition to the one required. The second canvas sent to Manila was a portrait of Don Miguel Lopez de Legaspi reconstructed by Luna from his recollection of Legaspi’s portrait he saw in the hall of the Cabildo and the third was of Governor general Ramon Blanco.

In 1887, Luna once again traveled back to Spain to enter in that year’s Exposition two of his pieces, the La Batalla de Lepanto and Rendicion de Granada, which both won. He celebrated his triumph with his Filipino friends in Madrid, and Graciano Lopez-Jaena delivered a speech for him.

Luna’s paintings are generally described as being vigorous and dramatic. With its elements of Romanticism, his style shows the influence of Delacroix, Rembrandt, and Daumier.

Full Name: Vincent Willem Van Gogh
Born: March 30th 1853 in Groot Zundert, Brabant Holland
Died: July 27th 1890 in Auvers-sur-Oise, France

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. Some of his paintings are now among the world’s best known, most popular and expensive works of art.

The 19th century European society of Van Gogh’s time was not ready to accept his truthful and emotionally morbid way of depicting his art subjects. His internal turbulence is clearly seen in most of his paintings, which set the stage for the direction of a new style of painting called Expressionism. It is characterized by the use of symbols and a style that expresses the artist’s inner feelings about his subject. The whole of Van Gogh`s painted works - over 800 canvases - were produced in the very short time span of only 8 years. Indeed his total output of over 2000 drawings and paintings originate from the period 1880-1890.

Alongside these runs his great published correspondence of 800 letters, mainly to his brother Theo, and it is through this that we learn much about, although never fully understand, the tormented spirit of this eccentric genius, Vincent Van Gogh. They reveal how, having been unable to enter the ministry of the church, he gradually became taken over by his work, inextricably enslaved by its demands, in search of the ultimate `truth` and feeling “the positive consciousness of the fact that art is something greater and higher than our own adroitness or accomplishments or knowledge”.

This belief led him to a great modesty and he used to sign himself, if at all, only “Vincent”, always knowing that his life on earth would be very short. The parish priest of Auvers-sur-Oise called him accursed and even refused to provide his hearse for Vincent`s funeral. Therefore, an understanding of the paintings by Van Gogh requires insight into his turbulent life, because his style of painting is exemplified by a projection of the painter’s inner experience onto the canvas he paints. In Vincent Van Gogh’s own words, he said, “What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter, and then the painting.” To understand an artist of Expressionism we must first explore their biography.

Many of us can identify with the roadblocks that Vincent Van Gogh experienced in his many career and romantic pursuits, all ending in failure. His reaction to these experiences however, demonstrates a biological and psychological abnormality, causing behaviors that alienated those around him. As he became more isolated from society and began to pour all of his energies into painting, his eccentricities and outbursts developed pathological traits, which caused him first, to be institutionalized, and second, it led to his suicidal death at the young age of 37.

His career in the art world began in 1869 when, on the recommendation of his uncle `Cent`, a founder and shareholder, he was employed by the Goupil & Co art gallery as a clark in their Hague branch. Theo joined the Brussels office in 1873. Being transferred to London to complete his training, he fell in love with Eugénie, the daughter of his landlady, but was rejected. This led him to a period of great despair and depression, so much so that he could not attend to his duties effectively and he was transferred to Paris in 1875, where he lived in a small room in Montmatre. He was forced to resign in 1876 and immediately returned to England.

Vincent`s emotional turmoil did however bear artistic fruits in the form of a remarkable gift for perception - seeing powerfully what most others did not observe at all - “sad but always cheerful” he described himself and he turned to the religious scriptures for solace, secretly harbouring the ambition to become a clergyman like his father. However, he did manage to find employment in Ramsgate, on the south coast, where he tough French, spelling and arithmetic in a small school - and was able also to linger on the beach and watch the sea. From there he found employment as assistant to the Methodist preacher Reverend Jones at Isleworth, where he came into close contact with the great squalor and poverty of his parishioners, inspiring him to a desire to live in the service of the most destitute. However, returning home to Holland for Christmas, his parents managed to talk him out of this impecunious existance and again his uncle Cent obtained for him a clerk`s job in a booksellers in Dordrecht.

Fernando Amorsolo y Cueto (May 30, 1892 - April 26, 1972) is one of the most important artists in the history of painting in the Philippines. Amorsolo was a portraitist and painter of rural Philippine landscapes. He is popularly known for his craftsmanship and mastery in the use of light. Born in Paco, Manila, he earned a degree from the Liceo de Manila Art School in 1909.

Biography

Fernando Amorsolo was born on May 30, 1892 in Paco, when Manila was still under Spanish sovereignty, to Pedro Amorsolo, a bookkeeper, and Bonifacia Cueto. Amorsolo spent his childhood in Daet, Camarines Norte, where he studied in a public school and was tutored at home in Spanish reading and writing. After his father’s death, Amorsolo and his family moved to Manila to live with Don Fabian de la Rosa, his mother’s cousin and a Philippine painter. At the age of 13, Amorsolo became an apprentice to De la Rosa, who would eventually become the advocate and guide to Amorsolo’s painting career. During this time, Amorsolo’s mother embroidered to earn money, while Amorsolo helped by selling watercolor postcards to a local bookstore for 10 centavos each. Amorsolo’s brother, Pablo, was also a painter.

Amorsolo’s first success as a young painter came in 1908, when his painting Leyendo el periódico took second place at the Bazar Escolta, a contest organized by the Asociacion Internacional de Artistas. Between 1909 and 1914, Amorsolo enrolled at the Art School of the Liceo de Manila, where he earned honors for his paintings and drawings.

After graduating from the Liceo, he entered the University of the Philippines’ School of Fine Arts, where De la Rosa worked at the time. During college, Fernando Amorsolo’s primary influences were the Spanish court painter Diego Velazquez, John Singer Sargent, Anders Zorn, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, but mostly his contemporary Spanish masters Joaquín Sorolla Bastida and Ignacio Zuloaga. Amorsolo’s most notable work as a student at the Liceo was his painting of a young man and a young woman in a garden, which won him the first prize in the art school exhibition during his graduation year. To make money during school, Amorsolo joined competitions and did illustrations for various Philippine publications, including Severino Reyes’ first novel in Tagalog, Parusa ng Diyos (God’s Punishment), and Iñigo Ed. Regalado’s Madaling Araw (Dawn). He also illustrated for the religious Pasion books. Amorsolo graduated with medals from the University of the Philippines in 1914.