How to look at a painting, a ten minute method for slow looking
Most of us give a painting less than half a minute. Here is a simple method that turns ten unhurried minutes into the best part of a museum visit.
PB29 Ultramarine
Art & Design
Painting, sculpture, photography and digital art: materials, methods and how to see them.
Knowing how a work is made changes how you see it. Here you will find the media of painting, the lost wax method behind a bronze, the families of printmaking, photography as an art and the new digital forms, together with a simple method for looking at any picture slowly and well.
Oil, acrylic, watercolour, gouache and tempera explained
Every paint is coloured powder held in a binder. Learn how egg, oil, gum and polymer shape the look of a picture, and how to tell them apart.
Sculpture from marble to bronze, materials and the lost wax method
Carved stone, modelled clay, cast bronze and welded steel: how sculptors choose their materials, and how a bronze is made, step by step.
Woodcut, etching, lithography and screenprint, printmaking explained
An original print is not a copy of a painting. Here is how the four families of printmaking work, and how to tell them apart with a simple loupe.
Photography as art, from the darkroom print to the collector’s edition
How photographs found their way into museums, what separates a silver print from a pigment print, and why the date of a print matters as much as the date of the picture.
Digital art explained, from generative code to immersive rooms
From plotter drawings in the 1960s to video, net art, immersive projections and AI, a calm guide to art made with machines and to how museums keep it alive.
Colour in art, pigments, contrasts and the blue that cost more than gold
From earth colours to Prussian blue and the paint tube, how artists got their colours, why ultramarine was so precious and how colour contrasts work on the eye.
Art movements at a glance, from the Renaissance to Pop Art
Seventeen movements in one compact guide: when they happened, what they wanted, how to recognise them on a museum wall and which artists to look for first.
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Palette Studio
Load any picture and see its colour palette, privately in your browser.
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The other sections
- Artists & StudiosPortraits, studio visits and a look inside the places where art is made.
- Galleries & ExhibitionsArt spaces, openings, biennials and fairs worth the journey.
- Collecting ArtClear orientation for a first purchase and a reliable refresher for seasoned collectors.
- Art LivingArt at home, in hotels and in architecture: hanging, lighting, framing and living with it.
- Art HistoryThe great artists, their lives and the works that changed how we see.