What stories can a porcelain horseman tell? Have you ever paused to gaze at a porcelain figurine, standing behind the glass of a museum display? Not just a pretty trinket, but a genuine sculpture—with fragile dynamism, the history reflected in the eyes of a horse, every intricate detail of a uniform capturing the spirit of an entire era.

The basis for painting is any physically existing material or surface on which paints are applied: metal, wood, fabric, paper, brick, stone, plastic, vellum paper (thin parchment, wax, tracing paper), parchment, plaster, glass. However, only a few of them represent the traditional foundations for oil painting; they are divided into two groups: elastic…

Since the 14th century, artists have used sticks made from a mixture of lead and zinc, which were sometimes called "silver pencils", for drawing. Slate pencils have been known since the 16th century. That night in 1565, a storm broke out in the English county of Cumberland.