USB Movie Reviews

The History of Paper

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 foremost source of fibre for papermaking.

Prior to 1798, Nicholas-Louis Robert constructed the earliest paper-making machine. Using a moving screen belt, it was made only one sheet at a time by dipping a frame or mould which has a screen bottom into a vat of pulp. Some years later the brothers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier improved Robert’s machine, and then in 1809 John Dickinson invented the first cylinder machine.

Although most steps in papermaking have become highly mechanized, the basic process has remained mostly the same. 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 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 among the grades and types of paper are decided by a number of factors: the type of fibre being used; the manner in which pulp is prepared, which can be either by mechanical (groundwood) or chemical (primarily sulfite, soda, or sulfate) methods, or by a combination of the two; by the adding of more materials to the pulp, the most common being bleach or colouring and sizing, the latter to check penetration by ink; by conditions under which the sheet is formed, including its weight; and by the physical or chemical treatment applied to the finished 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 paperboard are also important sources. Other fibres used include straw, bagasse (residue from crushed sugarcane), esparto, bamboo, flax, hemp, jute, and kenaf. Some paper, particularly specialty items, is made using 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 visible 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.

If you are looking for arts supplies or school art supplies, make sure you visit Discount Art Warehouse for all your art supplies and art paper.

Four Essential Art Supplies for Professional and Budding Painters

Before you can create the best artworks that reflect your unique painting style, you will need to secure four essential art supplies that can help you express your deepest feelings onto the canvas. Once you have obtained these important tools, you can already explore the world of art without anything holding you back. Here are the most important supplies that can inspire you to create your very own masterpiece.

Paintbrushes
Every painter needs a brush to convey a feeling to his or her audience. Start finding different types of brushes that can assist you while you are exploring various painting techniques. Start with a flat synthetic brush to create simple works of art. As your skills continue to improve, search 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 a mix 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 want 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 images 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 whenever it becomes too thick. You can also use it for cleaning your brushes and using special techniques such as glazing.

Artist’s canvas
When shopping for canvases, you should 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 better results with their durable card panels and versatile surfaces.

With these four key art supplies, you can share the beautiful images you have visualised 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.

What is Abstract Art?

Abstract Art is a broad movement in American painting that came up during the late 1940s and then was a favoured trend in Western painting through the 1950s. The premier American Abstract Expressionist painters were Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko. Contemporaries were 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. Most of them worked, lived, or had shows in New York City.

Though it is the general designation, Abstract Expressionism is not an accurate category of the works created by those artists. In truth, the movement consisted of several different painterly styles that were different in both technique and quality of work. Despite this variety, Abstract Expressionist paintings also share several general characteristics. They are fundamentally abstract — that is to say, they are based around forms which were not drawn from the outside world.

They furthermore master unrestricted, spontaneous, and individualised emotional expression, and they show wide freedom of technique and method to create this result, with particular emphasis pushed on the use of the changeable physical form of paint to evoke expressive qualities (such as, sensuousness, dynamism, violence, mystery, lyricism). They show similar emphasis on the unstudied and intuitive application of that paint in a form of artistic improvisation akin to the automatism of the Surrealists, with the parallelable purpose of showing the influence of the creative unconscious in art. They display the conscious neglect of normally structured composition built up with discrete and segregable areas and their replacement with a individual unified, unchanged partition, network, or other image that exists in unstructured space. Lastly, the paintings fill huge canvases to create for such aforementioned visual aspects both monumentality and engrossing might.

The earlier Abstract Expressionists had two particular forerunners: Arshile Gorky, who painted sensual biomorphic forms with a free, intricately linear and liquid paint procedure; and Hans Hofmann, who had dynamic and strongly textured brushwork in his abstract but conventionally structured artworks. An early and special influence on nascent Abstract Expressionism was the arrival on American shores in the late 30s and early forties of a whole host of Surrealists and other important European avant-garde artists who fled the rise of the Nazi party Europe. Those artists forcefully influenced the native New York City painters and privileged for them an intimate understanding of the vanguard of European artwork. The Abstract Expressionist movement itself is usually viewed as having begun with the painting done by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning during the late 1940s and early 50s.

In spite of the diversity of techniques in the Abstract Expressionist movement, three broad approaches can be distinguished. The first was action painting which is characterized by a loose, quickfire, dynamic, or strong handling of paint in sweeping or slashing brushstrokes, and in application in part dictated by chance, i.e. dripping or spilling paint directly onto the canvas. Pollock initially practiced action painting by dripping commercial paints onto raw canvas building up intricate and tangled skeins of paint into exciting and suggestive linear patterns. De Kooning had highly vigorous and expressive brushstrokes creating richly coloured and textured images. Kline used strong, sweeping black strokes on white canvas to create starkly monumental forms.

The middle ground of Abstract Expressionism is demonstrated by several varied styles ranging from the more lyrical, delicate imagery and fluid shapes seen in paintings by Guston and Frankenthaler to the visibly structured, forceful, almost calligraphic pictures of Motherwell and Gottlieb.

The remaining and least emotionally expressive field was that of Rothko, Newman, and Reinhardt. These painters made use of large spaces or dimensions of flat colour and weak diaphanous paint to find quiet, subtle, almost meditative effects. The top colour-field painter was Rothko; the large part of his works consist of vast combinations of soft-edged, solidly coloured rectangular fields that tend to glimmer and resonate.

Abstract Expressionism created a wide influence on both the American and European art circles in the 50s. Indeed, the movement marked the transition of the creative centre of modern day painting from Paris to New York City in the postwar era. Throughout the time of the 50s, the the youth of the movement increasingly heeded the direction of the colour-field painters. By the 60s, these practitioners had largely shifted away from the great expressiveness of the action painters.

If you’re looking for discount art supplies online including art canvas and easels, talk to the Discount Art Warehouse.