Paintbox: The High Tech Approach Id Artistic Creativity

42 EE June 1988 PAINTBOX: THE HIGH TECH APPROACH ID ARTISTIC CREATIVITY The great technical innovations of art have seldom been observed or reliably recorded in their early stages. Jan Van Eyck, at the beginning of the 15th cen- tury, was probably the first artist to make masterly use of oil painting, though he was not, as is sometimes sup- posed, its inventor. Watercolour in the most general sense is a very ancient technique, but its full de- velopment did not take place until the John Spurling is art critic of the New Statesman. David Hockney"s PAINTBOX painting. 18th and 19th centuries in England. Graphite sticks seem to have been in- vented in the 16th century, but not until 1790 did the French chemist, Nicolas- Jacques Conte, manage to control their hardness and softness and transform them into "lead" pencils that have been used by artists ever since. The use of brushes, on the other hand, goes back to ancient China and Egypt, and the Stone Age in Europe. PAINTBox(1) is a dif...