UPHESC Assistant Professor Drawing & Painting 2025 PYQs

Concept: Isaac Newton passed white sunlight through a glass prism and showed it splits into seven colours – Violet, Indigo, Blue, Green, Yellow, Orange, Red (VIBGYOR).

1. His prism experiments (1660s) laid the basis of the colour wheel used by painters.
2. Thomas Young (c.1802) and George Palmer (1777) worked on the three-receptor theory of colour vision, not the spectrum.
3. John Joly made an early colour photography screen process (1890s).

Short trick: Prism + 7 colours = Newton.

Concept: Visual arts are perceived through the eye – painting, sculpture, architecture, printmaking etc.

1. Painting, sculpture and architecture are seen – visual (spatial) arts.
2. Poetry is a literary art received through words/sound, not a visual art.

Short trick: Eye = visual art; ear/words = poetry, music.

Concept: A pattern is a motif (unit) repeated regularly to build a new overall design.

1. Proportion = size relation of parts.
2. Harmony = agreement/unity of elements.
3. Texture = surface quality (feel).
4. Only pattern is defined by repetition of a unit.

Short trick: Repeat a motif → Pattern.

Concept: The six limbs (Shadanga) of painting are listed in Yashodhar Pandit’s ‘Jayamangala’ commentary (c. 11th–12th cent.) on Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra.

1. The verse: Rupabheda, Pramanani, Bhava, Lavanya-yojanam, Sadrishyam, Varnikabhanga.
2. Bharat Muni wrote Natyashastra; Mammat – Kavyaprakash; Bhavabhuti – dramatist (Uttararamacharita).

Short trick: Shadanga ← Jayamangala ← Yashodhar.

Concept: Chiaroscuro (Italian: chiaro = light, scuro = dark) is the modelling of form through strong contrast of light and shade on a flat surface.

1. It is a drawing and painting term – Leonardo, Caravaggio, Rembrandt are famous masters.
2. Sculpture and architecture get light-shade from real relief, not from this pictorial device.

Short trick: Chiaro-light + Scuro-dark → painting.

Concept: Traditionally the fine arts are five: architecture, sculpture, painting, music and poetry.

1. Hegel and the classical scheme rank them from most material (architecture) to least material (poetry).
2. Indian texts also count the same five lalit kalas.

Short trick: ASPMP – Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Poetry = 5.

Concept: Link each text with its author/source.

1. Jayamangala – commentary by Yashodhar Pandit (4).
2. Kamasutra – Vatsyayana (3).
3. Chitrasutram – the painting section of Vishnudharmottara Purana (1).
4. Sadrishyam (likeness) – one of the Shadanga (2).
5. So a-4, b-3, c-1, d-2.

Short trick: Jayamangala → Yashodhar first; only option A starts with 4.

Concept: Lithography reached India through the British in Calcutta in the early 1820s (Government Lithographic Press, c.1822–23).

1. Calcutta was the capital of British India and the first centre of lithographic printing.
2. Goa had India’s first letterpress (1556) – do not confuse it with lithography.
3. Bombay and Madras presses came later.

Short trick: Goa = first printing press; Calcutta = first litho press.

Concept: Collage (French coller = to glue) is picture-making by pasting assorted materials – paper, cloth, photos, objects – on a surface.

1. Popularised by Picasso and Braque (Synthetic Cubism, 1912).
2. Mosaic uses only small tesserae of glass/stone; embossing is raised relief; plastic art means 3-D modelled art.

Short trick: Coller = glue → many materials glued = Collage.

Concept: Performing arts are presented live by performers through the body/voice in time – theatre, dance, music.

1. Installation is a visual (contemporary) art – objects arranged in a space for viewers to experience.
2. So installation is not a performing art.

Short trick: Performer needed → performing art; objects in space → installation.

Concept: Bengal’s terracotta temples (Bishnupur etc.) arose because the alluvial delta has abundant clay but no building stone.

1. A is true – terracotta is the characteristic medium of Bengal temples and figures.
2. R is true – lack of stone nearby made baked clay/brick the natural choice.
3. Hence both A and R are correct.

Short trick: Delta = clay, no stone → terracotta Bengal.

Concept: Advertising aims to inform, persuade and remind – building sales for a brand.

1. Creating a favourable climate for sales, reminding customers and attracting new buyers are its core aims.
2. Changing the brand itself is a management/branding decision, not the purpose of advertising.

Short trick: Inform – Persuade – Remind; never ‘change the brand’.

Concept: E.B. Havell, Principal of Government School of Art, Calcutta, wrote ‘The Ideals of Indian Art’ (1911).

1. Havell also wrote ‘Indian Sculpture and Painting’ (1908) and supported the Bengal School with Abanindranath.
2. Herbert Read is a British critic (‘The Meaning of Art’); Gaganendranath and Ramendranath were painters.

Short trick: Havell = Ideals (1911) + Bengal School patron.

Concept: ‘Asli Swad Zindagi Ka’ is the famous tag line of Cadbury Dairy Milk (Ogilvy, 1990s).

1. Pepsi – ‘Yeh Dil Maange More’; Amul – ‘The Taste of India’; Perk – ‘Thodi si pet pooja’.

Short trick: Dairy Milk = ‘Kuch meetha ho jaaye’ & ‘Asli swad zindagi ka’.

Concept: The Diamond Sutra found at Dunhuang (China) is the oldest dated woodblock-printed book (dated 868 CE, given as 869 in many texts).

1. It has a printed frontispiece of the Buddha preaching – the earliest dated woodcut picture.
2. Dance of Death (Holbein) and Biblia Pauperum are 15th–16th-century European block books.

Short trick: Dunhuang + Diamond Sutra = oldest dated woodcut.

Concept: Mosaic builds an image from small coloured pieces (tesserae) of glass, stone or tile set in mortar.

1. Famous: Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna, Hagia Sophia.
2. Fresco = pigment on wet plaster; mural = any wall painting; miniature = small-scale painting.

Short trick: Tesserae = Mosaic.

Concept: Drypoint is an intaglio process: lines are scratched directly into a metal plate (usually copper) with a hard needle, raising a ‘burr’ that gives velvety lines.

1. Copper is soft enough to scratch and holds the burr – best surface.
2. Limestone is for lithography, silk screen for serigraphy, wood for woodcut.

Short trick: Drypoint needle + copper burr.

Concept: Shyam Sharma (Patna) is a nationally known printmaker, famous for woodcuts and linocuts on Buddhist and folk themes.

1. Ram Kumar is known as an abstract landscape painter.
2. D.P. Dhuliya and B.N. Arya are known as painters/teachers, not chiefly as printmakers.

Short trick: Shyam Sharma = woodcut master of Bihar.

Concept: In intaglio (engraving, etching) ink lies in the grooves below the plate surface and must be pulled out under heavy press pressure.

1. The paper is soaked/dampened before printing – Statement I true.
2. Damping softens the fibres so they are pushed into the grooves and lift the ink – Statement II true.

Short trick: Intaglio = damp paper + heavy press.

Concept: Luminosity is the effect of a surface appearing to glow or emit light – an illusion created by value and colour contrast.

1. A light area surrounded by darker, duller tones seems to shine.
2. Illusion of space = depth/perspective; of texture = implied texture; line is a basic element, not luminosity.

Short trick: Lumen = light → luminosity = illusion of light.