9781422287101

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Creating Paintings

Make Connections: From Powder to Liquid For most of history, painters had to use powdered pigments to mix paint. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that painters could buy tubes of liquid paint, making the whole painting pro- cess a little shorter and less challenging.

TYPES OF PAINTS Painters have some choice when it comes to materials they can use. To- day, painters have a choice between: • Tempera: Old-fashioned tempera paint is made with egg yolks and pigment. Most commercially produced tempera paint today doesn’t use egg yolks, though, and it is usually quite cheap and easy to use. Kids just starting out with painting often use tempera paint first, but it used to be popular with professional artists many hundreds of years ago. • Oil paint: Oil paint is one of the most popular paints for profes- sional artists today. It is made from pigments mixed with oil, and it takes several days to dry fully. • Acrylic paint: Another popular paint that comes in several grades for anyone from craft painters to professional artists. Acrylic paint is synthetic , and was invented in the 1930s. It can also be diluted with water for a thinner coat. This paint dries faster than oil paint. • Watercolors. Watercolor paint is transparent and comes in soft blocks set in palettes . Because it is water based, artists can usu- ally lift it off the paper if they make a mistake. Watercolors are made out of pigments, gum arabic (a kind of tree sap), and water.