Painting
The art of creating pictures using colors, shapes and lines is called painting. Museums and galleries show the paintings of professional artists. But painting is also a popular form of entertainment and creative expression.
Experienced painters usually use a brush to apply oil paints to a canvas cloth surface. Young painters usually use watercolors on pieces of paper. Very young children may use finger-paints to create paintings.
Painters can use their art to express devotion to a religion, to tell a story, to express feelings and ideas, or simply to present a pleasing picture. Religious paintings often show a god or a scene from a sacred text. Other common subjects have been famous legends and events in history, as well as scenes from daily life. Artists also paint portraits (肖像), or pictures of people. All of these types of paintings show the human figure in some way.
Some kinds of paintings do not focus on people. In landscape (风景) paintings, the focus is on scenes from nature. Artists also paint still objects such as fruit and vegetables. Some artists communicate their ideas through pictures that do not represent any objects.
Paintings dating back 15,000 years have been found on the walls of caves in France and Spain.
Samples of painted pottery (陶器) from at least 5,000 years ago have been found in China and Iran. The ancient Egyptians decorated their temples with beautiful paintings. People in ancient Greece painted on decorative objects such as vases in addition to the walls of temples.
A.These works are called still lives.
B.These works can communicate a special feeling.
C.Humans have been making paintings for thousands of years.
D.People of all ages create pictures using a variety of materials.
E.Cave paintings generally show animals that early humans hunted.
F.The design of a painting is the plan of its lines, shapes and colors.
G.Sometimes artists make portraits of themselves, which are called self-portraits.
Music is not just a set of sounds and rhythms. Its influence on the brain is much deeper than any other human experience. Keep on reading to know all about the amazing power of music.
A recent study suggests that preterm(早产的) babies appear to experience less pain and feed more when listening to music. A team of experts led by Dr. Manoj Kumar of University of Alberta, Canada, found that music had a beneficial effect on reducing pain for preterm babies experiencing painful medical tests. It also appeared to benefit full-term babies during operations.
Many people experiencing brain damage have speech and movement-related problems. Music can help them recover from brain injuries. As a different and effective treatment, doctors often advise such patients to listen to good music to improve the parts of the brain responsible for these two functions. When people with neurological(神经系统的) disorders hear a musical beat, it helps them to regain a balanced walk.
Though music cannot make deafness disappear, it can really stave off the loss of hearing. There was an experiment involving 163 people where 74 were musicians. Participants were asked to pass some listening tests. Musicians heard the sounds better than non-musicians, and this difference got clearer with age. This means that a 70-year-old musician hears better than a 50-year-old non-musician, even in a noisy environment.
Besides, music mends a broken heart. It is not about thrown-away love, but about a heart attack. The matter is that music can help people recover from a heart attack or a heart operation by reducing blood pressure, slowing down the heartbeat rate, and reducing anxiety. Listening to the quality music produces positive emotions, improves the movement of blood, and expands blood vessels, thus, promoting quick recovery of the whole cardiovascular (心血管的) system.
