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Medium & production · Hand & relief

Hand-painted

Brush and paint applied directly to the final surface.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under medium & production: what technology shaped it?

styles make it: 113
as a defining choice: 45
as a usual one: 42
now and then: 26
avoid it: 5

Styles defined by it 45

For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.

Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic & Register Compositionc. 0–394 · Middle East & North AfricaThe visual system of pharaonic Egypt, in which writing is made of pictures and pictures are ruled like writing.
Mixteca-Puebla Codex Paintingc. 1200–1560 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe painted screenfold books of Postclassic southern and central Mexico (not the Maya codices): long strips of gesso-coated deerskin, folded like a screen and painted on both sides.
Persian Miniature (Ilkhanid, Timurid and Safavid Book Painting)c. 1300–1700 · Middle East & North Africa, South AsiaThe court book painting of Iran and Timurid Herat, formed in Mongol Tabriz from Islamic, Byzantine and Chinese models: from Rashid al-Din's Jamiʿ al-tawarikh (1314) and the Great Mongol Shahnama to Behzad's Herat and the Shahnama of Shah Tahmasp, ending in the album pages of Safavid Isfahan.
Mithila (Madhubani) Paintingc. 1350–present · South AsiaWomen's ritual wall and floor painting from Mithila in north Bihar and Nepal's Terai, attested from at least the 14th century, seen by W.
Javanese Wayang Kulit (Tatah Sungging)1500–present · Southeast AsiaThe visual language of Javanese shadow puppets: flat figures cut from buffalo parchment, with head and legs in profile, shoulders turned to the front and long jointed arms worked by horn rods.
Rinpa & Saga-bon1600–present · East AsiaA Kyoto school of decorative design that revived the poetry and court painting of the Heian period, begun around 1600 by the calligrapher Hon'ami Kōetsu and the painter Tawaraya Sōtatsu and carried on less by teaching than by admiration across generations: Ogata Kōrin, Sakai Hōitsu, Kamisaka Sekka.
Burmese Parabaik Painting (Konbaung Folding Books)1752–1885 · Southeast AsiaPainted Burmese folding books of the Konbaung court and its monasteries.
Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting1776–present · East AsiaKorean painted folding screens of the late Joseon period.
Hand-Painted Signage & Vernacular Lettering1800–present · Global / networkedLetters painted by trained sign writers on fascias, windows, walls, vehicles and showcards, from Victorian gold leaf on glass to Mexican rótulos, Indian bazaar boards and Ghanaian barbershop signs.
Kalighat Pat & Battala Bazaar Prints1830–1930 · South AsiaThe bazaar art of nineteenth-century Calcutta: watercolours sold to pilgrims by patua painters at the Kalighat temple, and the cheap woodcuts and metal engravings that Battala presses printed for chapbooks and almanacs.
Fileteado Porteño1890–present · Latin America & CaribbeanA Buenos Aires tradition of ornamental brush painting that began around 1900 on the grey-painted trade carts of Italian immigrant coachbuilders and spread to trucks, colectivo buses, shop signs and gallery panels.
Bògòlanfini Mud Cloth1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe mud-dyed cotton cloth of the Bamana and other Malian peoples, in which the ground rather than the motif is painted: cloth dyed yellow with n'gallama leaves is covered around each sign with fermented iron-rich mud, and the unpainted signs are then bleached pale.
Senegalese Sufi Devotional Imagery (Souwère Glass Painting and Amadou Bamba Portraits)1900–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe devotional imagery of Senegal's Sufi brotherhoods, above all the Mourides: reverse paintings on glass (souwère), made in Senegal's cities since about 1900, and the murals, banners, prints and photocopies that multiply one 1913 photograph of Sheikh Amadou Bamba across Dakar and Touba.
Santiniketan & Bengal School Graphics1905–1954 · South AsiaThe nationalist, anti-academic art of Calcutta and Santiniketan, which turned from oil-paint naturalism and chromolithograph gloss to Indian and pan-Asian sources.
Cubist Pictorial Space1907–1925 · Western EuropeThe pictorial revolution of Picasso and Braque that shattered single-point perspective into overlapping, faceted planes seen from several viewpoints at once.
Arnhem Land Bark Painting & Rarrk1912–present · OceaniaPainting in ochres on flattened stringybark by Yolŋu, Kunwinjku, Kuninjku and other clans of Arnhem Land, carrying ceremonial designs into portable form; collected from 1912, painted through art centres since the 1970s.
ROSTA Windows1919–1922 · Eastern EuropeHand-stencilled satirical news posters made by the Russian Telegraph Agency during the Civil War and hung in empty shop windows, first in Moscow, then in Petrograd and provincial towns.
Amazonian Boat Lettering (Abridores de Letras)1925–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe painted boat names of Pará's rivers in the Brazilian Amazon, made for about a century by self-taught riverside painters (abridores de letras).
Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster1940–1999 · South AsiaThe painted publicity of Bombay's Hindi film industry, at its height from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Ndebele Geometric Painting1940–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe mural tradition of Southern Ndebele women, who paint homestead walls and gateways, and later canvases and objects, with bold, symmetrical geometric designs.
Vietnamese Propaganda Poster (Tranh cổ động)1945–present · Southeast AsiaThe state poster art of Vietnam from the 1945 August Revolution to today.
Jeepney Art1946–present · Southeast AsiaThe decoration of the Philippine jeepney, the shared taxi built from surplus US Army jeeps after 1945 and later from locally fabricated stainless-steel bodies by firms such as Sarao and Francisco Motors.
Pakistani Truck Art1947–present · South AsiaThe total decoration of Pakistan's trucks and buses, which grew from company marks and saints' portraits painted in the late 1940s into a workshop art in which painters, metalworkers, woodcarvers and reflective-tape specialists collaborate on each vehicle.
Hurufiyya Calligraphic Modernism1949–present · Middle East & North AfricaA pan-Arab and Iranian modern-art movement, begun by Madiha Omar in the late 1940s, that freed the letters of the Arabic script from text and used them as abstract visual units.
West African Barbershop & Hair Salon Signs1950–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaHand-painted boards advertising barbershops and braiding salons across West and Central Africa, made by self-taught, often anonymous sign painters since the mid-20th century.
Chinese National-Style Animation (Shanghai Animation Film Studio)1956–1989 · East AsiaThe 'national style' of the Shanghai Animation Film Studio, which turned from Disney and Soviet models to Chinese media: Peking-opera masks and movement, paper-cut and folded-paper figures, mural and New Year print colour and, from 1960, ink-wash painting set in motion after Qi Baishi and Li Keran.
Woodland School (Legend Painting)1962–present · North AmericaA school of painting from northwestern Ontario, made public when Norval Morrisseau showed at Toronto's Pollock Gallery in 1962 and carried on by Ojibwe, Odawa, Oji-Cree and Cree artists such as Daphne Odjig and Carl Ray.
Picó Sound-System Painting (Colombian Caribbean)1967–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe hand-painted fronts of the picós, the giant sound systems that play dances in the barrios of Barranquilla and Cartagena.
Tingatinga Painting1968–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaA Tanzanian popular painting school begun in Dar es Salaam by Edward Tingatinga (1932–1972), who from 1968 painted animals, birds and village scenes in glossy bicycle enamel on square hardboard ceiling boards for residents and tourists.
Ultras Graphics (Curva Banners and Tifo)1968–present · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Middle East & North Africa, Southeast Asia, North AmericaThe graphic language of Italy's organised football supporters, the ultras, from the late 1960s, and of the groups that copied them across Europe, North Africa and beyond.
Kinshasa Popular Painting1970–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaA school of easel painting founded in Kinshasa in the early 1970s by Chéri Samba, Moké, Chéri Chérin and Pierre Bodo, largely self-taught painters, several of them trained in Kinshasa's billboard and sign workshops.
Warli Painting1970–present · South AsiaThe ritual wall painting of the Warli, an Adivasi people of the northern Sahyadri in Maharashtra, carried onto paper and canvas from the 1970s by Jivya Soma Mashe and others.
Western Desert Iconography1971–present · OceaniaThe acrylic painting movement that took form at Papunya in 1971, when men there painted the Honey Ant Dreaming on the school wall and then on board, carrying an older practice of sand, body and ceremonial designs into lasting form. 'Western Desert' is an umbrella name: the movement also includes Warlpiri, Anmatyerre and Arrernte painters of the Central Desert.
Graffiti & Hip-Hop Graphics1972–present · North America, Global / networkedBorn on New York's subway cars and Bronx party flyers, graffiti writing turns the writer's name into a monumental letter-sculpture: bubble, block and wildstyle letters with arrows, 3D drop shadows, fades and highlights, painted freehand in aerosol.
Jamaican Dancehall Signs & Sleeve Art1980–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe street graphics of Jamaica's dancehall era.
Pixação (São Paulo Tag Reto)1980–present · Latin America & CaribbeanThe name-writing of São Paulo's pixadores, which since the 1980s has covered walls and façades and, from the 1990s, the upper floors of tower blocks.
Pardhan Gond Painting (Jangarh Kalam)1981–present · South AsiaPainting on paper and canvas by Pardhan Gond artists of Patangarh and Bhopal, begun when Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, recruited Jangarh Singh Shyam in 1981; the style was later named Jangarh Kalam after him.
Ghanaian Movie Poster1985–2005 · Sub-Saharan AfricaHand-painted posters commissioned by Ghana's mobile video clubs from about 1985, painted by apprenticed sign painters on stitched flour sacks to advertise VHS screenings of Hollywood, Hong Kong, Nigerian and Indian films.
Matatu & Nganya Art1990–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe commissioned livery of Kenya's privately owned minibus taxis, at its most elaborate the Nairobi nganya.
Indonesian Woodcut Activism (Taring Padi)1998–present · Southeast AsiaThe protest graphics of Taring Padi, the collective founded by students and activists in Yogyakarta in 1998 as Suharto fell, and of the punk and activist woodcut scenes around it.
Arabic Calligraffiti2002–present · Middle East & North Africa, Western Europe, Global / networkedArabic letters sprayed, rolled and brushed at the scale of buildings.
Cartonera Books (Latin American Cardboard Publishing)2003–present · Latin America & CaribbeanBooks of Latin America's cartonera presses, begun by Eloísa Cartonera in Buenos Aires in 2003 after Argentina's 2001 crash: photocopied texts stapled and glued by hand into covers cut from used boxes, usually bought from cartoneros (waste pickers) above the market price.
Egyptian Revolutionary Street Art (Mohamed Mahmoud Murals)2011–2014 · Middle East & North AfricaThe street art of Egypt's 2011 revolution and the years after it, when Cairo's walls, above all around Tahrir and Mohamed Mahmoud Street, became what Ammar Abo Bakr called a newspaper.
Sudanese Revolution Graphics (Digital Illustrations and Sit-in Murals)2018–present · Sub-Saharan Africa, Middle East & North Africa, Global / networkedThe graphics of Sudan's December Revolution from 2018: digital illustrations and cartoons shared on Instagram and Facebook from inside Sudan and the diaspora, and the murals of the 2019 Khartoum sit-in.
Black Lives Matter Street Murals2020–present · North AmericaA single protest slogan painted along the roadway in capitals 20 to 35 feet tall, filling the street from kerb to kerb, so it reads whole only from rooftops, drones and helicopters.

Styles that often use it 42

A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.

Styles that use it now and then 26

An occasional choice in these styles.

It often goes with

Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.

Painterly brushworkin 76 of 113
Folk & sacred symbolsin 72 of 113
Communal & popularin 89 of 113
Spiritual & sacredin 66 of 113
Architecture & signagein 69 of 113
Full polychromein 81 of 113

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in medium & production