Paint 

is any pigmented liquid, liquefiable, or solid mastic composition that, after

application to a substrate in a thin layer, converts to a solid film. It is most
commonly used to protect, color and primer, or provide texture. Paint can be made
in many colors—and in many different types. Paint is typically stored, sold, and
applied as a liquid, but most types dry into a solid. Most paints are either oil-
based or water-based and each has distinct characteristics. For one, it is illegal
in most municipalities to discard oil-based paint down household drains or sewers.
[citation needed] Clean-up solvents are also different for water-based paint than
they are for oil-based paint.[1] Water-based paints and oil-based paints will cure
differently based on the outside ambient temperature of the object being painted
(such as a house). Usually, the object being painted must be over 10 °C (50 °F),
although some manufacturers of external paints/primers claim they can be applied
when temperatures are as low as 2 °C (35 °F).[2]

Assorted tempera (top) and gouache (bottom) paints

HistoryEdit

A charcoal and ochre cave painting of Megaloceros from Lascaux, France

Paint was one of the earliest arts of humanity. Some cave paintings drawn with red
or yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide, and charcoal may have been made by
early Homo sapiens as long as 40,000 years ago.[3] Paint may be even older. In 2003
and 2004, South African archeologists reported finds in Blombos Cave of a 100,000-
year-old human-made ochre-based mixture that could have been used like paint.[4]
[5] Further excavation in the same cave resulted in the 2011 report of a complete
toolkit for grinding pigments and making a primitive paint-like substance.[5][6]

Interior walls at the 5,000-year-old Ness of Brodgar have been found to incorporate

individual stones painted in yellows, reds, and oranges, using ochre pigment made
of haematite mixed with animal fat, milk or eggs.[7][8]

Ancient colored walls at Dendera, Egypt, which were exposed for years to the
elements, still possess their brilliant color, as vivid as when they were painted
about 2,000 years ago. The Egyptians mixed their colors with a gummy substance and
applied them separately from each other without any blending or mixture. They
appear to have used six colors: white, black, blue, red, yellow, and green. They
first covered the area entirely with white, then traced the design in black,
leaving out the lights of the ground color. They used minium for red, generally of
a dark tinge.[citation needed]

The oldest known oil paintings are Buddhist murals created circa 650 AD. The works
are located in cave-like rooms carved from the cliffs of Afghanistan's Bamiyan
Valley, "using walnut and poppy seed oils."[9] Pliny mentions some painted ceilings
in his day in the town of Ardea, which had been made prior to the foundation
of Rome. He expressed great surprise and admiration at their freshness, after the
lapse of so many centuries.

In the 13th century, oil was used to detail tempera paintings. In the 14th

century, Cennino Cennini described a painting technique utilizing tempera
painting covered by light layers of oil. The slow-drying properties of organic
oils were commonly known to early European painters. However, the difficulty in
acquiring and working the materials meant that they were rarely used (and indeed
the slow drying was seen as a disadvantage[10]). Paint was made with the yolk
of eggs and therefore, the substance would harden and adhere to the surface it was
applied to. Pigment was made from plants, sand, and different soils. Most paints
used either oil or water as a base (the diluent, solvent or vehicle for the
pigment).

The Flemish-trained or influenced Antonello da Messina, who Vasari wrongly credited

with the introduction of oil paint to Italy,[11] does seem to have improved the
formula by adding litharge, or lead (II) oxide. A still extant example of 17th-
century house oil painting is Ham House in Surrey, England, where a primer was used
along with several undercoats and an elaborate decorative overcoat; the pigment and
oil mixture would have been ground into a paste with a mortar and pestle. The
process was done by hand by the painters, which exposed them to lead poisoning, due
to the white-lead powder.

In 1718, Marshall Smith invented a "Machine or Engine for the Grinding of Colours"
in England. It is not known precisely how it operated, but it was a device that
increased the efficiency of pigment grinding dramatically. Soon, a company called
Emerton and Manby was advertising exceptionally low-priced paints that had been
ground with labor-saving technology:

Paint used in every day - white paint on a wall

One Pound of Colour ground in a Horse-Mill will paint twelve Yards of Work, whereas
Colour ground any other Way, will not do half that Quantity.

By the proper onset of the Industrial Revolution, in the mid-18th century, paint

was being ground in steam-powered mills, and an alternative to lead-based pigments
had been found in a white derivative of zinc oxide. Interior house painting
increasingly became the norm as the 19th century progressed, both for decorative
reasons and because the paint was effective in preventing the walls rotting from
damp. Linseed oil was also increasingly used as an inexpensive binder.

In 1866, Sherwin-Williams in the United Statesopened as a large paint-maker and

invented a paint that could be used from the tin without preparation.

It was not until the stimulus of World War IIcreated a shortage of linseed oil in
the supply market that artificial resins, or alkyds, were invented. Cheap and easy
to make, they also held the color well and lasted for a long time.[12]