May 3rd, 2011
Paper has been traced to China in about AD 105. It reached Central Asia by 751 and Baghdad by 793, and then by the 14th century there were paper mills in a number of places in Europe. The invention of the printing press in about 1450 markedly increased the need for paper, and at the beginning of the 19th century wood and other vegetable pulps began to replace rags as the foremost source of fibre for papermaking.
Prior to 1798, Nicholas-Louis Robert created the first paper-making machine. Using a moving screen belt, it was made one sheet at a time by the dipping of or mould which has a screen bottom into a vat of pulp. Some years later the brothers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier improved Robert’s machine, and in 1809 John Dickinson invented the first cylinder machine.
Although most steps in papermaking are now highly mechanized, the basic process has remained essentially the same. Firstly, the fibres are separated and wetted to create the paper pulp, or stock. The pulp is then filtered on a woven screen that forms a sheet of fibre, which is pressed and compacted to squeeze out most of the water. The remaining water is removed by evaporation, and the dry sheet is further compressed and, depending upon the intended use, coated or impregnated with other substances.
Differences among the grades and types of paper are determined by several factors: the kind of fibre used; the preparation of the pulp, either by mechanical (groundwood) or chemical (primarily sulfite, soda, or sulfate) methods, or by a combination of the two; by the addition of more substances to the pulp, the most commonly used being bleach or colouring and sizing, the latter to check penetration by ink; by conditions under which the sheet is formed, including its weight; and by the physical or chemical treatments applied to the finished sheet.
Although wood has become the foremost source of fibre for papermaking, rag fibres are still used for paper of maximum strength, resistance to mould, and permanence. Recycled wastepaper (including newsprint) and paperboard are also important sources. Still other fibres used include straw, bagasse (residue from crushed sugarcane), esparto, bamboo, flax, hemp, jute, and kenaf. Some paper, particularly specialty items, is created from synthetic fibres.
Weight or substance per unit area, called basis weight, is measured in reams (now commonly 500 sheets). Paper is also measured by caliper (thickness) and density. The strength and durability of paper is determined by factors such as the strength and length of the fibres, as well as their bonding ability, and the formation and structure of the sheet. The optical properties of paper include its brightness, colour, opacity, and gloss. Among the most important paper grades are bond, book, bristol, groundwood and newsprint, kraft, paperboard, and sanitary.
If you are looking for arts supplies or school art supplies, make sure you visit Discount Art Warehouse for all your art supplies and art paper.
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November 28th, 2010
Before you can create the best artworks that show your unique painting style, you must secure four essential art supplies that can help you define your deepest feelings onto the canvas. Once you have obtained these important tools, you can already explore the world of art without anything holding you back. Here are the most important supplies that can help you to create your very own masterpiece.
Paintbrushes
Every painter needs a brush to convey a sensation to his or her audience. Start finding different kinds of brushes that can help you while you are exploring different painting techniques. Start with a flat synthetic brush to create simple works of art. As your skills continue to improve, look for other art supplies such as flat bristle brushes, Filbert brushes, and sable brushes (and think outside of the box, trying items such as rubber wedges, potato/lino cut shapes}. All of these tools can add variety to every idea you were able to put into paintings.
Palettes and palette knives
While you are using oil-based paint, you will need to use a wood palette to hold them. Do not forget to clean your palette at the end of all your painting sessions. If you want to use acrylic paints, use a paper palette or any plastic surface instead of a wooden palette.
You can use palette knives to mix the paint on your wooden or paper palette. Try to look for trowel-shaped palette knives that you can use to remove the paint from your canvas or palette.
Oil paint and special mediums
Oil paint is one of the most common art supplies used for painting pictures with beautiful textures. Their versatile nature can help you use thin and thick textures for your artworks. Since they tend to dry slowly, you will have enough time to work the oil paint on the canvas and to scrape some of the paint off for revisions.
You will also need special mediums to thin the oil paint when it becomes too thick. You can also use it for cleaning your brushes and using special techniques such as glazing.
Artist’s canvas
When buying canvases, you usually have the option to purchase a stretched canvas or a canvas board. Stretched canvases are conveniently mounted on stretcher bars, that can be displayed on walls even when they are not framed.
If you have a limited budget, try using canvas boards as an alternative to high-end stretched canvases. Although they are cheaper than stretched canvases, they can deliver superior results with their durable card panels and versatile surfaces.
With these four key art supplies, you can share the beautiful images you were able to visualise by preserving them into a wonderful work of art.
If you are looking for art supplies, including school art supplies, make sure you check out Discount Art. The range of art supply specials is extensive and as a member you get a 10 percent discount.
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September 29th, 2010
Abstract Art is a vast movement in American painting that was instigated in the late 1940s and then become a favoured trend in Western painting during the fifties. The most prominent American Abstract Expressionist painters were Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko. Others were Clyfford Still, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Lee Krasner, Bradley Walker Tomlin, William Baziotes, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, Elaine de Kooning, and Jack Tworkov. Most of them worked, lived, or had galleries in New York City.
Although it is the common designation, Abstract Expressionism is not the right category of the kind of art created by the artists. In truth, the movement comprised numerous different painterly styles that were different in both technical application and quality of expression. Despite this variety, Abstract Expressionist paintings also possess many broad elements. They are essentially abstract — meaning, they are based around forms that were not taken from the real world.
They furthermore emphasize unrestricted, spontaneous, and individualised emotional expression, and they display vast freedom of skill and process to create this outcome, with special importance pushed on the use of the changeable physical nature of paint to call up expressive qualities (for example, sensuousness, dynamism, violence, mystery, lyricism). They show the same emphasis on the unstudied and intuitive use of the paint in a method of psychic improvisation in the trend of the automatism of the Surrealists, with the same purpose of finding the force of the creative subconcious in art. They exhibit the neglect of commonly structured composition built up by application of discrete and segregable elements and their replacement with a individual unified, unchanged field, network, or other image that exists in unstructured space. Last, the paintings fill large canvases to grant the aforementioned visual aspects both monumentality and engrossing might.
The earlier Abstract Expressionists had two iconic forerunners: Arshile Gorky, who painted sensual biomorphic images with a free, lightly linear and liquid paint method; and Hans Hofmann, who made use of dynamic and fully textured brushwork in his abstract but conventionally composed works. Another special influence on nascent Abstract Expressionism was the arrival on the US shores in the late 30s and early forties of a whole host of Surrealists and other European avant-garde artists escaping from the rise of the Nazi party Europe. The European artists forcefully moved the native New York City painters and privileged for them a more intimate insight of the vanguard of European paintings. The Abstract Expressionist movement itself is generally considered as having been initiated with the painting created by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s.
With regard to the differentiation of technique in the Abstract Expressionist movement, three common approaches can be isolated. First was action painting which is indicated by a loose, speedy, dynamic, or powerful handling of paint in sweeping or slashing brushstrokes, and in techniques somewhat dictated by chance, such as dripping or spilling paint directly onto the canvas. Pollock first practiced action painting by dripping commercial paints onto a raw canvas to build up multilayered and tangled skeins of paint into exciting and suggestive linear patterns. De Kooning employed extremely vigorous and expressive brushstrokes creating richly coloured and textured images. Kline utilised dynamic, sweeping black strokes on a white canvas to build starkly monumental forms.
The middle approach in Abstract Expressionism is represented by many varied styles from the more lyrical, delicate imagery and fluid shapes in paintings by Guston and Frankenthaler to the clearly structured, forceful, almost calligraphic artworks of Motherwell and Gottlieb.
The remaining and least emotionally expressive field was that of Rothko, Newman, and Reinhardt. These painters used large areas or dimensions of flat colour and weak diaphanous paint to achieve quiet, subtle, almost meditative effects. The premier colour-field painter was Rothko; most of his artworks consist of large-scale combinations of soft-edged, solidly coloured rectangular areas that tend to shine and resonate.
Abstract Expressionism had a special influence on both the American and European art worlds throughout the 1950s. Indeed, the movement marked the shift of the creative centre of modern day painting from Paris to New York City during the postwar period. Through the time of the fifties, the younger followers of the movement increasingly followed the direction of the colour-field painters. By the sixties, those young participants had commonly moved away from the high expressiveness of the action painters.
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