Miniature painting: beauty the size of a button

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Did you know that in addition to landscape and portrait painters, there are also miniaturists? That these artists have a skill that perhaps even exceeds the artistic ability of others?

Why is that? What are the types of miniature painting? Where are the most popular products made and where do miniaturists train? You will learn all this by reading the article.

What is miniature painting?

As the name suggests, miniaturists make small paintings. From under the brushes of masters, both portraits and abstractions with landscapes can come out. Sometimes you look at a tiny picture, drawn to the smallest detail, and you can’t believe that someone has such golden hands!

In principle, everything that belongs to painting and has a small size can be considered a miniature. However, it can be divided into several types.

What are its types

One cannot think that an artistic miniature is the same paintings, onlytiny. In fact, this art direction is quite common in many industries:

• Book graphics. Tiny but carefully drawn pictures in any book can be considered a miniature if they are not made on a computer.
• Miniature painting is used when painting cars. Unexpected, isn't it?
• Tiny portraits, which used to be inserted into pendants around the neck, can also be considered an example of miniature painting.
• Fedoskino miniature - a topic for a separate article. It is extremely popular both in Russia and abroad. Many foreigners are not averse to receiving a box as a gift, which at least resembles the Fedoskino one!
• Artistic miniatures also include the creation of small copies of famous paintings. The Mona Lisa is the size of your palm? Aivazovsky's canvases, each no larger than an ordinary photograph? A miniaturist is capable of making such paintings.

Fedoskino miniature painting

Fedoskino is a village located just thirty kilometers from Moscow. For more than two hundred years, the main activity of the inhabitants of Fedoskino has been the creation of lacquer miniature painting.

The activities of the Fedoskino masters are considered real masterpieces. They produce no more than a thousand products for sale every year, since each is made according to old technologies. Fedoskino miniature painting is considered successive for chinoiserie, which is a stylization of the style of China. On the other hand, it has been compared to Johann Stobwasser's snuffboxes.

The main line of work of Fedoskino craftsmen is the creation of caskets with painted lids. There can be absolutely any picture on it: a portrait, a sketch, a landscape. A miniaturist is capable of depicting anything.

The tiny paintings on the box are written on a black background, layer by layer of applying paint. Thanks to the contrast of colors, the miniatures are filled with color and acquire a certain flair of antiquity. The box just created by the master may look like it was pulled out of the past from the bedroom of some noblewoman. For creating a certain atmosphere and the opportunity to plunge into the past and love the products of Fedoskino masters.

Mainly masters from Fedoskino specialize in portraits. We can say that miniature portraits have become the hallmark of these artists.

How to become a miniaturist?

If you are interested in the opportunity to create miniature painting, then you can become a professional artist if you enter the Fedoskino School. A village that has retained its main activity will provide you with the best teachers and centuries-old experience of craftsmen.

The school has been successfully preparing graduates for more than eighty years. Studious mastery is mastered not from textbooks, but in practice, performing drawing after drawing. In addition, at the moment there are simply no textbooks on miniature painting! Everything has to be learned from experience.

If you are not ready to move to become a miniature painter, thendo not despair and throw this direction of art out of your head. You may well write miniatures for yourself as a hobby. How is this pastime worse than any other?

You will need thin brushes, good paints and the right hand. Even if the brush trembles, do not worry: with experience it will pass. It is better to start work in the style of miniature painting not with lacquer products, but with simple drawings. Only very, very small ones.