Oil Painting - FAQs answered by Pragati Gunasekar

Oil Painting - FAQs answered by Pragati Gunasekar

1. Is priming the canvas must? and what material can be used for priming?

Answer: Yes, if you want better results or if you don't want the grains of the canvas showing visibly. However, it is not required for practice.

Oil gesso or Acrylic gesso can be used to prime canvases. Most canvases are already primed, but you can prime them again, if you want. You may also use MDF boards, if you want. Though these boards have smooth surfaces, they still need to be primed again.

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Cubism

Cubism

Cubism is an artistic movement, created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which employs geometric shapes in depictions of human and other forms. The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening and modeling. Cubist painters presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects.

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The Louvre

The Louvre

The Louvre was originally built as a fortress in 1190, but was reconstructed in the 16th century to serve as a royal palace. In the 17th century, major additions were made to the building complex by Louis XIII and Louis XIV. Cardinal de Richelieu, the chief minister of Louis XIII, acquired great works of art for the king.

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Expressionism: Modernist Movement

Expressionism: Modernist Movement

Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaning of emotional experience rather than physical reality.

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Impressionism Movement

Impressionism Movement

Impressionism is a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities, ordinary subject matter, inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience. Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s.

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Thomas William Roberts

Thomas William Roberts

Thomas William Roberts was an English-born Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism. Roberts migrated with his family to Australia in 1869 to live with relatives. Settling in Collingwood, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria.

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An Interview with Gunjan Shrivastava by Rahil

An Interview with Gunjan Shrivastava by Rahil

When did you realise that you wanted to be an artist?

I was drawn to art at a very young age and I would like to say naturally. My mother is an artist too so she had a major influence on me. Having said that, art is the epicenter of my life. It is the very reason for my existence. As a child even though I had guidance, I had a mind of my own. I would always experiment and not stick to the formal way of making an art work. So I knew very early in life that this is my calling.

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What is cyanotype and why is it here to stay: An insight

What is cyanotype and why is it here to stay: An insight

An amalgamation of the scientific approach of chemistry and the creativity of art, devoid of technology, cyanotype is one of the oldest photographic printing processes in the history of photography. Becoming increasingly popular with contemporary artists who love to experiment with their media and constantly seek new ways to incorporate unconventional mediums in their work.

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Krishnaji Howlaji Ara

Krishnaji Howlaji Ara

Krishnaji Howlaji Ara was an Indian painter and is seen as the first contemporary Indian painter to meticulously use the female nude as a subject. He was a part of the Progressive Artists' Group in Bombay and was a founder of the Artists' Centre in Mumbai. Opinions about Ara's works remain divided with his critics accusing them of lacking perfection and not referenced from life.

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Thomas William Roberts

Thomas William Roberts was an English-born Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School art movement, also known as Australian impressionism. Roberts migrated with his family to Australia in 1869 to live with relatives. Settling in Collingwood, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria.

Shearing the rams, 1890

Shearing the rams, 1890

He worked as a photographer's assistant through the 1870s, while studying art at night under Louis Buvelot and befriending others who were to become prominent artists, notably Frederick McCubbin. After attending art schools in Melbourne, he travelled to Europe in 1881 to further his training, and returned home in 1885, "primed with whatever was the latest in art".

While in London and Paris, he took in the progressing influence of painters Jules Bastien-Lepage and James Abbott McNeill Whistler. He traveled in Spain in 1883 with Australian artist John Russell, where he met Spanish artists Laureano Barrau and Ramon Casas who introduced him to the principles of Impressionism and plein air painting.

A leading proponent of painting en plein air, he joined Frederick McCubbin in founding the Box Hill artists' camp, the first of several plein air camps frequented by members of the Heidelberg School. He also encouraged other artists to capture the national life of Australia, and while he is best known today for his "national narratives"—among them Shearing the Rams (1890), A break away! (1891) and Bailed Up (1895)

Holiday sketch at Coogee, 1888

Holiday sketch at Coogee, 1888

He earned a living as a portraitist, and in 1903 completed the commissioned work The Big Picture, the most famous visual representation of the first Australian Parliament. Roberts painted a considerable number of fine oil landscapes and portraits, some painted at artist camps with his friend McCubbin.

The most famous in his time were two large paintings, Shearing the Rams, now displayed in the National Gallery of Victoria and The Big Picture, displayed in Parliament House, Canberra. The Big Picture, a depiction of the first sitting of the Parliament of Australia, was an enormous work, notable for the event depicted as well as the quality of Roberts' work.

Tom-Roberts-Mosman_s-Bay.jpg

Roberts made many other paintings showing country people working, with a similar image of the shearing sheds in The Golden Fleece (1894), a drover racing after sheep breaking away from the flock in A break away!, and with men chopping trees in Wood splitters (1886). Many of Roberts' paintings were landscapes or ideas done on small canvases that he did very quickly, such as his show at the famous 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition in Melbourne.

Roberts had more works on display in this exhibition than anyone else. A "lost" painting titled Rejected was featured in a 2017 episode of the BBC series Fake or Fortune?. It was determined by experts to be a genuine Roberts, dating from his student years in London.

Pakhal Tirumal Reddy

Pakhal Tirumal Reddy

Pakhal Tirumal Reddy known as P T Reddy, was an Indian artist. He was the fifth child born to Ram Reddy and Ramanammachild at Annaram village, Karimnagar district, Telangana, India. He received his diploma in painting from J. J. School of Art, Bombay in 1939. He married Yashoda Reddy on 9 May 1947, and she completed a master's of art and Ph.D. degrees and authored over 22 compilations and novels. P T Reddy played a role in the introduction and the evolution of the so-called "Modern Art" of Europe to India.

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Ramkinkar Baij

Ramkinkar Baij

Ramkinkar Baij was an Indian sculptor and painter, one of the pioneers of modern Indian sculpture and a key figure of Contextual Modernism. Baij was born in an economically modest family in the Bankura district of the modern state of West Bengal in India.

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Indian Art Form: Pichwai Painting

Indian Art Form: Pichwai Painting

Pichhwai also known as pichhavai, pichhvai, pechhavai etc. are large devotional Hindu painted pictures, normally on cloth, which portray Krishna. They are mainly made to hang in Hindu temples of the Pushtimarg devotional tradition, especially the Shrinathji Temple in Nathdwara, Rajasthan, built around 1672. They are hung behind the idol of Shrinathji, a local form of Krishna and the centre of Pushtimarg worship, to depict his leelas.

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Indian Art Form: Mysore Painting

Indian Art Form: Mysore Painting

Mysore painting is an important form of classical South Indian painting that originated in and around the town of Mysore in Karnataka encouraged and nurtured by the Mysore rulers. Painting in Karnataka has a long and illustrious history, tracing its origins back to the Ajanta times.

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Manishi Dey

Manishi Dey

Manishi Dey was an Indian painter of the Bengal School of Art. He was born in Dhaka, Bengal Presidency on 22nd September, 1909. He died in Kolkata at the height of his career at 56 years of age. Manishi Dey was the younger brother of Mukul Dey, a pioneering Indian artist and dry point etcher. Their two sisters, Annapura and Rani, were accomplished in arts and crafts as well.

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