Painting is an art drawn on a medium such as canvas, paper, wall etc using a variety of appropriate pigments and appliers. The usage of all three painting materials such as the medium, the pigment and the appliers used various from one artist to another. As one artist may be very comfortable using a paint brush and the other his own hand.

Apart from these basic painting materials, a major factor deciding a good painting depends upon the artist mind, his ideas, and view points and above all how he tries to project his idea on the medium.

Color is the matter of painting bringing in life and liveliness to it.  The perfect way of portraying a theme or any real life object is trying to get the exact color combination. Getting the perfect one is not so easy hence painters prepare their own colors in order to bring in the best image they want to portray in the medium.

Painting has been in existence for a long period from the time when man wanted to portray his ideas or wanted to represent any aspect such as an event or an object. Pre-historic paintings existed on rocks and caves mostly using a black pigment to represent animals, hunting, human figurines etc. As the days past by the medium, the paint and other paintings materials changed so as to improvise the painting on the whole.

Today a variety of painting materials are available suiting various environment and painting techniques but mainly these materials are classified as interior and exterior paintings. Exterior painting materials involve using water resistant base and mediums where as interior painting does not require being water resistant. Interior painting materials include oil paint, water colors etc.

Today there are not only various painting materials but there are also various styles and techniques of painting. Styles of paintings as such includes abstract art which involves in depicting the artist idea in a non representational or non objective way, modern painting focusing more on the beauty of the painting rather than the originality of the figurine, natural paintings clearly represents a place or any natural existence such as a flower or tree.

Techniques of paintings could be from brush painting, finger paintings etc to digital painting using computers. Following is a list of painting techniques and styles.

Painting techniques
1. Impasto
2. Computer painting (Digital)
3. Glaze
4. Grisaille
5. Pointillism (aka divisionism, ’stippling’)
6. Scumble
7. Sfumato
8. Sumi-e
9. Wash

Painting Styles
1. Abstract
2. Baroque
3. Constructivism
4. Cubism
5. Fauvism
6. Graffiti
7. Hard-edge
8. Impressionism
9. Mannerism
10. Modernism
11. Naïve art
12. Neo-classicism
13. Op-Art
14. Orientalism
15. Pointillism
16. Pop-Art
17. Postmodernism
18. Realism
19. Romanticism
20. Romantic realism
21. Socialist Realism
22. Surrealism