Thousands of years ago, in the Paleolithic age, the ancient man was able to unleash his thoughts on a series of paintings. This amazing exercise caused an evolutionary change in world history. There are many milestones on this long journey. It is a process of time, struggle and discovery.It can be interpreted as one of the greatest expressions in human history.For thousands of years,people of various civilizations have been releasing their own emotions applying diverse art mediums and techniques. Within this journey,water-based paintings have been used by many societies in ancient times.Pharaohs painted their temples and tombs. Greeks painted pottery. Romans painted frescoes on the walls. The end of medieval religious painting saw the dawn of a new era.
The revival of the classical culture of Renaissance in Europe, revolutionized the history of art. During the Renaissance, artists sketched on paper using graphite pencils. Renaissance masters Da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael used natural chalks for drawings that became the reason for the growth of pastels. Jan van Eyck discovered the secret of oil painting. The end of the Renaissance, the Mannerist Art, broke the rules and created an illusion that transcends nature. A beautiful and exaggerated style was created by Baroque and Rococo Art with oil medium.Neo-classicism restored to the art of Greek-Roman grandeur. Romanticism gave victory to imagination and individualism. Realism was the mirror of the life of the working class and the peasantry. In these art trends, Rembrandt, Goya and Courbet used brushes as well as palette knives to create their paintings.
At the end of Neo-classicism, Romanticism, and Realism, art took a new turn. It was a transformational exercise. A group of controversial and independent artists who broke the traditions of the Academy were capturing the inevitable effects of the natural light of nature.They were the Impressionists who created a pictorial language in the material world using their own brush and canvas. There was a powerful art movement that advanced a mild revolt against the Impressionists. They were the Post-impressionists who transcended all the boundaries of art at the time.Paul Cezanne, Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin were the pioneers of this amazing artistic trend. Rough colours on flat surfaces and emotional distortions of forms were used in Fauvism and Expressionism.
Cubism, Futurism, Suprematism, and Constructivism were the art movements that commented on modern life in the 19thcentury.Modernist sense began with the works of Cubist artists Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. They invented collage and mixed media. Dada and Surrealism were revolutionary art movements of the 20th century. Abstract Expressionism is a development of abstract art that began in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. Pop art is an art movement based on modern popular culture. It was born of consumerism. Pop artist Andy Warhol explored effects of acrylic, printmaking techniques and created new approaches to the medium. Postmodernism is a trend that developed from the mid to the late 20thcentury. Within this historical narrative, humankind has used a variety of mediums ranging from animal blood on cave-surfaces to modern digital technology for their visual expressions.
Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual or performing artifacts, expressing the artist’s ideas or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. The mediums of art are combined with different and unique techniques to communicate people’s imaginations.
Sri Lanka Telecom bringing the value, beauty, reflection, pride and immortality of Sri Lankan culture and nature to the public through the annual calendar re-emphasizes the value of art to project historical background and different artistic methods to the future generations.
Water-based Colours - April 2020
Watercolour is an extremely old painting tradition, also known as aquarelle, which dates back thousands of years. Watercolours are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. The pigments are ordinarily transparent dry colouring materials. The medium is most commonly mixed with water to create translucent layers of colour on a surface of the paper. The rise of watercolour paintings as a serious artistic endeavour progressed over the years. To create watercolour paintings, many techniques were used by applying a series of monochrome washes one over the other. Watercolour is often combined with gouache or “body colour”, an opaque (non-transparent) water-based paint containing a white element derived from chalk, lead or zinc oxide. The technique of water-based paintings belongs to the history of many cultures. Historians believe that watercolour paintings first appeared in the Paleolithic cave paintings in Europe.
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