Painting throughout the ages online

Ellen Whyte, Columnist, Malaysia ellenwhyte@lepak.com

The art of painting goes back thousands of years to the days our Stone Age ancestors decorated cave walls with pictures of the animals around them. This week, we take a look at various web sites that showcase art throughout the ages, as well as game sites that will help develop an eye for a good painting.

* Ancient Paintings

On Dec. 18, 1994, three French speleologists (cave explorers) discovered a cave filled with hundreds of paintings featuring mammoths, rhinoceroses, bears, lions and other animals that roamed France in prehistoric times. Scientists believe these paintings were made about 31,000 years ago.

Discovery of a Paleolithic Painted Cave at Vallon-Pont-d'Arc (Ardeche) at www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/index.html describes how the cave was found, how the cave paintings have been preserved and what this has taught us about our ancestors. This is a huge site full of information and some really excellent images. Don't be put off by the very dark welcome page -- the actual articles are easy to read.

* About Colors

If you were living 31,000 years ago, how would you make paint? Pigments Through The Ages at webexhibits.org/pigments/index.html kicks off by describing how Paleolithic painters mixed fat with ground minerals to produce three basic colors -- red, black and yellow -- and moves on to examine how later artists developed ways of producing more colors such as purple, blue and green.

Other sections look at the development and the uses of blue, green, yellow and red. The sections for purple, orange, white, brown and black are still under construction, but there are enough titbits of information here to make visiting worthwhile.

* Great Art Games

Don't know a Gauguin from a penguin? A. Pintura, Art Detective, at www.eduweb.com/pintura is an online interactive detective game that will help you learn more about great artists such as Picasso, Titian, Millet, Van Gogh, Raphael and Gauguin -- all while you solve the Case Of Grandpa's Painting.

Presented as a noir detective story, this site puts you in charge of an investigation. Your client commissions you to discover whether a painting found in an attic is a valuable masterpiece or a fake. To do this, you compare known masterpieces you happen to have copies of in your office to the painting in question. If you make an incorrect assessment, you will be given more help -- in fact, it's worth doing this game straight through the first time and checking out other options the next time around just to see what it says. This is a great way to learn more about color, composition, style and subject.

A. Pintura is just one of the many Educational Web Adventures available in cyberspace. Check out these as well as other brilliant resources by visiting the Art and Art History sites at www.eduweb.com/adventure.html#art. Each resource here has high quality games and exhibitions that will help you pick up information about individual artists as well as various schools of style.

Two that I found particularly interesting were Inside Art and A Lifetime of Color ArtEdventures and Art Education Resources. In Inside Art, a sudden black hole appears, transporting you into the canvas of a painting you were admiring. The only way you can get back to the world you know is by asking Trish the Fish to help you discover more about the painting. This is a really good way to supplement your knowledge of what to look for in a painting such as brushwork, use of color and composition.

The second is a treasure trove of games and puzzles including the fascinating Art of Crime Detection game. This starts off by explaining how your left and right brain work and how this can help you develop your artistic skills. The second half of the game allows you to apply this new knowledge.

You are presented with a security camera clip that shows a crime in action and the PDArtist tool to make likenesses of the criminal you've seen. Warning: this game is such fun you'll want to play for hours!

* Asian Art

Asia Art at www.asia-art.net/history.html showcases work from various Asian cultures. Sections here introduce Chinese landscape painting, traditional figure painting, Chinese peasant painting as well as other types of work that are still admired today.

Other sections cover Indonesian and Malay Batik painting, as well as little-known Asian arts, like Korean painting and Vietnamese silk painting. Pages on modern Asian art also have a catalog of work for sale.

If you are interested in honing your own skills, surf through each section carefully and look out for the pages describing techniques tips and tricks for aspiring artists.

For more information, search for the key phrases: painting, cave painting, pigments, art activities.