Art Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. It is one of the “Plastic Arts,” meaning it involves the shaping or modeling of material. Unlike painting, which creates the illusion of space on a flat surface, sculpture inhabits the same physical space as the viewer. It has height, width, […]
Art Furniture Making (often referred to as Studio Furniture) is a sub-discipline of the decorative arts where furniture is created not merely as a functional object, but as a unique, expressive work of art. Unlike mass-produced factory furniture, Art Furniture is typically one-of-a-kind (bespoke) or produced in very limited editions by a single artisan or […]
Art Design and decoration of objects While “Fine Art” (paintings) hangs on a wall, the Art, Design, and Decoration of Objects (often called Applied Arts or Decorative Arts) constitutes the items we live with, hold, and use. This field sits at the intersection of three distinct disciplines: 1. Design: The engineering of function (Does it […]
Art Hatching (and its sibling, Cross-Hatching) is an artistic technique used to create tonal or shading effects by drawing closely spaced parallel lines. It is the primary method for creating value (light and shadow) in mediums that cannot be easily blended, such as pen and ink, etching, woodcut, and silverpoint. Since you cannot “smudge” ink […]
Art Charcoal is arguably the oldest art material in human history. From the charred sticks used in cave paintings 30,000 years ago to the refined tools of today, it remains the primary medium for studying value (light and shadow). Charcoal is essentially burnt organic material (wood). Unlike graphite (pencil), which has a metallic sheen and […]
Art Watercolor painting (also known as aquarelle in French) is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. It is arguably the most unforgiving and yet the most luminous of all art mediums. Unlike oil or acrylic, where you can paint over mistakes, watercolor is transparent. Once […]
Art Sketching is the fundamental practice of freehand drawing, used to quickly capture an idea, a mood, or a fleeting moment. It is generally considered the preliminary stage of a more finished work of art, but it also exists as a distinct and respected art form in its own right. Unlike a “drawing,” which implies […]
Art Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting, drawing, and other graphic media, in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. Emerging in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, it was a counter-movement to Abstract Expressionism […]
Graphic Arts is a broad category of visual arts based on the use of lines and tones on a two-dimensional surface, rather than color and three-dimensional modeling (which are associated with painting and sculpture). Historically, the term referred strictly to printmaking and drawing. In the modern era, it has expanded to encompass Graphic Design, digital […]
