Art History Week
We can't deny that colours are everywhere around us. Anything and everything that surrounds us has a colour, a tint, a hue to it. 
All humans, no matter the language they speak, have come up with names for the variety of colours nature offers. 
But where do the colour names come from? Is there a reason why green is called green and not a completely different word? 

Colours everywhere! But why those names?
Artist: Jane Blundell
In this article, we'll try to introduce you to the origin of colour names by explaining some of the most common colours. 
Let's get started!
The little bitter or yellow in Spanish

Amarillo (yellow) is a diminutive form of the Spanish amargo (bitter) which comes from the Latin word amarus. 
How d

Art History Week
Directly On Film Effects
Motion pictures are a special visual effect themselves. The first motion pictures from kinetoscopes in 1890s of just people bowing or moving around spawned what we now know as movies and television. In the 1880s, French scientist Charles-Emile Reynaud created the Theatre Optique, which projected a series of images onto a screen. In 1892, he showed off his creation in front of an audience with three animated short films that were created by painting the scenes directly onto the film frames.
Here is “Pauvre Pierrot,” one of the aforementioned animated films and also what is considered to be the oldest surviving animated film.

Creating effects directly on the film by scratching off the emulsion and painting is a technique that continued to be used years later. It is commonly calle

Art History Week
Art Nouveau, an art movement known for its sweeping organic lines and flat stylization, has captivated art admirers since the 1800s.
Often depicting blooming greenery or graceful women with swirling hair, this style has its roots in several cultures including Japanese and French. Perhaps the most striking and formative example of the birth of Art Nouveau is the work of Alphonse Mucha.
Diverse Beginnings
The budding style of the Art Nouveau movement was influenced by both Eastern and Western art. After 1853, previously isolated Japanese culture was exported to the West. Art with sweeping lines, flat colors, and abstractions, especially woodblock ukiyo-e (“pictures of the floating world”) artwork, quickly became popular in Europe. Also an important catalyst for Art Nouveau was the European arts and crafts movement-- a renewed focus on craftsmanship and artist

Art History Week
Now that summer has passed on the Northern Hemisphere, people start to wear more layers to keep warm and cover the art decorating their skin.
Tattoos have become very popular in recent years, and the development and improvement of the art style is undeniable.


But how did our ancestors get inked?
Let's take a brief walk through the history of tattooing, courtesy of Authority Tattoo, The Guardian and Wikipedia.

The first tattoo recorded in history
Tattoos date back centuries - tattoos were discovered on mummified bodies as old as 3370 BC. In history class, Ötzi the Iceman was no doubt a subject of interest; he had had 61 tattoos in different l

Art History Week
Oh my goodness, what an AWESOME week we just enjoyed, with all these articles full of so many interesting things!!! We couldn't be happier for having brought to you guys all these amazing mini-journeys into the past!!!
I want to extend a BIG thank you to all the artists who kindly dedicated their time and efforts to make this week possible!!! :iconflyingheartsplz::iconloveloveplz::iconflyingheartsplz:
Here is a recap of all the articles presented this week:
Monday, November 4th:
"Traditional Asian Costumes, An Introduction" by SinistrosePhosphate
Tuesday, November 5th:
"The Origins of Colour Names" by Shesvii

Pieter Bruegel the Elder: The Exhibits and Experience. My Journey and Exploration.
  
Last August, I was in the Chapel Church in Brussels, Belgium, twisting a paper booklet in my hands. A famous Flemish painter and printmaker, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, was buried at the Chapel Church 450 years ago. At the time, I had no idea who Bruegel was and I was even more confused as I stared at a statue, a bird fountain with water made out of blue plaster. Legs and an arm of a man stuck out of the fake water and I thought, "gosh, what an awful baptism," because he looked to be drowning.

It wasn't until I was back at my Airbnb reading the pamphlet from the church called "Bruegel, the Great Escape" when I realized that the drowning man was supposed to be Icarus after he flew too clo

Art History Week
Hi there, the name is Yuukon and I am back with another Art History article! Last time we talked about a bunch of famous photographs throughout history, and today we'll be talking about famous writers throughout history! I have picked out some personal favourites, and some I learned about during school. 
Disclaimer: There are a lot of great writers throughout history, and I would've loved to add every single one of them to this list. I didn't, because, let's face it, even though we're lovers of lit, we still wouldn't read a never-ending article
Alright, let's kick this off! 
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle was born on May 22,1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Arthur got his passion for books from his mother, Mary Foley Doyle, who had a love for boo

Art History Week
We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have."
:iconwhimsicalblue:
 Today I want to talk about a person who not only excelled in the field of arts/ literature but in various projects.
He is the reason that I actually love books and helped me to value the people around me.
Every page of his books shines with the warmth of unconditional love and spiritualism.
His writing is absolutely a delight to read and leaves you with  wonderful thoughts and feelings which make a lasting  impression  on your soul and hope for the better world. "
          
Mitchell David Albom is an internationally renowned and best-selling American author,  journalist, screenwriter, dramatist, radio and television broadcaster, philanthropist, and musician.
He is best known for the inspirational and motivational stories that dwells i

Introduction
The period of Greek Art began from the Cyclidian and Minoan civilization. Ancient Greek Art and Hellenistic Art have and had been influenced by several other cultures and their art. We are going to look at the latter part of the Ancient Greek Art period on to the Hellenistic period from Geometric Period, Oriental Period, Archaic Period, Classical Period and Hellenistic Period respectively. This will also include some context, social, religious, or political, to go along with it. This article will mainly focus on the art form in potteries, sculptures friezes in temples if possible. Architecture has not been included for the sake of already lengthy size. Click the images to see an enlarged view in sta.sh.
Transition from the Dark Ages
After the destruction of Mycenaean palaces, the sophisticated achievements of the Greek Bronze Age1 disappeared. This hailed the Dark Ages

Art History Week
There's a special shelf in one of our many bookcases that's dedicated to our own family history. There are books detailing our lineage, photo albums that depict our own childhood (the horror of your own past staring back at you...) but maybe the strangest book of all, the photo album of myp mother's ancestors.
When we think of art history, we mostly envision the paintings, frescoes and sculptures. But as time moves on, so does art, and photography is developed as a means to capture a person's likeness. Where a painter can turn his work into something that doesn't even closely resemble his actual subject, a photo is a moment in time captured for eternity - as is.
But have you ever noticed: nobody ever smiles. Did people not know how to smile, or simply not have a reason to smile at life?


Let's take you on a brief tour of the history of smiling for the camera.




Source: Mouse

Art History Week
This article will be just a little insight into the history of colour and pigment mixing in art. For a in depth pigment explanation, we suggest you to visit this site.
Before getting started, let's make sure we know what is a pigment:
Pigment: 
1. A substance that imparts black or white or a color to other materials especially.
2. A powdered substance that is mixed with a liquid in which it is relatively insoluble and used especially to impart color to coating materials (such as paints) or to inks, plastics, and rubber
Pigments are solid materials with a high tinting strength that are usually employed in powdered form. Nowadays, we can find both natural and synthetic pigments, so the range of colours available is almost endless. But what about the pigments used by ancient artists? 
Pigments in Prehistoric times

Art History Week
Floral painting is one of the most popular themes in the history of art, inscribed in the genre of still life. From the first manifestations and through the years, the art has had a constant evolution as it surpassed the traditional vision of itself as a faithful representation of nature.
Currently, artists made their process more creative and personal in their search for new forms of expression that led them to develop their own style and, later, achieve its transcendence. However, the floral painting will never go out of style due to the compositional freedom that it allows. In this article we will see how this pictorial genre has evolved throughout the history of art and the most famous artists who have dedicated part or all of their work to flowers.
First botanical studies
In Ancient Greece, Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher and naturalist, made the first systematic classification of plants from their medicinal properties belonging t

Art History Week
Depiction of human body has deep roots in history. In this article I would like to introduce you to various Bronze Age anthropomorphic figurine traditions from several archaeological sites and to put them into broader historical and artistic context. Modern archaeologists resent the aesthetic-driven appreciation of the ancient objects, as such attitude leads towards biases against incomplete or broken items, and most importantly encourages looting of archaeological sites in search of 'treasures'. Even if the object form a disturbed site eventually reaches archaeologists, the context of the find is irreversibly lost, and without context, the object loses a lot of its scientific value. Having said that, I still believe that there is nothing wrong in admiring the aesthetic value of these items, and in drawing inspiration from them. As more than 3000 years divide us from the Bronze Age societies, we may never know for sure how the figurines were used and regarded by the pe

Art History Week
Hi there! My name is Yuukon, and today I want to teach you something about the history of photography!
Before we all went digital with our tiny cameras and smartphones, we would take photographs on film. And while some of you will fondly remember this and others might still be working with it, there will no doubt be people who don't know what film photography is or how it works. 
In this article I will be highlighting some photography history through different types of film. Below, a list of types of film I will be discussing:
DaguerreotypeInstant film35 mm filmLomography
Daguerreotype
Daguerreotype was the first publicly available photographic "film". It was invented by Louis Daguerre and in 1839 it was introduced worldwide. For nearly twenty years, it was the most common photographic process used until in 1860, when new and cheaper processes became available. 
Daguerreotype was not actually film, in fact, the image would be caught on a pol

What is Stippling?
Stippling is the creation of a pattern, representing various levels of opacity, through the use of dots of different sizes. The spacing and density of the dots will illustrate such opacity levels. These various opacity levels are used to create shading in illustrations:
    

But how did it all start, and who invented this technique?
In the 1500’s, an Italian engraver named Giulio Campagnola (father of artist Domenico Campagnola), invented the “Stippling Technique”

The technique originally involved engraving with dots or little flicks of the burin (which is a steel cutting tool used by engravers), instead of using normal lines. This would allow the engravers to achieve different intensities of dots, instead of using c

A Brief History of Typography
A little insight into the history of not only Typography, but also of written language. This article will be far from covering it all, but focuses on highlighting some of the major events and periods in the history of Typography.
Typography
From the Greek roots τύπος typos = "impression" and -γραφία -graphia = "writing".
Cuneiform
~ 30th Century BC – 200 AD
Or "Script of Nails / Cuneiform Script" is probably the oldest form of written text. This calligraphic form of writing was carved into clay tablets.

The Latin Alphabet
~ 800 BC – present
This is the basic alphabet used in all Western languages. The Romans based it among others