Friday, November 16, 2018
7 Innovative Painting Techniques That Don’t Require a Paintbrush
mymodernmet.com: Throughout history, many pioneering artists have found innovative ways to produce paintings, often rejecting the traditional method of brush on canvas. One of the first was Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros who publicly shunned the paintbrush, calling it “an implement of hair and wood in an age of steel.” With a desire to further push the boundaries of painting techniques, the artist established a radical Experimental Workshop in New York City in 1936. Here, some of the most celebrated names in art history met to pour, scrape, and splatter pigments across the canvas.
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I would consider myself very new to the painting and visual arts world, as this year is really the first time that I have created pieces of visual art, so reading this article was really fun for me to learn about all of the different techniques of painting that don’t involve a paintbrush; most of which I had never heard of before. I think my favorite style explained was pulling and scraping because the artist explained, Gerhard Richter, talked about this painting style as losing control which really stuck with me. Normally when I think of painting and fine art I think about how much control it takes to move the paintbrush and how precise one has to be to paint with so much detail. But this technique and style doesn’t take the much control and the artist can just move how they want and keep pushing and pulling at the artwork until they are satisfied with their piece. I really like the idea of just painting and not knowing exactly what the finished product will look like.
While I would say that painting, or any fine art actually, is not my thing, I still found this article very interesting. What I liked about all these techniques is how natural they seemed. To me, working with a paintbrush, at least the only way we are taught here at CMU, involves being very precise while creating clean lines and vivid colors. What this article showed me is that this as absolutely not the case in the real world. Here at school to create "good" art you may be expected to work in a more precise way, but you don't have to do that in the real world. I liked how many of the artists talked about letting the medium you are working with dictate a lot of what you do. Letting the paint drip can be beautiful. Using things like a squeegee to pull the paint across a canvas can create awesome textures. I hope to be able to practice some of these techniques one day.
Well, this article was kind of disappointing. I feel like I have seen almost all of these techniques in their own independent articles elsewhere or even on the greenpage. The only technique I have never ever seen is boxing paint onto a canvas. Which is somewhat interesting, I suppose. Although, personally, this just seems like another kind of bland way to make your art seem more interesting. Same with painters who use like pillows instead of sponges for unknown reasons. Maybe I am a little too cynical, but I wanted more from this article, personally. I wanted something new, or maybe more of a how to as opposed to another list article. I was expecting something more like "this is how you can make a landscape with just a sponge", or something similar. I think I may have to do my own research to find something like that though, we will see.
This article is impressive in a way that tells us that traditional methods or tools might be a reason as to what hinders with our creativity. As far as I know, anytime I have thought about painting, my go-to-tool is a paintbrush, because that is what I was taught in my childhood to use. This article, in a way, helps to break that rule in my mind.
All the techniques that have been describes in this article are so interesting to talk about, liberating to think about and exciting to use. Because all of these techniques gives people a chance to explore different possibilities to create a beautiful piece of painting.
For instance, splattering and dripping is such a useful way to create an abstract painting because none of the paint strokes have a precise and uniform definition which helps to relieve the eye because they get to see something free flowing.
Another interesting one to me was the pulling and scraping technique, which essentially says that to get a creation, you just need to let the medium dictate the outcome of the creation, which, just in words seems so poetic to think about. I wonder how satisfying and creatively liberating this might be to use in real life.
I think this article does complete justice in letting the readers to think of other things as a medium for painting other than a paintbrush.
I thought this article was very interesting. Part of what I love about art is the constant desire to innovate and to create new ways of creating. I thought this article encapsulated that idea very well. There are so many different ways of creating art and, even within the realm of painting, there are so many different methods and each one of them produces something completely different but also completely interesting and beautiful. There is no one way and no right way to paint something and I hope to be able to try these methods of creating and also I hope to see many new methods come up as time goes by. Even though not all of these paintings are my favorite kind of art, I still think the methods used for them are fascinating and should be explored more in classes. What I’ve been learning this year is that, even though I may not enjoy certain types of art, I can still respect them and I still want to learn more about the thought process that goes into certain types of art production and I think this article did a good job of presenting a wide array of art.
There are so many different ways to put paint on a surface. The question I sometimes have when I hear about many of these techniques is what is the use in traditional theatrical painting. Looking at these ones, in particular, I see a lot that is great for creating art but not nearly on the stage. However thinking back on this I remember a method a scenic artist that I worked with for some time called the spoon drop. This is where she would take the spoon from where she was working and with it dipped in paint drop it onto the surface creating many different types of random texture and not just a simple spatter. I found it interesting that one of the methods, as noted, was "Medieval-era travelers brought the Ebru technique from Turkey to Europe, and it was later associated with the art of bookbinding—you might even find old marbled book covers today in old bookshops and flea markets."
It’s funny to me that this article came across my screen when it did. Just yesterday I was at home depot with Sasha, who was looking at brooms to use as a painting tool. Apparently she needed to do a large floor, but the look wanted to be ‘brushed’ not ‘rolled’. It never even occurred to me to use something like a broom to apply paint. Of course, some of the techniques in this article I’m familiar with, like dripping and airbrushing. But some of these techniques I’d never heard of. It’s really cool to see all of the different natural patterns that can be created. I think a lot of these techniques would be hard to replicate at a scale useful for theatre, but still something interesting to consider. It always helps to think outside of the box when a production presents a challenge. And it may just be that one of these techniques could be the one, or at least lead you to the path of finding the best one for your process.
So many of these techniques are things I’d love to try myself. It is so important when creating personal art, that one chooses their technique, and not let the past way of doing things dictate the creation (unless that style/medium is the desired goal). I love learning about new ways people find to manipulate a medium to create their own art. Finger painting, ebru, and pulling/scraping are all methods I would love to try out on a big canvas. I find its hard to do so many of these, for paint can be so expensive. These methods also inspire me to try out different things as paint though. “Painting” is much less defined than what we think of it to be. Just earlier today, I spent an hour and a half at a demonstration of “golden” paints. The company offers many things such as clear coats that mimic glass, plastic, and even lipgloss. They also sell paint that is meant to peel off an be a skin that is applied to the artwork. I hope to look for more and more ways to manipulate the environments around me into the art I create.
It is amazing to see how art’s evolution has taken it into a loop. Painting started as finger painting in the walls of caverns, and evolved to become almost identical to real life. Just to start being deconstructed again and being painted fingers and less control. Although, we might be back to antique techniques, the level of skill have not receded. I found myself looking up more paintings from the painters mentioned in this article. They are so mesmerizing. Specially Iris Scott’s work. I just think it blew my mind how something so trivial as finger painting, which is usually seen as a children’s activity, could create such complex art pieces. I was also amazed by the Pouring technique, I watched the whole video of people just pouring paint. And I agree, seeing the colors interact with one another absorbed me. The way the move and touch but not necessarily mix. It’s very interesting.
As someone who loves to try out different creative methods of using traditional art supplies (like paint), I found this article to be really interesting. It gives many ideas of methods of painting that don’t require a paintbrush, and while I thought the examples were going to be a bit more obscure, they were still really interesting to read about. I have tried quite a few of these methods like splattering, and digital painting, and have found that they can be very successful, depending on the look you are trying to get. Methods I’m really interested in trying include pulling/scraping and pouring. I think these two are able to create certain types of art that can’t really be produced using any other method. Overall, I think this is a good list of painting methods, I was just originally expecting it to be obscure ways of painting regularly, just with weird objects like cut open vegetables (which is actually a very fun method I’ve tried that produces really cool art!).
I love reading about new methods of painting, because in theatre we are bound to need to use all of them at some point I think scenic artists are so incredibly talented, and I am fascinated by all of the different techniques they use to create all of the visual illusions we see onstage. I was especially interested in this article because you often don't see traditional visual art painting techniques talked about, but there are so many different ways that artists use them to create their art. I was especially intrigued by the pouring technique, which reminds me of the marbling technique I see a lot in beauty tutorials and I wonder if that is where it came from, because it requires so much planning and precision. I also love that finger painting is an actual recognized art form and not something just for kids to do all over the walls.
The section of this article that caught my eye the most was the video on painting with boxing gloves, for more than one reason. First off I was impressed with the innovation and originality that came with the idea and made me wonder how that thought came about. Second the implication of creating art out of violentes resonates. He is literally using violence to create art. In a way art seems like a peace building activity and he is breaking down that barrier in a tactful way. Additionally his color choice says a lot. In the video he is mostly using red paint which at first i definitely off putting it almost seems like he is causing the canvas to bleed from punching it but on further reflection it is almost a portrait on violence in a very true from while still creating a masterpiece. Overall the artist takes full advantage of the “‘it’-ness of a thing” when he uses boxing gloves to create his work.
It is interesting to hear about how different artists create their work. One artist mentioned here is Gerhardt Richter, who I have seen multiple pieces by in The High Museum of Art, where I used to work. In that museum I saw multiple of his abstract squeegee paintings, to which I was curious how he made. Well, now I know! Unfortunately my training at the museum did not involve learning about each individual artist, and their methods and their ideas. But another piece by Richter which always stood out to me was an installation piece that he had, which was multiple large panes of thick glass stacked about a foot away from each other. This piece was meant to abstract the viewer’s reflection and project it onto the other side of the glass as well, so not only was your reflection ghost-like but it was somewhere else as well.
I enjoyed seeing the results of these different painting techniques! I think that a lot of the time we feel limited by convention while trying to express ideas through art, and I think it’s interesting to see how different tools can create different aesthetics! I also really appreciated seeing digital art being mentioned in one of these articles- I think we often discount it as being ‘cheating’ or not real art because it’s being done on the computer, while in reality it takes the same skills as traditional art, just a different media. I liked seeing the ways in which the tools you use affect the process and the final product- the scraping technique and the pouring technique create totally different looks, for example, and convey different meanings, whereas the hyper realistic airbrushing is another completely different aesthetic with different uses. I feel like there is no valid or invalid way to do art, and this article really emphasizes that.
So this was a article that I am curious why it was here on the green page as the vast majority of the article would be difficult to describe as being as thing close to tangential the to world of theatre. That said when trying to see if and of these paint styles could in any way be useful for a scenic painter in the shop the only method that came to mind was the air brush method. I would be throughly interesting in how large of a object one can do with a reasonable amount of time. Could it be faster than standard painting techniques that we currently use for painting sets and what not. The biggest drawback for the idea of using Airbrushes is the fact that you would most likely require a spray booth to be able to work in. However I’m pretty sure you could take airbrushes and add CNC and you’d have very interesting product.
This article creates a great glimpse into the world of Modern art and collects the various techniques that are being employed. I enjoyed looking at the variation and breadth it shows within the art world. I think that these approavlcnes and outside of the box methods are vital to creativity to opening our perspectives and views on the world. As an artist myself I can confident hat for many artists the process is so much of the art, not just the final product. This is especially evident in the artist who boxes his painting, it is about exploration, feeling and the movement. I think that those paintings a are so much more interesting because of the process and the work the artist has invested into their art. It’s not just trying to make something different or standing out, it is their journey in creating.
To see all these methods laid out in an article is quite inspiring. This kind of articles not only helps us on the way of coming up something new on technical front, but also keeps the track of the techniques that are already existed. Actually, the title of the article is not that accurate. In controversy of the word innovative, some of the techniques in fact can be traced back over centuries, even millenniums. Such as pouring and Ebru paintings, these methods had a long and prosperous history in the middle Asia area, but somehow neglected during the time period from middle age to industrial revolution, which the world is leading by the western cultures. However, this little flaw will not diminish the benefits of the article by much. Introducing- or reintroducing these fantastic works to our modern theatrical industry is both vital and encouraging. From finger painting to digital drawing was a long history on technical front. While the methods seemed so different from one the other, they all share the same quality of expression our minds and thoughts. The art is always about what to say, rather than how to say.
I think the cool part about this article is how it explains painting as a science rather than an art form. The various techniques are just a few examples of how artists express their work. I would not discount the use of a paintbrush; however, the ability to think outside the box when constructing a piece only adds to the value of the art. It brings me to the question, are people painting more for the technique or the meaning of the piece? I think for a lot of the work shown in this article is a mixture of the two.
Of the processes listed the most intriguing is the Ebru painting. The process is not something that I am familiar with, and I feel as though painting with no context is fascinating and with an explanation of the process would only make the viewer more interested in the art form.
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