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Imagery · Drawn & painted

Painterly illustration

Brushed, airbrushed or painted pictures.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under imagery: what kind of pictures, if any?

styles make it: 139
as a defining choice: 33
as a usual one: 51
now and then: 55
avoid it: 32

Styles defined by it 33

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

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.
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.
Ten Bamboo Studio Colour Woodblock (Douban & Gonghua)1626–present · East AsiaA kind of colour woodblock printing begun in late-Ming Nanjing, made so that a print looks like a brush painting.
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.
Indian Calendar & Bazaar Art1878–present · South AsiaMass-printed images of Hindu deities, epic scenes, saints, nationalist heroes and film stars, sold in bazaars and given away as business calendars, from the chromolithographs of the Calcutta Art Studio and Ravi Varma Press to Sivakasi offset.
Spanish Bullfight Poster (Cartel Taurino)1879–present · Southern EuropeThe Spanish bullfight poster in its illustrated form, from Marcelino de Unceta's lithographs (from 1879) to the Valencian house of Ortega, which supplied rings across Spain.
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.
Shanghai Modern & Yuefenpai1910–1949 · East AsiaThe commercial art of treaty-port Shanghai.
Basel Object Poster (Swiss Sachplakat)1919–1955 · Central EuropeThe Swiss descendant of the German object poster, made in Zurich and above all Basel from 1919 to the early 1950s.
Early Turkish Republican Graphic Design1925–1960 · Middle East & North AfricaThe pictorial poster, label and ticket art of the young Turkish Republic, led by İhap Hulusi Görey after his Munich training in Ludwig Hohlwein's orbit, with Münif Fehim Özarman and, after 1943, Kenan Temizan.
Australian Travel Poster (ANTA Era)1929–1959 · OceaniaThe pictorial posters that the Australian National Travel Association (ANTA, 1929), state tourist bureaux, railways and shipping lines commissioned to sell Australia abroad and at home.
Giallo Mondadori Covers (I Libri Gialli)1929–present · Southern EuropeThe cover system of Mondadori's crime series, Milan, from I Libri Gialli of 1929 to Il Giallo Mondadori today.
Mexican Calendar Chromo (Cromos calendáricos)1930–1970 · Latin America & CaribbeanMexico's give-away advertising calendars, at their height from the 1930s to the late 1960s.
Egyptian Painted Film Poster1932–1996 · Middle East & North AfricaThe painted publicity of Egyptian cinema from the early talkies to the 1990s, designed outside the studios by artist-printers such as Hassan Mazhar Gassour and printed as colour lithographs in Cairo.
Socialist Realist Propaganda Poster1932–1989 · Eastern Europe, Central Europe, East Asia, Southeast AsiaThe official art doctrine of the Soviet Union from 1932, later exported across the socialist world, which replaced avant-garde experiment with legible, heroic realism 'national in form, socialist in content'.
Spanish Civil War Poster1936–1939 · Southern EuropeThe poster war waged by the Spanish Republic, its unions and its anarchist, communist and socialist parties against Franco's uprising.
Hand-Painted Bollywood Poster1940–1999 · South AsiaThe painted publicity of Bombay's Hindi film industry, at its height from the 1940s to the 1980s.
Polish Poster School1950–1990 · Eastern EuropeA painterly, metaphorical poster culture that flourished in communist Poland, chiefly for film, theatre, opera and circus.
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.
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.
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.
Afrobeat Sleeve Art1974–present · Sub-Saharan AfricaThe painted and collaged record covers of Nigerian Afrobeat, defined by Lemi Ghariokwu's sleeves for Fela Kuti from Alagbon Close (1974) onward.
Iranian Revolutionary & Sacred Defence Poster1978–1988 · Middle East & North AfricaPosters, murals and stamps of the 1978–79 Iranian Revolution and the 1980–88 war with Iraq, which fused the red-white-black international revolutionary poster with Persian miniature and coffeehouse narrative painting.
City Pop Illustration1979–present · East Asia, Global / networkedThe painted look of Japanese city pop record sleeves and magazine covers, fixed by Hiroshi Nagai's sleeve for Eiichi Ohtaki's A Long Vacation (1981) and Eizin Suzuki's for Tatsuro Yamashita's For You (1982).
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.
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.
Solarpunk2014–present · Global / networked, North America, Latin America & CaribbeanHopeful eco-futurist imagery born online.
Lo-fi Anime Aesthetic2017–present · Global / networked, Western Europe, North America, East AsiaThe look of YouTube's 24/7 lo-fi hip hop streams.

Styles that often use it 51

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

Styles that use it now and then 55

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 103 of 139
Naturalistic depictionin 83 of 139
Romantic & sensualin 60 of 139
Gradientsin 58 of 139
Hand-letteringin 116 of 139
Hand-paintedin 63 of 139

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Other choices in imagery