Visual Art

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.
Drawing of a lion by Rembrandt

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 .
19th century camera

Filmaking
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.

Compter 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.

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.