Visual Arts

Visual arts are forms of art that you can see, such as drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography and filmmaking. Design and working with textiles are also often referred to as visual art. Visual arts have changed over the centuries. During the Middle Ages artists created paintings, sculptures or prints and became famous. Today visual arts applies to many different forms.

Drawing

Drawing is creating a picture with a variety of tools, in most cases pencils, crayons, pens or markers. Artists draw on different types of surfaces, like paper or canvas. The first drawings were discovered in caves, that date back about 30,000 years.

Ancient Egyptians drew on papyrus, Greeks and Romans made drawings on other objects, like vases. In the Middle Ages drawings were sketches that were made on parchment. When paper became common in the Renaissance, drawing became an art perfected by Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and others.

Painting

Painting is often called the most important form of visual art. It is about putting colours on a canvas or a wall. Painters express their ideas through a mixture of colours and different brush strokes .

Painting is also one of the oldest forms of visual art. In old caves prehistoric people painted hunting scenes onto walls. Paintings became important in ancient Egypt, where tombs of pharaohs were covered with scenes of everyday Egyptian life.

During the Renaissance, painting a became very important art. Italy became the center of Renaissance painting. The era produced masters like Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian. Italian influence spread to the north of Europe, mostly to Belgium and Holland. The most famous artists of the 17th century famous painters during the Dutch Golden Age were, Rembrandt and Vermeer.

During the last 200 years painters discovered new styles. Impressionism began in France during the end of the 19th century; Picasso created Cubism at the beginning of the 20th century.

Printmaking

Printmaking is art that is made by covering a plate with ink and pressing it on the surface of another object. Today prints are mostly produced on paper today but originally, they were pressed onto cloth or other objects. Plates are often made out of wood or metal.

The first prints were probably made in ancient Mesopotamia. Later on they became popular in ancient Egypt and China .Printmaking spread to Europe towards the end of the Middle Ages.

Photography

Photography is making pictures by letting light through the lenses of a camera onto a film. In analogue photography light was recorded onto a film, which had to be chemically developed. Images could then be printed onto special paper.
Today most photography is digital. Cameras have no film, the images are recorded onto silicon chips.

Filmmaking

Filmmakers make moving images that they turn into films. It is a very expensive and complicated form of art, involving many tasks, for example scriptwriting, casting, and editing film sequences before they can be shown to an audience. A full-length feature film often takes many weeks or months to produce.

Computer art

Today, art is no longer limited to brushes, paint and pencils. In the last few decades artists have been working with computers to capture images and change them . Computer art consists of a wide variety of different forms, from capturing and changing sound to creating video games.

Sculpture

Sculptures are three-dimensional pieces of art that are created by shaping various kinds of material. Among the most popular are stone, steel, plastic, ceramics and wood. Sculpture is often referred to as plastic arts.

Sculpture goes back to ancient Greece. It has been important in various religions of the world over many centuries. In the Renaissance Michelangelo was one of the masters of the art. His most famous piece of work was David, a marble statue of a naked man.

Words

analogue = not digital ; for example an analogue clock uses pointers and not numbers
ancient = old
apply to = here: to be made up of
brush = object that you use for painting
brush stroke = a single movement of a pen or a brush when you are painting or drawing
canvas = piece of cloth that an artist paints on
capture = save
casting = choose people who will act in a film
century = a hundred years
cloth = material used for making clothes
common = popular, much used
consist = made up of
cover = here: put on
crayon = stick of coloured wax or chalk that children use to draw
create = make
date back = go back to
decade = ten years
develop = here: make into paper prints
digital = using a system of information which is stored in the form of numbers, usually ones and zeros
discover = find for the first time
Dutch Golden Age =time in the 17th century, in which the Netherlands was an important world power and produced many scientists and artists
editing = put parts of a film together
express = show
feature film = full length film that usually has a story and uses professional actors; it is normally shown in a cinema and watched by millions of people
image = picture
influence = power, control
involve = include
lens = part of a camera through which light travels before it hits a film
limit = exist only in a certain way
marble = hard piece of rock that becomes smooth when you polish it; it is used for monuments, floors etc.
master = a person who does things very well
Mesopotamia = area in western Asia, around the Euphrates and Tigris River; important civilizations and cultures developed around this area and the first cities were built here
mixture = combination
originally = at first
papyrus = paper made from a plant that grows in water
parchment = material used in the past before paper came up; it was usually made out of the skin of goats or sheep
perfect = to make something as good as possible
pharaoh = ancient Egyptian king
piece = object
plate = thin piece of metal
prehistoric = the time before anything was written down
printmaking = creating pictures by putting ink on a plate and pressing it on paper, cloth etc..
record = save
refer to = call
scriptwriting = write the storyline or plot of a film
sculpture = object made out of stone, wood or other materials by an artist
sequence = part of a film
shape = form
silicon chip = piece of metal that is used to save information
sketch = simple, quick drawing that does not show much detail
spread = move to other places
statue = image of a person or animal made out of stone or metal
surface = top part of an object
task = job, thing to do
textile = all types of cloth that are used for making clothes, tablecloth etc.
tomb = place below the ground where a dead person is buried
tools = here: objects you use to draw or paint
variety = many different kinds of
various = different
vase = container used to put flowers in

English Online

Articles in Easy Understandable English for Learners