Contemporary art is simply artwork made by artists today. Contemporary art styles are not to be confused with painting styles.
Contemporary art styles have deepened past just visual art forms, and have developed into something much more with the passing generations. They are painting, sculpting, drawing, printmaking, digital artwork, collages, photography, videography, installation, music, and performance art:
1.) Painting
Painting is one of the oldest and powerful art forms ever developed. It is hard to know when humans began creating paintings, but it can be traced back to the dawn of time, possibly even before Homo sapiens.
Painting has ventured into multiple mediums and even intersected with many other mediums. There are thousands of ways to apply, make, and manipulate paint.
Painting is quite simply using an application tool (most often a paintbrush) and spreading/blending/brushing the paint onto a desired surface.
2.) Sculpting
Sculpting encompasses many different visual expressive outlets. The main modes are shaping, carving, and casting. It is primarily a three dimensional visual art form, that also can intermingle with other contemporary art forms. It can branch into many artistic categories.
Sculpting is the act of creating a three dimensional figure or shape with tools, or most oftentimes just hands.
3.) Drawing
Drawing is a visual art form that is one of the first that many people ever learn in their childhood. It is a strong foundation for almost every other art form, and is a great tool expanding into other realms aside from art as well.
Drawing requires a soft tipped medium (such as a pencil or marker) that will make two dimensional marks on a desired surface.
4.) Printmaking
Printmaking is a contemporary art form that goes slightly more unnoticed than some of the more classical ones, but holds the same amount of significance in modern culture and practice.
Printmaking is transferring designs onto a desired surface (most often wood, fabric, and paper).
5.) Digital Work
Digital artwork is an ever-growing medium that is literally infinite. Options are utterly endless for texturing, dimensions, sizing, and much more.
Digital artwork is all technological forms of art that are created and adapted for being viewed on a device, sometimes even transferred into reality.
6.) Collages
Collaging is a very important part of artwork that often is looked over. It is prevalent in visual art, and in other art forms as well, such as music.
Collages are when different pieces of artwork/images/designs are put together in a collaborative piece that brings about a new meaning.
7.) Photography
Photography is a very special form of artwork, that it intersects with understanding reality and a unique point of view. Most photography is based solely on the quality of the image and the eye that is perceiving it. It is most commonly used this day in age for social media promotion.
Photography is the art of taking photos that suggest or focus the viewer on concepts, such as paintings do. Balance, lighting, contrast, and hues are all very important aspects in photography. Hint: all of these example images are photography!
8.) Videography
Videography is new, such as digital artwork is, but it is an expertise that leaves little room for diversification, making it that much harder to master.
Videography is visual art through film and video, most often associated with camerawork in movies and films, in recent years even on social media.
9.) Art Installation
Installations are a form of artwork that interacts with the environment around it. Ambience and identity of a space help to convey a message to the viewer.
Art installations can be two or three dimensional, digital or not, and often is an interactive experience, with different angles and points of view communicating different ideas.
10.) Performance
Performative visual art is one of the most diverse contemporary art forms there are. Performance has been an active part of all societies for a very long time.
Performative arts can range from fashion, to acting, to dancing, to every self expression or calculated expression of art. They are often associated with the performer completing or doing an action that invokes certain ideas or feelings from their audience.
