A blank canvas provides endless creative possibilities.
Professional artists often paint on a canvas, which is a heavy, woven fabric stretched over a wooden frame or board. Canvases are made of white cotton or linen fabric and work well with acrylic and oil paints. By painting on canvases, you can work on a firm, steady surface. You can also give your paintings dimension by leaving brushstrokes that expose the texture if the canvas. With a canvas and other essential tools --- paint brushes, easels, and paints --- you can create beautiful work in a variety of styles.
Landscape
Landscape paintings feature scenes from nature.
Landscape paintings depict scenes in nature. You may choose to paint pictures of leafy forests, grassy dunes on a beach, golden cornfields, or long stretches of farmland. Landscape paintings were particularly popular in American art in the 19th century, a time artists romanticized the American wilderness through painting. When you create landscapes, you may paint a real-life scene in nature, an urban landscape, or an allegorical landscape painting with symbolic meaning.
Still Life
Still life art features beautifully arrange objects.
Still life paintings feature inanimate objects, often laid out on a table. These may be fruit, flowers, books, jars, or even musical instruments and shoes. Famous still life paintings include Paul Cezanne's "Still Life with Fruit" and Vincent Van Gogh's "Vase with Twelve Sunflowers." In still life art, the items and their arrangement suggest a message or symbolism.
Portraiture
Portraits may feature an individual or family.
Portraits are paintings of a particular person or family. You may also paint a portrait of a pet. Portraiture was the most popular type of painting during the American colonial times and 19th century. Famous portraits include Gilbert Stuart's many paintings of George Washington, and Andy Warhol's abstract, pop-art portraits of celebrities.
Abstract Art
Abstract paintings depict the free association of the artist and may include vibrant colors, drips of paint, and unusual shapes.
Abstract art has very few rules. Abstract paintings can consist of lines, dots, drips and splatters of paint, unusual shapes, color blocks, and scribbles in whatever arrangement you choose. In abstract art, you may create through free association, meaning you create as ideas organically come to you. Abstract art can be as much about the process of creating as the product itself. Some famous abstract painters are Wassily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.
