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Paper originated in China in about AD 105. It reached Central Asia by 751 and Baghdad by 793, and then by the 14th century there were paper mills in several parts of Europe. The invention of the printing press in about 1450 greatly increased the demand for paper, and at the beginning of the 19th century wood and other vegetable pulps began to replace rags as the main source of fibre for papermaking.
Earlier than 1798, Nicholas-Louis Robert constructed the earliest paper-making machine. With a moving screen belt, paper was made one sheet at a time by dipping a frame or mould with a screen bottom into a vat of pulp. Some years later the brothers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier improved Robert’s machine, and in 1809 John Dickinson invented the first cylinder machine.
Although most steps in papermaking are now highly mechanized, the basic process has remained essentially unchanged. Firstly, the fibres are separated and wetted to produce the paper pulp, or stock. The pulp is then filtered on a woven screen to form a sheet of fibre, which is then pressed and compacted to squeeze out most of the water. The remaining water is removed by evaporation, and the dry sheet is further compressed and, depending upon the intended use, coated or impregnated with other substances.
Differences regarding grades and types of paper are decided by a number of factors: the type of fibre used; the preparation of the pulp, either by mechanical (groundwood) or chemical (primarily sulfite, soda, or sulfate) methods, or by a combination of the two; by the adding of more substances to the pulp, the most commonly used being bleach or colouring and sizing, the latter to reduce penetration by ink; by conditions under which the sheet is formed, including its weight; and by the physical or chemical treatments applied to the resulting sheet.
Although wood has become the foremost source of fibre for papermaking, rag fibres are still used for paper of maximum strength, durability, and permanence. Recycled wastepaper (including newsprint) and cardboard are also important sources. Other fibres used include straw, bagasse (residue from crushed sugarcane), esparto, bamboo, flax, hemp, jute, and kenaf. Some paper, in particular specialty items, is created from synthetic fibres.
Weight or substance per unit area, called basis weight, is measured in reams (now commonly 500 sheets). Paper is also measured by caliper (thickness) and density. The strength and durability of paper is determined by factors such as the strength and length of the fibres, as well as their bonding ability, and the formation and structure of the sheet. The optical properties of paper include its brightness, colour, opacity, and gloss. Among the most important paper grades are bond, book, bristol, groundwood and newsprint, kraft, paperboard, and sanitary.
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Before you can create the best artworks that reflect your unique painting style, you must secure four essential art supplies that can help you express your deepest feelings onto the canvas. Once you have obtained these important tools, you are ready to explore the world of art without any inhibitions or reservations. Here are the necessary supplies that can inspire you to create your very own masterpiece.
Paintbrushes
Every painter needs a brush to convey a sensation to his or her audience. Start finding different types of brushes that can assist you while you are exploring different painting techniques. Start with a flat synthetic brush to create simple works of art. As your skills continue to improve, look for other art supplies such as flat bristle brushes, Filbert brushes, and sable brushes (and think outside of the box, trying items such as rubber wedges, potato/lino cut shapes}. All of these tools can add spice to every idea you were able to put into paintings.
Palettes and palette knives
While you are experimenting with oil-based paint, you will need to use a wood palette to hold them. Do not forget to clean your palette at the end of all your painting sessions. If you need to use acrylic paints, use a paper palette or any plastic surface instead of a wooden palette.
You can use palette knives to mix the paint on your wooden or paper palette. Try to look for trowel-shaped palette knives that you can use to remove the paint from your canvas or palette.
Oil paint and special mediums
Oil paint is one of the most common art supplies used for painting pictures with tactile textures. Their versatile nature can help you use thin and thick textures for your paintings. Since they tend to dry slowly, you will have enough time to work the oil paint on the canvas and to scrape some of the paint off for revisions.
You will also need special mediums to thin the oil paint every time it becomes too thick. You can also use it for cleaning your brushes and using special techniques such as glazing.
Artist’s canvas
When purchasing canvases, you usually have the option to purchase a stretched canvas or a canvas board. Stretched canvases are conveniently mounted on stretcher bars, that can be displayed on walls even when they are not framed.
If you have a limited budget, use canvas boards as an alternative to high-end stretched canvases. Although they are cheaper than stretched canvases, they can deliver superior performance with their durable card panels and versatile surfaces.
With these four key art supplies, you can share the beautiful images you were able to visualise by preserving them into a wonderful work of art.
If you are looking for art supplies, including school art supplies, make sure you check out Discount Art. The range of art supply specials is extensive and as a member you get a 10 percent discount.
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Abstract Art is a broad movement in American painting that started during the late 1940s and became a predominant trend in Western painting during the 50s. The top American Abstract Expressionist painters were Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko. Others included Clyfford Still, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Lee Krasner, Bradley Walker Tomlin, William Baziotes, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, Elaine de Kooning, and Jack Tworkov. Many of the artists worked, lived, or had shows in New York City.
Although it is the commonly accepted designation, Abstract Expressionism is not an accurate description of the pieces created by these artists. In actual fact, the movement had lots of different painterly styles varying in both technical application and quality of expression. Despite this differentiation, Abstract Expressionist paintings share a number of common characteristics. They are basically abstract — that is, they display forms not taken from the outer world.
They furthermore push limitless, spontaneous, and individualised emotional expression, and they exercise wide freedom of technique and application to reach this goal, with a special emphasis focused on the exploitation of the variable physical nature of paint to call upon expressive qualities (for example, sensuousness, dynamism, violence, mystery, lyricism). They place the same importance on the unstudied and intuitive application of the paint in a process of psychological improvisation in the manner of the automatism of the Surrealists, with the parallelable intent of expressing the influence of the creative subconcious in art. They show the conscious rejection of conventionally structured composition created by application of discrete and segregable areas and their replacement with a single unified, unchanged field, network, or other image that exists in unstructured space. Lastly, the paintings fill huge canvases to create for such aforementioned visual effects both monumentality and engrossing power.
The earlier Abstract Expressionists had two particular forerunners: Arshile Gorky, who painted sensualised biomorphic images with a free, lightly linear and liquid paint technique; and Hans Hofmann, who made use of dynamic and fully textured brushwork in his abstract but conventionally composed pieces. Another early and key influence on nascent Abstract Expressionism was the arrival on American shores in the late thirties and early 40s of a group of Surrealists and important European avant-garde artists who were fleeing the Nazis in Europe. The European artists forcefully influenced the native New York City painters and allowed them a detailed understanding of the vanguard of European art. The Abstract Expressionist movement itself is generally viewed as having begun with the art created by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning in the late forties and early 1950s.
Despite the diversity of techniques in the Abstract Expressionist movement, three general approaches can be isolated. One was action painting which is characterized by a loose, speedy, dynamic, or strong handling of paint in sweeping or slashing brushstrokes, and in application somewhat dictated by chance, for example dripping or spilling paint directly onto the canvas. Pollock first practiced action painting by dripping commercial paints on a raw canvas creating multilayered and tangled skeins of paint into exciting and suggestive linear patterns. De Kooning employed extremely vigorous and expressive brushstrokes to build richly coloured and textured images. Kline was known for strong, sweeping black strokes onto white canvas creating starkly monumental forms.
The middle ground with Abstract Expressionism is demonstrated by a host of varied styles from the lyrical, delicate imagery and fluid shapes in paintings by Guston and Frankenthaler to the highly structured, forceful, almost calligraphic art of Motherwell and Gottlieb.
The final and least emotionally expressive approach was that of Rothko, Newman, and Reinhardt. These painters took large spaces or dimensions of flat colour and thin diaphanous paint to create quiet, subtle, almost meditative effects. The top colour-field painter was Rothko; the large part of his paintings consist of vast combinations of soft-edged, solidly coloured rectangular fields that tend to shine and resonate.
Abstract Expressionism cast a wide impact on both the American and European art styles during the 1950s. Indeed, the movement sparked the change of the creative centre of contemporary painting from Paris to New York City through the postwar era. During the period of the fifties, the the younger participants of the movement increasingly came under the leadership of the colour-field painters. By the 1960s, the participants had generally drifted away from the high expressiveness of the action painters.
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