Author: Alina Nibu Mathew

Do you Know the History of Crayons?

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“I must have been very young, but I have a clear memory of drawing on a cream brick wall… with wax crayons,” A famous Australian graphic designer Robert Ingpen once said this. Almost all of us have the same colorful childhood memory of crayons. 

Crayons are simply colored wax, chalk, charcoal, or other materials used for drawing or coloring. Those made from oiled chalk are called oil pastels and those made of pigmented mix with wax are called grease pencil or china marker.

Crayons are very easy to draw with, less messy, and are not harmful to kids. Thus made it a must-have elementary school essential.

Crayola was the first brand to sell kid’s crayons. Crayons were invented by two cousins, Edwin Binney and C. Harold Smith. The brand’s first box of eight Crayola crayons was made in 1903. It cost a nickel. The word Crayola was created by Alice Binney (wife of Edwin Binney). She added the French words craie (which means chalk) and oily (oleaginous) and combined them.

Europe is known to be the birthplace of modern crayon. The first contemporary, cylindrical stick crayon is considered to be a mixture of charcoal and oil. Later, it was replaced by powdered pigments of various hues. Then wax was substituted by oil in the mixture made crayon sticks sturdier and easier to handle.

The History of Portraits: What You Need To Know

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A portrait is simply an artistic representation of a person. It could be a drawing, sculpture, or photograph.

The artist who makes portraits is called a portraitist. Portraits often relate to a message, which the artist or sitter (person who commissioned the work) wishes to convey. 

When a portrait is made, the portraitist aims to show the sitter’s appearance along with some elements of their character.

The artist will carefully craft visual clues to tell the story of the person in the artwork. Portrait paintings can reveal the sitter’s place in society, their hobbies or occupation, or aspects of their personality or beliefs. The facial expression, gesture, settings, clothing, objects. There have been portraitures as long as paintings. 

The first portrait is attributed to artists of the Egyptian Old Kingdom (2700-2300 BC). Entirely dedicated to the dead, kings, and gods, these paintings are not made to be seen by the living but for the spiritual world. 

Later in the early AD’s, portraits of the Roman empire was made, known as “Faiyum Portraits”. They were used to insert to the bandages of the mummy face concerned. They are called funeral portraits.

Why should you start drawing?

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Drawing can be explained as the resurrection of the visuals on a platform placed before an individual’s eyes. But the beauty lies in the way the artist- regardless of how inexperienced they may be, tries to reconstruct it. A piece of drawing reveals a lot about the artist, how they view the world, how they convey their rights. It is a true form of experiencing oneself. 

Why is drawing an important form of art? Let’s just say that if given paint and a canvas almost half of the population would stare at it blankly for a minute before any sort of creativity strikes them.

There is an artist deep inside everyone that stays dormant until they are pulled out by practice. People with artistic talent tend to find creativity in everything they touch. This, in turn, helps in broadening their perspective.

Children should be encouraged to learn drawing and find peace through it. Training your drawing skills is almost as good as enhancing your inner creativity. Creativity tends to boost a person’s analytical and logical senses when in a crisis. These reasons alone would make drawing worth your time. 

Drawing or art, in general, is often downgraded by few. Needless to say, a potential artist with a whole different world in their eyes are forced to blindfold and suppress themselves. It is therefore essential and advantageous to enhance one’s drawing skills and polish their creativity.

What makes ‘The Scream’ so expensive?

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‘The Scream’ is the popular name given to a composition created by Edvard Munch. The original title to this work was ‘Der Schrei der Natur’, which means ‘The Scream of Nature’ in German and the Norwegian title is Skrik (Shriek). The Norwegian is translated as the scream and so the painting is known as ‘The Scream’ or ‘The Cry’.

Edvard Munch is a recognized forerunner of expressionism, he is renowned for his representation of emotions. The painting was not intended to be a representation of an individual scream.

It symbolizes the anxiety of human condition along with the worry of nature. It is noted that the reddish sky in the background is the artist’s memory of the effects of the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, which deeply tinted the sunset sky red during the 18th century. The imagery of The Scream has been compared to that which an individual suffering from depersonalization disorder experiences, a feeling of distortion of the environment and one’s self.

However, Munch describes his inspiration for the image in his diary as, “One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream.“

The Scream’s powerful expression has proliferated into everyday life. It is one among the handful of artworks to be turned into emoji. It has also been made into Pop Art culture. ‘The Scream’ is not a single work of art, there are two paintings, 2 pastels and an unspecific number of prints. One of them was auctioned at Sotheby’s in 2012 and was sold for £74 million, making it one of the most expensive pieces of art ever sold.

What you need to know about Street Artist Banksy

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Street art is an independent virtual art created in public locations. Artists try to communicate with common people about social and political issues or create awareness in local people through such drawings.

Street artists have taken their canvases from papers to public property walls, which is now off to street walls as well. There are different varieties of street artists based on the area he or she chooses. They are graffiti artists, portrait artists, caricaturists, affichiste, and chalk artists among others.

Banksy is an English based street artist. Even though his identity remains unknown, he is considered as the most famous street artist in the world. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humor with graffiti executed in distinctive stenciling techniques.

Apart from street art, Banksy is a famous political activist and film director. He uses smart vandalism to raise awareness of social and political issues.

He started street art in 1997 and his first work is known as ‘The Mild Mild West’. He did it to cover an advertisement of a former solicitors’ office on Stokes Croft in Bristol. The art depicts a teddy bear lobbing a Molotov cocktail along with three riot police. Banksy’s stencils feature striking and humorous images occasionally combined with slogans. His works are so valuable that it often gets stolen or chipped out of walls as well.