Aesthetics is the study of art and beauty; it was an important issue for such 18th and 19th century philosophers as Kant or Hegel. Classical philosophers like Plato and Aristotle also theorized about art and painting in particular; Plato disregarded painters (as well as sculptors) in his philosophical system; he maintained that painting cannot depict the truth—it is a copy of reality (a shadow of the world of ideas) and is nothing but a craft, similar to shoemaking or iron casting. By the time of Leonardo painting had become a closer representation of the truth than painting was in Ancient Greece. Leonardo da Vinci, on the contrary, said that “Pittura est cousa mentale” (painting is a thing of the mind). Kant distinguished between Beauty and the Sublime, in terms that clearly gave priority to the former. Although he did not refer particularly to painting, this concept was taken up by painters such as Turner and Caspar David Friedrich.

Hegel recognized the failure of attaining a universal concept of beauty and in his aesthetic essay wrote that Painting is one of the three “romantic” arts, along with Poetry and Music for its symbolic, highly intellectual purpose.^[3][4] Painters who have written theoretical works on painting include Kandinsky and Paul Klee.^[5][6] Kandinsky in his essay maintains that painting has a spiritual value, and he attaches primary colors to essential feelings or concepts, something that Goethe and other writers had already tried to do.

Iconography is the study of the content of paintings, rather than their style. Erwin Panofsky and other art historians first seek to understand the things depicted, then their meaning for the viewer at the time, and then analyse their wider cultural, religious, and social meaning.

In 1890, the Parisian painter Maurice Denis famously asserted: “Remember that a painting – before being a warhorse, a naked woman or some story or other – is essentially a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order.”^[7] Thus, many twentieth century developments in painting, such as Cubism, were reflections on the means of painting rather than on the external world, nature, which had previously been its core subject. Recent contributions to thinking about painting has been offered by the painter and writer Julian Bell. In his book What is Painting?, Bell discusses the development, through history, of the notion that paintings can express feelings and ideas.

The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, claimed by some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth or humans often hunting. However the earliest evidence of painting has been discovered in two rock-shelters in Arnhem Land, in northern Australia. In the lowest layer of material at these sites there are used pieces of ochre estimated to be 60,000 years old. Archaeologists have also found a fragment of rock painting preserved in a limestone rock-shelter in the Kimberley region of North-Western Australia, that is dated 40 000 years old. [1]There are examples of cave paintings all over the world—in France, Spain, Portugal, China, Australia, India etc.

In Western cultures oil painting and watercolor painting are the best known media, with rich and complex traditions in style and subject matter. In the East, ink and color ink historically predominated the choice of media with equally rich and complex traditions.

Portrait painting is another form of painting, which is different from the other types of painting style. In other types of painting you can find the subject of landscape painting or abstract painting. In portrait painting the subject is based upon human being, pets, animals and inanimate objects. In portrait painting if you find any artist has painted him or her-self it is called self-portrait, but if an artist paint any other person it becomes portrait painting. One of the best examples of portrait painting is Leonardo da Vinci’s painting titled the Mona Lisa. It s portrait of women but how the artist capture the smile in his painting become a reason of popularity. In the same manner you can find many famous examples of portrait paintings.

Portrait painting can be done in any media such as oil, watercolor, charcoal, pencil, pen and ink, pastel and mixed media. For portrait painting artist want a person in front of him for making his portrait and for capturing the facial expression of his as well as his body language. For portrait painting sometime several sitting is needed. In old times in order to appreciate the beauty of ladies used to paint them life, so that they can capture the natural expression of their face. Although with the passage of time as everything is changing in the same manner now you can find the artists who can portrait painting with the help of your photograph. If you are are interested in making your family portrait or any particular person portrait and any memorial moment of your life should hang at your home but if you think it is time consuming, then it is no more a problem. Now on internet you can find the different websites which offer portrait painting for you. You just need to handover your photograph to them and they will make your portrait painting. Before making any deal make sure you have checked all the websites because it is possible you can find some reasonable offer.

Even if you have no idea from where you can find the e portrait artist in that case you can checkout directory of portrait painters in which worldwide artist name is mentioned in it. This is how you can find the local area portrait artist. Here is a tip for the student of arts if any one is interested in portrait painting in that case try to start with your self-portrait. In self-portrait you need to sit in front of the mirror so that you can paint yourself. This could help in improving your art skills and you can start understand human face too.

In every painting artist tries to portray different and unique angle of our surrounding factors with the help of different techniques. Landscape is one of the common subjects that every artist paints because it has huge range for painting. In landscape painting you can easily figure out that some artist try to capture the beauty of natural light or someone try to paint beautiful view of any city or a spectacular view from a different angle. Landscape is the subject that you can commonly find in paintings which is available in all type of medium. The landscape painting is the detail and realistic work in which you can find the feeling of impressionistic or idealized and romance. Landscape painting is the expression of natural beauty of the world which is spread all over the world in the forms of trees, rivers, sky and forest. As well other aspects of natural beauty, which is part of our world. Word landscape is from the Dutch, which mean a sheaf, a patch of cultivate ground. The word landscape became part of English vocabulary in late 17th century.

If you are looking for the landscape painting for your house wall for this you can find your requirement on internet. On internet you can find the art galleries or websites which sale landscape paintings. This is how you can find the landscape painting according to your desire without wasting too much time. Even you can find the websites which can prepare landscape paintings on order for you and according to your requirement. Such landscape paintings are not print but purely handmade and it is available in different sizes as well as in museum frame style too.

Before selecting any landscape painting make sure in which medium you want to buy it. Every medium has different effects on painting. You can buy oil painting landscape as well as same painting in water paint too. It is up to you which medium landscape painting is according to your requirement and taste. If you are looking for the composition of different unique artwork of landscape in that case checkout the landscape abstract paintings. Usually in abstract painting subject is not clear but in abstract landscape painting you can see the beautiful combination of abstract work as well excellent portrait of natural beauty together.

Landscape can be ideal subject for new beginner because in such painting you can learn different aspect of paintings such as direction of light, proportion and mixing of pigments. Even you can take help from the websites in which landscape techniques are given which can help you for improving your art skills.

Art has different forms and each form of art has language of expression such as music, acting and painting all of them portray our social issues. Paintings begin with blank canvas but with the artist skills and talent a picture begins to form which portray his inner expression. Paintings are available in different mediums such as water paint or oil paint and many others. Both types of painting style are different although most of time people like oil paintings because the colors and whole painting look solid. If we compare what is the difference between water paints painting and oil paints painting it is very obvious. For water painting water is used for mixing pigments. On the other hands in oil painting for mixing pigment linseed oil is used although other oils are also used in it but when oil get dry it give different effects. Oil paints are famous medium among the artist because it is quite difficult to learn but at the same time its helpful for improving their skills of brush strokes and techniques too. There is another reason why artist like to use oil paints for paintings because oil take time for drying on canvas due to this they can repaint any part of the painting.

Any oil painting that is hanged on any wall can create it own charm what so ever subject of any oil painting. No machine made print cant compare with the handmade oil painting. Sometime we see some famous artist painting hang to someone house wall and we wish we can get exactly the same painting for our house or office. This is no more problem because on internet you can find the websites where they can make oil paintings according to your desire. Whether you want oil painting in still life, landscape, abstract or animal it could be anything you want in oil painting you will get it. You can send your e-mail to them and then they send you quotation for your particular oil painting.

Before purchasing any oil painting make sure where you want to place it because the colors of oil paintings are very expressive. If you want to place it in any formal place like living room in that case dark colors oil painting will be perfect selection.

If you are planning to join any art school and you have particular interest in oil painting for this you can learn some techniques related to oil paintings. On internet you can find websites in which oil painting techniques teach how you can improve your skills of painting as a student of art.