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Paper has been traced to China in about AD 105. It reached Central Asia by 751 and Baghdad by 793, and by the 14th century there were paper mills in a number of places in Europe. The invention of the printing press in about 1450 markedly increased the demand for paper, and at the beginning of the 19th century wood and other vegetable pulps began to replace rags as the foremost source of fibre for papermaking.

Prior to 1798, Nicholas-Louis Robert invented the first paper-making machine. Using a moving screen belt, paper was made one sheet at a time by dipping a frame or mould with a screen bottom into a vat of pulp. Some years later the brothers Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier improved Robert’s machine, and in 1809 John Dickinson invented the first cylinder machine.

Although most steps in papermaking have become highly mechanized, the basic process has remained mostly unchanged. First of all, the fibres are separated and wetted to produce the paper pulp, or stock. The pulp is then filtered on a woven screen that forms a sheet of fibre, which is then pressed and compacted to squeeze out most of the water. The remaining water is removed by evaporation, and the dry sheet is further compressed and, depending upon the intended use, coated or impregnated with other substances.

Differences regarding grades and types of paper are decided by a number of factors: the type of fibre being used; the preparation of the pulp, which can be either by mechanical (groundwood) or chemical (primarily sulfite, soda, or sulfate) methods, or by a combination of both; by the addition of other substances to the pulp, the most commonly used being bleach or colouring and sizing, the latter to impede penetration by ink; by conditions under which the sheet is formed, including its weight; and by the physical or chemical treatment applied to the resulting sheet.

Although wood has become the major source of fibre for papermaking, rag fibres are still used for paper of maximum strength, durability, and permanence. Recycled wastepaper (including newsprint) and cardboard are also important sources. Additional fibres used include straw, bagasse (residue from crushed sugarcane), esparto, bamboo, flax, hemp, jute, and kenaf. Some paper, particularly specialty items, is made using synthetic fibres.

Weight or substance per unit area, called basis weight, is measured in reams (now commonly 500 sheets). Paper is also measured by caliper (thickness) and density. The strength and durability of paper is determined by factors such as the strength and length of the fibres, as well as their bonding ability, and the formation and structure of the sheet. The optical properties of paper include its brightness, colour, opacity, and gloss. Among the most important paper grades are bond, book, bristol, groundwood and newsprint, kraft, paperboard, and sanitary.

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Before you can create the best artworks that capture your unique painting style, you will need to secure four essential art supplies that can help you define your deepest feelings onto the canvas. Once you have obtained these important tools, you can already explore the world of art without any inhibitions or reservations. Here are the most important supplies that can inspire you to create your very own masterpiece.

Paintbrushes
Every painter needs a brush to convey a sensation to his or her audience. Start collecting different types of brushes that can assist you while you are exploring various painting techniques. Start with a flat synthetic brush to create simple works of art. As your skills continue to improve, search for other art supplies such as flat bristle brushes, Filbert brushes, and sable brushes (and think outside of the box, trying items such as rubber wedges, potato/lino cut shapes}. All of these tools can add variety to every idea you were able to put into paintings.

Palettes and palette knives
While you are experimenting with oil-based paint, you will need to use a wood palette to hold them. Do not forget to clean your palette at the end of all your painting sessions. If you need to use acrylic paints, use a paper palette or any plastic surface instead of a wooden palette.

You can use palette knives to mix the paint on your wooden or paper palette. Try to find trowel-shaped palette knives that you can use to remove the paint from your canvas or palette.

Oil paint and special mediums
Oil paint is one of the most common art supplies used for painting images with tactile textures. Their versatile nature can help you use thin and thick textures for your paintings. Since they tend to dry slowly, you will have plenty of time to work the oil paint on the canvas and to scrape some of the paint off for revisions.

You will also need special mediums to thin the oil paint whenever it becomes too thick. You can also use it for cleaning your brushes and using special techniques such as glazing.

Artist’s canvas
When purchasing canvases, you usually have the option to purchase a stretched canvas or a canvas board. Stretched canvases are conveniently mounted on stretcher bars, that can be displayed on walls even when they are not framed.

If you have a limited budget, try using canvas boards as an alternative to high-end stretched canvases. Although they are cheaper than stretched canvases, they can deliver better results with their durable card panels and versatile surfaces.

With these four key art supplies, you can share the beautiful images you have visualised by preserving them into a wonderful work of art.

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Abstract Art is a broad movement in American painting that was instigated in the late 1940s and turned into a common trend in Western painting in the 50s. The top American Abstract Expressionist painters were Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko. Others included Clyfford Still, Philip Guston, Helen Frankenthaler, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Lee Krasner, Bradley Walker Tomlin, William Baziotes, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Pousette-Dart, Elaine de Kooning, and Jack Tworkov. Several of these artists worked, lived, or had galleries in New York City.

While it is the accepted designation, Abstract Expressionism is not the proper label of the art created by these artists. In actual fact, the movement had several different painterly styles that differentiated in both skill and quality of method. Despite this, Abstract Expressionist paintings possess many general aspects. They are primarily abstract — in effect, they are based around forms that were not taken from the outside world.

They furthermore emphasize open, spontaneous, and individual emotional expression, and they show high freedom of technique and application to attain this goal, with importance put on the exploitation of the malleable physical characteristic of paint to create expressive qualities (such as, sensuousness, dynamism, violence, mystery, lyricism). They express the same emphasis on the unstudied and intuitive use of that paint in a sort of internal improvisation in the trend of the automatism of the Surrealists, with the parallelable goal of demonstrating the power of the creative unconscious in art. They show the conscious ignorance of regular structured composition created with discrete and segregable effects and their replacement with a sole unified, unchanged partition, network, or other image that exists in unstructured space. Last, the paintings fill big canvases to grant these aforementioned visual effects both monumentality and engrossing power.

The early Abstract Expressionists had two particular forerunners: Arshile Gorky, who painted suggestive biomorphic images by using a free, lightly linear and liquid paint method; and Hans Hofmann, who had dynamic and harshly textured brushwork in his abstract but conventionally constructed paintings. Another important influence on nascent Abstract Expressionism was the arrival on the American shores in the late thirties and early forties of a troupe of Surrealists and other European avant-garde artists who escaped from the rise of the Nazi party Europe. Those avant-garde artists greatly moved the native New York City painters and gave them a more detailed view of the vanguard of European artwork. The Abstract Expressionist movement itself is generally viewed as having been initiated with the art done by Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning through the late 40s and early fifties.

Remembering the variety of the Abstract Expressionist movement, three common approaches can be located. The first was action painting which is recognised by a loose, rapid, dynamic, or violent handling of paint in sweeping or slashing brushstrokes, and in technique largely dictated by chance, for example dripping or spilling the paint openly onto the canvas. Pollock first practiced action painting by dripping commercial paints onto the raw canvas to create layered and tangled skeins of paint into exciting and suggestive linear patterns. De Kooning utilised highly vigorous and expressive brushstrokes building up richly coloured and textured images. Kline used strong, sweeping black strokes onto white canvas for starkly monumental forms.

The next approach with Abstract Expressionism is exhibited by a host of varied styles starting from the more lyrical, delicate imagery and fluid shapes of paintings by Guston and Frankenthaler to the clearly structured, forceful, almost calligraphic works of Motherwell and Gottlieb.

The final and least emotionally expressive approach was that of Rothko, Newman, and Reinhardt. These painters took large spaces or fields of flat colour and thin diaphanous paint to create quiet, subtle, almost meditative outcomes. The leading colour-field painter was Rothko; the majority of his pieces consist of large combinations of soft-edged, solidly coloured rectangular areas that tend to shine and resonate.

Abstract Expressionism created a great influence on both the American and European art styles during the 1950s. Indeed, the movement sparked the transition of the creative centre of modern day painting from Paris to New York City throughout the postwar decades. During the period of the 1950s, the the younger participants of the movement increasingly heeded the style of the colour-field painters. By the 1960s, the younger artists had commonly drifted away from the great expressiveness of the action painters.

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