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Origami - Art of Paper FoldingOrigami is an art form that transforms paper into a sculpture through paper folding and sculpting techniques. Thus, cutting or gluing paper would not be considered to be origami, but 'kirigami' instead. The name 'Origami' is Japanese, in which 'Ori' is the Japanese word for folding, and 'kami' the word for paper.
It is generally believed that origami originated from Japan, but, as there are few records, this is not certain. Nevertheless, Japan developed origami into an intense art form that still exists to this day.
In the past, instructions for origami were passed down in spoken form and not written down. Some say that origami first originated in China in 1st Century, in which paper was then brought to Japan by Buddhist monks in 6th Century. Others claim that paper was made in the 8th Century by the Arabs, with Moors bringing the art of paper folding to Spain in the 12th Century. Spain then spread to South America, and as trade routes developed, origami was thus introduced to Europe a

A History of Photography (Mostly)Art History Photography Month has begun and where better to start than with the History of Photography! I appreciate not everything is included, but here are some key main events and features, images and happenings that have impacted Photography across the years. If you don't want to read it all, scroll to the bottom for my tl;dr handy summary

1000AD
This is said to be where it all began with Alhazen inventing the first pinhole camera - known as Camera Obscura. Heard the phrase before? Now you know where it originates from! Aristotle observed and noted in around 330BC the optic laws that made pinhole cameras possible and questioned why the Sun could make a circular image when it shined through a square hole.
Source:LOC
1794
The First Panorama opens - the forerunner of the movie house invented by Robert

The Tales of Beatrix Potter

Cold winter evenings or blustery Autumn days had the soundtrack of my Mother's voice reading Beatrix Potter books out loud when I was younger. In fact, the wonderful children's books were the epitome of my childhood. The illustrations were just perfect and the stories, whilst simple, were mysterious and adventurous in their own way. Beatrix Potter was born in 1866, South Kensington, London. She was said to live a lonely life, being educated at home by a governess and so perhaps that's why she delved into a fantasy world of rabbits, geese and other traditional animals.

Beatrix's illustrations come from her copious studies of her own pets, and the animals that roamed the gardens of the places in which she holidayed as a child. The fascinating fact was that Beatrix's illustrations became greetings cards before her books were created. I see her drawings on cards in shops now and I always thought that it had developed the other way around. Her first boo

Food Photography - back to basicsFood is a necessity for daily life and good health (the right kinds anyway), but food is also fast becoming something of an Art as well as many turn to their cameras once a mammoth baking session is over and capture the delightful dishes in attractive and alluring ways. Since the beginnings of Still Life Photography, food has been a subject and whilst the topic has remained the same - methods, equipment and ease have changed in varying degrees across the years. Food Photography is still a genre that is vastly overlooked and majorly underrated in the art world.
It all began with Still Life Paintings back in the 17th Century. They were as far from commercial as a style could get and certainly weren't created with selling in mind. However the skill and main aspects that realism painters took back in the 17th Century are kept close to the hearts of Food Photographers today as they grip onto Realism, effects of light, composition and arrangement. Props have always been an important part of

Printing: From the Far East to the Printing PressIllustrations have been hand drawn for many centuries. But as the demand for the distribution of illustration and text increased, people developed printing techniques, and over time this would turn into what we now know as the printing press, the mass production of illustration and text.
Let us take a look at the Far East first, in particular China and Japan where print has been traditionally used as early as the 7th century. The Chinese have been using woodblock printing since the Tang Dynasty (7th Century). This method of printing quickly spread to other East Asian countries, including Japan. The earliest complete survival of a dated printed book is the Diamond Sutra (Buddhist text). This of course ties into one of the most famous Chinese inventions, paper!

"It was the Chinese who really discovered the means of communication that was to dominate until our age."

A. Hyatt Mayor

Wood block printing was used in the production of books such as

Famous Photographs: Lunch Atop A SkyscraperWhilst the most famous photographs from across the years often feature famine, death, destruction and war, it's sometimes refreshing to catch a glimpse of one or two that don't exhibit depression, demise and conflict. Photo-journalism can work both ways to brief the viewer of an image on what it's like to step into somebody else's shoes. It can shock, bring a tear or even, by some miracle - a smile.
Lunch Atop A SkyScraper does exactly that. It provokes a smile, it features across the world in postcards, books, greeting cards and other formats and ultimately it tugs at that part of your heart that knows there can be good in the world. So what makes it famous?
Source: Wikipedia
The Photograph itself shows eleven working men eating lunch, sitting on a steel girder. Nothing extraordinary about that right? Wrong. Their feet are dangling 256 metres above New York City. Nobody actually knows w

Famous Photographs: The Afghan GirlIf you run a google search on what are the top famous Photographs of all time, The Afghan Girl is sure to appear. She is truly a face from History and one that many across the globe have tried to capture within others time and time again. But what exactly has made this image and its photographer so captivating?
Source: Daily Mail/National Geographic/Steve McCurry
Eyes, they say, are the window to the soul. And capturing such a piercing and expressive look in a photograph is a highly sought after skill. The Afghan Girl exhibits suspense, suspicion and a sense of distrust at the person behind the lens, she gives off an air of maturity, a foreboding feeling - a vulnerability behind years of strength. That, is what makes her so captivating.
Sharbat Gula is her name, although few even know this rather important detail. Sh

Surrealism on DeviantArtA small introduction:
Surrealism was an artistic movement, founded in Paris 1924 by André Breton. Dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams – it's when artists create dreamlike paintings filled with familiar objects that have been changed in a weird way that you would not see in reality.
Features:

The Beginning of MangaNarrative in art has been seen for centuries in a wide range of different forms. Now I should start off by saying the 'true origins' of manga is disputed. World War II accelerated the world of comics and manga. However we'll take a look at what has been going on before global conflict changed everything. We'll start with the actual name itself, manga, meaning 'whimsical pictures'. So this is the nature of it, satire, doodles, sketches, exaggeration and humour. The first time this term was used to describe a piece of artwork in Japan was given to Hokusai Manga (first published in 1814). So there is the term itself, but going a bit further back is where it's real history becomes debatable.

Theory 1
Manga started around 12-13th century, the Japanese Fujiwara Period. Animal caricatures known seen on picture scrolls are an early form of narrative. They show mischief and fun doodles, and they are actually an early example of Japanese art that is breaking away from their Chinese

A short history of QuiltingSince the history of quilting could easily fill a book and has in fact has filled many books, I'm going to keep this rather shorter. As it is a short overview there will be things left out that the more historically minded might miss but there are so many facets to quilting that I cannot include it all.
First of all some definitions to help you understand the terms I use:
- Patchwork is the sewing together of many pieces of fabrics to create a new larger piece of fabric that can then be used to make a quilt or a garment or anything else the maker chooses to make from it.
- Quilting is the layering of two fabrics with a filler layer in between that is then covered with lines or patterns of sewing stitches to hold the filling in place. In modern times it also often refers to a piece of patchwork that is given a backing and a filling and stitched through. In this article I will use both meanings.
Quilting has been around for at least 5000 years if not longer and used to pad fabrics for ma

Art History: John William Waterhouse:iconarthistoryproject: :iconcommunityrelations:
A man of some mystery John William Waterhouse, most affectionately known throughout his lifetime as 'Nino" was born in Rome to his English parents William and Isabella during the wonder years of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who set the art world alight.
It was his Italian beginnings that first influenced his artistic style as a young man first at school in Leeds, then later at his fathers studio in London where he entered the coveted Royal Academy of Arts at the age of 21, not as a painter; but as a sculptor. Six months later his probationary term ended and he was fully enrolled as a student leading to his first painting exhibits.
"Undine" 1872, oil on canvas and "Gone but not Forgotten" 1873, oil on canvas - shows Wa

Art History: Discovering Dali

Salvador Dali was born in Spain in 1904 and has been best known and recognised throughout the years for his surrealist, ambiguous works. Dali is responsible for inspiring a plethora of artists to create, combine and step outside of their comfort zones. Many know him for his paintings, but actually like many modern artists today, Dali traversed the fields of the artistic world to pick up talents in Writing, Photography, Sculpture and Film.

Dali was not famous for his methods. That's one of the mistakes that people make when tracing his history or seeking him out for inspiration. Dali's methods were much the same as anybody else's. However his concepts trumped them all and made him what he is remembered for today. He achieved his effects through a mastery of perspective
and a critical eye for color and shape, symmetry and innuendo. It is this realization that opens up the market for future dali-esque artists. There's nothing unusual behind the crea

Jerry Uelsman and Why Surrealism is ArtJerry Uelsman established his unique and famous Photography style in the 1940s by using multiple photos to create a surrealistic and impressionist composite image. He's what we'd call 'old school' and is a modern day photographer with old style equipment. Even though he lives in an era when digital Photography is widely available, he chooses simply to stick with his film cameras and is famously quoted as saying...
"I am sympathetic to the current digital revolution and excited by the visual options created by the computer. However I feel my creative process remains intrinsically linked to the alchemy of the darkroom."
Uelsman exhibits up to this present day with his work being showcased across much of the USA. His exhibition is famously titled, Faking it: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop and serves as a poke that perhaps we can learn a thing or two from this great man.
Source: Uelsma

Art History - Trad Art CV's:iconcommunityrelations: :iconarthistoryproject:
dA's Traditional Art Community Volunteers
Now that Art History has begun with Traditional Art it's only fitting you should get more acquainted with your Traditional Art Community Volunteers!

:icondeshrubber:
^deshrubber - Traditional Art

:iconSalvador-rudy:
^SRudy - Sculpture & Traditional General

:iconSamuelRaffa:
`SRaffa - Traditional Art

:iconkiwi-pdd:
^kiwi-pdd - Street Art & Graffiti

:thumb18488884

Cave Paintings: The Birth of IllustrationCave paintings are the root of traditional illustration, one the earliest of which has been in recent news, a 'faint red dot' dated to more than 40,000 years ago. These were discovered in 11 caves in Spain, and results show that they are at least 15,000 years older than we first thought. It raises many questions; What are they trying to say? Who made it? Is it symbolic? Who was it made for?
No matter what the answers are, illustration is a means for people to convey information, a means of visual communication. The purpose of these cave paintings are unknown, and we can only speculate as to their actual purpose. A time well before printing press, but the value of visual communication has lasted through the ages. One thing that is for sure is it was some sort of communication via visual aids, they had a purpose and had something to say.

Design is intelligence made visible.

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Papercuttings

Sun Dec 9, 2012, 4:17 AM

Papercutting is an art form that has been seen all over the world, adapted to regional styles based on cultures. It should come as no surprise that the Chinese have the earliest forms of papercutting currently known to us as the 'ancestor to paper' has been found in China. This was dated as far back as 2nd century B.C. and is considered as important as their discovery of printmaking, gunpowder and the compass.

~Thessatoria's It's Your Life

Naturally as paper spread throughout the world this art form evolved, spreading all over the Far East through to the Middle East. For example Japanese Kirigami where origami folds are cut and Indian Sanjhi.

This art form is popular to this very day, take renowned British artist Rob Ryan, which I am sure many of you here would have at least seen his work before! His work has been seen printed over everything you can think of, kitchenware, clothes, books and probably more!

Wall tapestry made from Rob Ryan's work.

Papercutting or just papercraft will take the shape and form of whatever culture and history paper exists in at the time. Its influence as an artform transcends well beyond it's roots as it's aesthetics and variety of styles have become objects of desire and beauty. I'll leave you with this, a little gem I found this year. An advert created by Dutch artist Rogier Wieland to advertise the new Moleskine Planners.

Roger Wielands Moleskine Planner animation

Source: www.misterrob.co.uk, rob-ryan.blogspot.co.uk, [link]

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Papercuttingsby ^kingmancheng

Journals / Art News / Artisan Crafts

=Vashtastic Dec 10, 2012 Digital Artist

this is so awesome

^kingmancheng Dec 11, 2012 Professional Filmographer

Thank you! :3

^cakecrumbs Dec 9, 2012

That video is positively captivating. Great article.

^kingmancheng Dec 10, 2012 Professional Filmographer

Thank you I@m glad you enjoyed it!

`ditto9 Dec 9, 2012 Professional Filmographer

(Oh and one of my favourite paper cut out artists is ~SayonaraRolling [link])

^kingmancheng Dec 10, 2012 Professional Filmographer

`ditto9 Dec 9, 2012 Professional Filmographer

THAT MOLESKINE ADVERT oh my word, the T-rex just got me right in the animation heart.
I looove paper cut-out, it's actually my favourite style of animation~
Great article!

^kingmancheng Dec 10, 2012 Professional Filmographer

Thanks very much! Whilst you're still over there buy yourself some cheap books with paper cuttings. I can't remember which shop it was but I got loads of booklets back with real paper cuttings cheap! :3

`ditto9 Dec 10, 2012 Professional Filmographer

;o; Oh I should definitely look for some!

^kingmancheng Dec 10, 2012 Professional Filmographer

Definitely, they're quite cheap and make nice gifts for people too.

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Papercuttings

Wall tapestry made from Rob Ryan's work.

Roger Wielands Moleskine Planner animation

Source: www.misterrob.co.uk, rob-ryan.blogspot.co.uk, [link]

Papercuttingsby ^kingmancheng

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