Activity#10-Mediums and Techniques

Pablo Picasso used oil on wood and oil on canvas in order to create his artworks the “Bullfight and the “Tragedy. Oil is a non aqueous medium which can be diluted with turpentine or mineral spirits.(Getlein, 168). Medium a liquid that holds the particles of pigment together without dissolving them (Getlein, 168). The medium effects the way I see the artworks though certain oils used to create the paintings.

In the “Bullfight” the artist appear to use thin brush strokes to outline all the figures in the painting. He used a symbol of a dying horse being brave and the bull being the brutality and darkness. The dead horse in the Bullfight is the most important thing to me in the painting because the artist made the dead horse standout by using the color red . He used oil painted consist of pigment compound with oil, usually linseed oil. The oil acts as a binder; creating as it dries a transparent film in which the pigment is suspended (Getlein, 172).
In the “Tragedy” the paint is thin because of the hidden brush strokes to show that the painting appear to be painted over an earlier painting according to the National Gallery of Art. For -example, the thin paint from an earlier images on the same canvas one can see the development of the artwork. The figures in the painting Tragedy stand out because the artist painted them in the color blue to let us see that the figures were cold and alone.

In both paintings , the characteristics of oil paint is that it dries very slowly. It means that the colors can be blended subtly, layers of paint can be applied on the top of other layers with little dangers of separating or cracking and the artist can rework sections of the painting almost indefinitely ( Getlein, 173). The two works are similar, because the paint is applied to a support, which is the canvas, paper, wood panel, wall, or other surface on which the artist works. The support may be prepared to receive paint with a ground or primer; a preliminary coating (Getlein,168). The qualities in both paintings let me see that the artist intentions was to paint how he felt in what we call the Blue Period and the Rose Period.