实用艺术英语unit 4 A

4 Artists’ paints are generally made to a paste-like consistency and need to be diluted in order to be brushed freely. Aqueous media can be diluted with water. Watercolors are an example of an aqueous medium. Nonaqueous media require some other diluents. Oil paints are an example of a nonaqueous medium; these can be diluted with turpentine or mineral spirits. Paints are applied to a support, which is the canvas, paper, wood panel, wall, or other surface on which the artist works. The support may be prepared to receive paint with a ground or primer, a preliminary coating.
Unit 4 Text A Painting
Warm-up exercise
Read the following questions first, which will help you understand the followingபைடு நூலகம்passage better, and then answer the questions after reading it carefully.
3 To begin this discussion of painting, we should define some terms that allow us to understand how, physically, such a work of art is put together. Paint is made of pigment, powdered color, compounded with a medium or vehicle, a liquid that holds the particles of pigment together without dissolving them. The vehicle generally acts as or includes a binder, an ingredient that ensures that the paint, even when diluted and spread thinly, will adhere to the surface. Without a binder, pigments would simply powder off as the paint dried.
Exercises of Text A
Part One
Go over each of the following sentences carefully and select the answer that is closest in meaning to the underlined word.
7 Literary sources tell us that encaustic was an important technique in ancient Greece (the word encaustic comes from the Greek for “burning in”). The earliest encaustic paintings to have survived, however, are funeral portraits created during the first centuries of our era in Egypt, which was then under Roman rule. Portraits such as this were set into the casings of mummified bodies to identify and memorialize the dead. The colors of this painting, almost as fresh as the day they were set down, testify to the permanence of encaustic.
1. What role does painting play in the world of works of art? 2. Which materials or tools are involved in the process of painting? 3. How much do you know about encaustic paints and frescos?
1. During that long history the styles of painting have changed considerably. C A. carefully B. considerately C. greatly D. specially 2. A binder is an ingredient that ensures that the paint, even when diluted and spread thinly, will adhere to the surface. A A. stick to B. turn over C. fit into D. serve as 3. Artists’ paints are generally made to a paste-like consistency and need to be diluted in order to be brushed freely. C A. softness B. weakness C. thickness D. firmness 4. Portraits such as this were set into the casings of mummified bodies to identify and memorialize the dead. A A. recognize B. mourn C. assure D. display
6 Encaustic paints consist of pigment mixed with wax and resin. When the colors are heated, the wax melts and the paint can be brushed easily. When the wax cools, the paint hardens. After the painting is completed, there may be a final “burning in” as a heat source is passed close to the surface of the painting to fuse the colors.
8 With fresco, pigments are mixed with water and applied to a plaster support, usually a wall or a ceiling coated in plaster. The plaster may be dry, in which case the technique is known as fresco secco, Italian for “dry fresco.” But most often when speaking about fresco, we mean buon fresco, “true fresco,” in which paint made simply of pigment and water is applied to wet lime plaster. As the plaster dries, the lime undergoes a chemical transformation and acts as a binder, fusing the pigment with the plaster surface. 9 There is nothing tentative about fresco. Whereas in some media the artist can experiment, try out forms, and then paint over them to make corrections, every touch of the brush in fresco is a commitment. The only way an artist can correct mistakes or change the forms is to let the plaster dry, chip it away, and start all over again.
1 In the Western tradition, painting is the queen of the arts. Ask ten people to form a quick mental image of “art,” and nine of them are likely to visualize a painting. There are several reasons for the prominence of painting. For one thing, paintings usually are full of color, which is a potent visual stimulus. For another, paintings usually are framed, some quite elaborately, so that one has the impression of a precious object set off from the rest of the world. Even without a frame, a painting may seem a thing apart – a focus of energy and life, a universe unto itself. Whatever the painting shows, it establishes its own visual scope, sets its own rules. 2 If we consider some of the earliest cave images, especially the more elaborate and colorful ones, to be paintings, then the art has been practiced for at least thirty thousand years. During that long history the styles of painting have changed considerably, as have the media in which paintings are done – the physical substances the painter uses. In the latter case it might be more accurate to say broadened, rather than changed, for few media have been completely abandoned, while many new options have been added to the painter’s repertoire.
5 It is impossible to tell which painting medium is the oldest, but we know that ancient peoples mixed their pigments with such things as fat and honey. Two techniques perfected in the ancient world that are still in use today are encaustic and fresco.