A fun cheat sheet for artists
(style cheat sheet here)

Original taken from vasily_sergeev V

A Brief Guide to Fine Arts

A long time ago, in my first year, we studied art history. The subject itself is terribly interesting, but the teacher is crap that you wouldn’t find with a flashlight during the day. As far as I know, there is not a single student who likes him. He gave lectures on Saturdays, from 8 a.m. until five minutes before he stood at the door, and then locked it. That's all. If you didn’t make it before eight o’clock, you missed it, but too many passes mean great grief. Now I'll tell you why. All year he showed us slides of paintings, sculptures, mosaics and other things, ranging from cave paintings to Russian artists of the 80s. And he had all these slides in the form of postcards. Here's a pack.

And at the end of the year, as usual, there is an exam. First two questions, and then additional execution on an individual basis. Based on the number of your absences per year (!), he took postcards out of the stack. At random, it was necessary to name the author and the title. Or at least the author, or at least the title. They quickly remembered the Mona Lisa and a couple of others, but something had to be done with the rest of the mulyon. Especially because everyone went to the retake already in a hurry. And so, in order to guess the authors, we in the group came up with a classification. And you know, in 97 cases out of a hundred it works! Still!

By remembering a few simple points, in a company that is not too close to ISO, you can be considered an expert, and in general.

1. If you see a dark background in the picture and all sorts of suffering on the faces, this is Titian.

The exception is this naked person with no signs of thought on her face. You can remember one. Venus, not Venus, but there is something venereal in her.

2. If in the picture there are buttocks and cellulite even on men, don’t hesitate - it’s Rubens.

3. If the men in the picture look like hairy-eyed, curly-haired women or just Italian fagots, this is Caravaggio.

He generally painted women one and a half times. In the next picture there is a woman: Gorgonyan Medusa Arutyunovna. Why she looks like Jonidep is a mystery worse than Monalisa’s smile.

4. If there are a lot of little people in the picture, this is Bruegel.

5. Many little people, little incomprehensible garbage - Bosch

6. If you can easily add a couple of fat-assed cupids and sheep to the picture (or they are already there in various configurations), without disturbing the composition - these could be:

b) Watteau



7. Beautiful, everyone is naked, and the figures are like those of bodybuilders after drying - Michelangelo.

8. You see a ballerina - you say Degas. If you say Degas, you see a ballerina.

9. Contrasting, harsh, and everyone has such skinny, bearded faces - El Greco.

10. If everyone, even the aunts, looks like Putin, it’s van Eyck

11. Monet - spots, Manet - people

And all because this issue has not lost its relevance to this day. The essence of this method was to remember several starting points. It was actually invented in order to pass an exam, but it worked so well that by using this trick one could be considered an intellectual connoisseur of painting.


And here is the story itself.

“A long time ago, in my first year, we studied art history. The subject itself is terribly interesting, but the teacher is crap that you wouldn’t find with a flashlight during the day. As far as I know, there is not a single student who likes him.

He gave lectures on Saturday, from 8 a.m. until five minutes before he stood at the door, and then locked it. That's all. If you didn’t make it before eight, you got a pass, and too many passes mean a big loss.

Now I'll tell you why. All year he showed us slides of paintings, sculptures, mosaics and other things, ranging from cave paintings to Russian artists of the 80s. And he had all these slides in the form of postcards. Here's a pack.
And at the end of the year, as usual, there is an exam. First two questions, and then additional execution on an individual basis. Based on the number of your absences per year (!), he took postcards out of the stack.

Especially because everyone went to the retake already in a hurry. And so, in order to guess the authors, we in the group came up with a classification. And you know, in 97 cases out of a hundred it works! Still!"

Here's part of that classification:







For hundreds of years World culture gave us a countless number of brilliant painters. One problem is that it is very difficult to remember everyone, as well as many of their works. This will help you have at least some knowledge on this topic and navigate the world of art more freely: simple instructions. It will allow you not to get into trouble when conducting small talk.

1. If you see a dark background in the picture and all sorts of suffering on the faces, this is Titian.

2. If in the picture there are such butts and cellulite even on men, have no doubt - this is Rubens.

3. If the men in the painting resemble and may turn out to be women, this is Caravaggio.

4. If there are a lot of little people in the picture - Bruegel.

5. A lot of little people + little incomprehensible fantastic stuff - Bosch.

6. If you can easily add a couple of cupids to the picture without disturbing the composition, or they are already there in various configurations, this is Boucher.

7. Beautiful, everyone is naked and the figures are like those of bodybuilders - Michelangelo.

8. You see a ballerina - you say Degas. If you say Degas, you see a ballerina.

9. Contrasting, harsh and everyone has such skinny bearded faces - El Greco.

10. If everyone, even the aunts, looks like Putin, it’s Jan van Eyck.

11. Bright-bright, colorful-colorful - Van Gogh.

P.S.: Monet – spots, Manet – people! ©

A course of lectures on the history of art has never been so simple and understandable - our short tips on how to recognize an artist by the style of a painting quickly and easily will help even the most distant people from painting to become specialists and connoisseurs.

We recognize the name of the artist by the style of his painting:

Cave painting is the first manifestation of the creativity of our distant ancestors recorded in history, who over thousands of years have gone from naive cave paintings to contemporary art of the twenty-first century. During this time, civilization was enriched with hundreds of great artists who created tens of thousands of imperishable masterpieces visual arts- graphics, sculpture, painting, and from the end of the nineteenth century also photographs.

Secrets of famous artists

Even professionals have to study for years in order to navigate without errors in the huge number of museum exhibits and masterpieces of private collections, but such knowledge is simply not available to mere mortals. Or rather, it was like that before. And now, thanks to the simple instructions presented below, every amateur will be able to feel like a connoisseur of painting from the beginning of centuries to the present and will learn to recognize the artist by painting, style, characteristic features and creative secrets. Of course, the method is not ideal, it is exaggerated and allows for exceptions, but for all its humorous and entertaining nature, it is quite accurate and witty.

Salvador Dali


The eccentric, madman and genius Salvador Dali went so far in his creative search that his works cannot be confused with other representatives of surrealism. The Spanish artist is not the founder of the genre, but truly became its ideal illustration both in art and in life.

Caravaggio (Michelangelo da Caravaggio)



The Italian erotomaniac loved women and men, girls and boys with girlish features. Caravaggio’s effeminate men are the name given to the artist’s characteristic style, in whose eyes masculine and female beauty interchangeable and sometimes indistinguishable.

Claude Monet





Paintings of nature in rural and urban France, painted with quick, sharp strokes and bright, brilliant colors - this is the brilliant impressionist Monet.

Michelangelo




The ideal embodiment of a Renaissance man - Buonarroti glorified his name in sculpture, architecture, philosophy and, of course, painting, where Michelangelo's style is physically attractive, beautiful, pumped-up people who do not hesitate to expose their muscular torso.

Interesting articles

Hieronymus Bosch





Little people in the face of a total apocalypse. Religious texts, apocrypha, myths and legends fascinated Bosch, who transferred his thoughts to the artistic canvas, where infernal torment, hellish executions, a biblical Old Testament nightmare and a universal catastrophe awaited humanity.

Piet Mondrian




The Dutch abstract artist died long before the advent of Excel spreadsheets, but his works look exactly like an accountant's desk.

Edgar Degas




The French impressionist adored not only painting, but also ballet, which Degas regularly attended and transferred to his canvases. Edgar Degas was interested in various themes and motifs, but his main artistic imprint on history forever remained ballerinas.

Pieter Bruegel





The most complex plots, compositions consisting of multiple small figures - this is Bruegel’s style, which is structurally similar to Bosch, but much more optimistic, cheerful, cheerful and does not promise the apocalypse with every work of art.

Frida Kahlo




The famous Mexican woman spent most of her life suffering from back pain after a terrible car accident in her youth. admired her great artist and part-time husband Diego Rivera, Frida herself admired her eccentric person, who left behind dozens of self-portraits, where the fused eyebrows of the models immediately catch the viewer’s eye. This is not an exaggeration - Frida Kahlo really was the owner of luxurious hair above her eyes, she was proud of it and always tried to emphasize it not only in herself, but also in other models.

Vincent van Gogh





Van Gogh spent the key years of his short but extremely stormy work in the midst of rural nature and severe heat, so his paintings are full of bright spots, which can be called a riot of flowers and colors. Vincent Van Gogh especially loved to fill the canvas with yellow flowers, as in the famous Sunflowers.

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Antoine Watteau





Jean Antoine Watteau's creative peak occurred in the first decades of the eighteenth century at the court of the French king, where aristocrats loved to dress up in colorful, lush clothes - these are the people you can find in almost all of Watteau's works.

Pablo Picasso




Pablo Picasso lived a very long life, during which his artistic style underwent dramatic changes. But still, his main achievement in painting is cubism, so Picasso is all about deformed, bizarre shapes and models.

Titian Vecellio




The background is in dark colors, the blessed man or the holy martyr in the foreground are paintings by Titian.

Rembrandt



Dull, yellow, gloomy tones and a man with a painful, sad, tired look - a painting by Rembrandt.

Francois Boucher





The artist François Boucher lived and worked in the mid-eighteenth century, but dealt primarily with biblical and ancient subjects, plump cupids in a variety of plot intricacies - Boucher's style.

El Greco



El Greco is all about harsh paintings, gaunt faces and religious themes.

Peter Rubens



The great Flemish artist Peter Rubens was a slender, lean man who, in his artistic quest, found the opposite of his own motifs - obese men, fat ladies with kilograms of cellulite and chubby babies. Women of Rubens is the name given to the style of the Fleming, whose paintings cannot be confused with others.

Jan van Eyck



The early Dutch artist and the modern Russian politician are separated by half a millennium of history and are united by canvases where Jan van Eyck persistently painted people strangely similar to Vladimir Putin.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir





The impressionist looked at the world positively, so Renoir’s paintings are light colors and contented, happy faces.

Edouard Manet





Another founder of impressionism, Edouard Manet, perceived the universe much less positively, which is why his paintings are full of gloomy colors, dull contours and sad people.

Leonardo da Vinci



The great Florentine is perhaps the most famous artist in the history of mankind, so even people far from art know the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci. But if we describe da Vinci's work in one sentence, we can say - epic landscapes in the background and beautiful men and women in the foreground.

There is an opinion that not only writers rewrite the same book, directors rewrite a film, and artists rewrite a painting. Therefore, having studied the entire gallery of the selected painter, we can isolate his characteristic style-forming features, thanks to which the Historian derived the form - how to recognize an artist by the style of his paintings.