Watercolor (or watercolour, also known as aquarelle ) designates either a painting method, the medium, or the resulting artwork, where paints made of pigments suspended or dissolved in water are used. Although the grounds used in watercolor painting vary, the most common is paper. Others include papyrus , bark papers, plastics , vellum or leather , fabric , wood, and canvas . One early form of watercolor painting, that is not normally included in the category, is buon fresco painting — wall - painting using pigments in a water medium on wet plaster , which goes back to Egyptian and Roman antiquity. One well known example of buon fresco is the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo, begun in 1508 and completed in 1514. Watercolor painting, usually referred to as brush painting in East Asian contexts, has a long history in many parts of the world. In Chinese and Japanese painting it has been the dominant medium, often in monochrome black or brown, when it tends to be called ink. India, Ethiopia and other countries also have long traditions. Watercolor has also been used for manuscript illumination since at least Egyptian times, and was a major part of European manuscript painting on vellum (often mixed with tempera ).
Icons. Christianity believed that the immaterial God took flesh in the form of Jesus Christ , making it possible to depict in human form the Son of God. It is on this basis that the old prescriptions against images were changed for the early Christians. Also, the concept of archetype was redefined by the early church fathers in order to better understand that when a person shows veneration toward an image, the intention is rather to honor the person depicted, not the substance of the icon In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, only flat images or bas relief images are used. The Greeks , having a long, pagan tradition of statuary, found the sensual quality of three dimensional representations did more to glorify the human aspect of the flesh rather than the divine nature of the spirit and so prohibitions were created against statuary. The Romans , on the other hand, did not adopt these prohibitions and so we still have statuary among the Roman Catholics to this day. Because the Greeks rejected statuary, the Byzantine style of iconography was developed in which figures were stylized in a manner that emphasized their holiness rather than their humanity. Symbolism allowed the icon to present highly complex material in a very simple way, making it possible to educate even the illiterate in theology. The interiors of Orthodox Churches are often completely covered in icons.