 |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
| ||||||||
Paint is the general term for a family of products used to protect and add color to an object or surface by covering it with a pigmented coating. As a verb, painting is the application of paint. One who paints is called a painter.
Paint is very common and is applied to almost every kind of object. It is a method of producing art, an industrial coating, a driving aid (lane markings), a preservative (rust-prone steel auto bodies), on interior walls, on exterior surfaces exposed to weather, and myriad other uses.
With art, it has also been used for centuries in the creation of great works, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa and Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night.
There are generally three parts to a paint, a solid part, and two liquid parts. Combined, the two liquid parts make up the medium or vehicle. The solid part is mostly pigments, which are particles that provide color and also help make the paint opaque. The binder (usually a natural or synthetic resin) is that part of the vehicle which eventually solidifies to achieve the dried paint film. The solvent or diluent (often an organic solvent, or water) is that part of the vehicle that is volatile and does not become part of the paint film. The major function of the solvent is to thin the paint to make it easy to apply.
After application, the liquid paint solidifies, leaving the binder and pigment as a colored coating. Depending on the type of binder, this hardening may be a result of processes such as curing (in oil paint, this takes the form of oxidation of linseed oil to form linoxin), evaporation (most water-based paints are emulsions of solid binders in water; when the diluent evaporates, the molecules of the binder coalesce to form a solid film), cooling (encaustic, or wax, paints are liquid when warm, and harden upon cooling), etc.
Since the time of the Renaissance, siccative (drying) oil paints, primarily linseed oil, have been the most commonly used kind of paints in fine art applications; oil paint is still common today. However, in the 20th centry, water-based paints, including watercolors and acrylic paints, became very popular with the development of latex and acrylic pigment suspensions. Milk paints (also called casein), where the medium is derived from milk, were popular in the 19th century and are still available today. Egg tempera (where the medium is egg yolk) is still in use as well, as are encaustic wax-based paints. Guache (pronounced 'gwash' and is a sort of opaque watercolor) was also used in the Middle Ages and Renaissance for manuscript illumination. The pigment was often made from ground semiprecious stones such as lapis lazuli and the binder made from either gum arabic or egg white. Guache is also commercially available today.
lead.
It wasn't until the middle of the 20th century that white lead was generally replaced by a less toxic substitute, titanium white, which was first used in paints in the 19th century. The titanium white used in most paints today is actually a mixture of titanium dioxide (pure titanium white) and zinc oxide (zinc white). See pigment.
Some newer paints can produce effects where the color changes depending on the angle (orientation) at which it is viewed. Modern U.S. and Canadian currency, specifically the newer higher denomination notes, have this effect on them. This effect is produced by having pigment molecules that are long and thin and are meant to dry in a specific orientation, with different ends of the molecule being different colors.
Paint can be applied as a liquid, as a solid, or as a gaseous suspension. Techniques vary depending on the practical or artistic results desired.
In the liquid application, paint can be applied by direct application using brushes, paint rollers, other instruments, or body parts. Examples of body parts include fingerpainting, where the paint is applied by hand, whole-body painting (popular in the 1960's avant-garde movement), and cave painting, in which a pigment (usually finely-ground charcoal) is held in the mouth and spat at a wall (NOTE: DO NOT DO THIS with modern paints, they are highly toxic and this might cause death or permanent injury).
Paint may also be applied by flipping or spraying the paint, solvent) can sprayed along with the paint to dissolve together both the delivered paint and the chemicals on the surface of the object being painted;
Paint is often applied to walls with a roller. Rollers generally have a handle that allows for different lengths of poles which can be attached to allow for painting at different heights. Generally, roller application takes two coats for even color. A roller with a thicker nap is used to apply paint on uneven surfaces. Edges are often finished with an angled brush.
Ancient painted walls, to be seen at Dendara, Egypt, although exposed for many ages to the open air, still possess a perfect brilliancy of color, as vivid as when painted, perhaps 2000 years ago. The Egyptians mixed their colors with some gummy substance, and applied them detached from each other without any blending or mixture. They appeared to have used six colors, viz., white, black, blue, red, yellow, and green. They first covered the field entirely with white, upon which they traced the design in black, leaving out the lights of the ground color. They used minium for red, and generally of a dark tinge.
Pliny mentions some painted ceilings in his day in the town of Ardea, which had been executed at a date prior to the foundation of Rome. He expresses great surprise and admiration at their freshness, after the lapse of so many centuries.
Paint is also a military verb meaning to shine a targeting device (laser, radar, etc.) to designate an object as the target of an attack.
Paint is also a term used in computer graphics.
A bitmap graphics editor may allow direct painting, such as: Gimp, Microsoft Paint, Paint Shop Pro, CinePaint and many more.
"Paint" is a music track by Soul Coughing from their 1996 album Irresistible Bliss.
North American horse; they are identified by their coloration, a combination of white and any color, arranged in large blotches. See American Paint Horse
|
||||
| View Live Article | This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License | |
||
