Five Lucky Kites

Michele Avanti

#318 of 450

Michele Avanti

Roseburg, OR

$13.00

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Title

Five Lucky Kites

Artist

Michele Avanti

Medium

Digital Art - Digital Art

Description

Five Lucky Kites painting by Michele Avanti

There is something so exciting and fun about flying a kite on the beach. The air tugging the kite up into the air as you slowly release the twine. Then to look up and see there are other kites flying along with yours. It is freeing, fun and brings out the child in everyone.

Why Five? Five is an auspicious number in Feng Shui, it symbolizes luck, good fortune, prosperity and good health. So this painting is also a wonderful image to activate positive chi in a child's bedroom or play area.

The color green is most prominent, so put it on your East Wall to increase health. Also an excellent choice for the east wall in any hospital room.

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A kite is an aircraft consisting of
one or more wings tethered to an anchor system. Frequently a wing of a kite is referenced as "kite". The necessary lift that sustains the kite in flight is generated when air flows above the kite's surface, producing low pressure above and high pressure below the wings. The interaction with the wind also generates horizontal drag along the direction of the wind. The resultant force vector from the lift and drag force components is opposed by the tension of one or more of the lines or tethers to which the kite is attached. The anchor point of the kite line may be static or moving (e.g., the towing of a kite by a running person, boat, free-falling anchors as in paragliders and fugitive parakites or vehicle.

The same principles can be used in water and experiments have also been made with lighter-than-air kites (kytoons)

Kites may be flown for recreation, art or other practical uses. Sport kites can be flown in aerial ballet, sometimes as part of a competition. Power kites are multi-line steerable kites designed to generate large forces which can be used to power activities such as kite surfing, kite landboarding, kite fishing, kite buggying and a new trend snow kiting. Kites towed behind boats can lift passengers which has had useful military applications in the past.

Kites were invented in China, where materials ideal for kite building were readily available: silk fabric for sail material; fine, high-tensile-strength silk for flying line; and resilient bamboo for a strong, lightweight framework.
The kite has been claimed as the invention of the 5th-century BC Chinese philosophers Mozi (also Mo Di) and Lu Ban (also Gongshu Ban). By 549 AD paper kites were certainly being flown, as it was recorded that in that year a paper kite was used as a message for a rescue mission. Ancient and medieval Chinese sources describe kites being used for measuring distances, testing the wind, lifting men, signaling, and communication for military operations. The earliest known Chinese kites were flat (not bowed) and often rectangular. Later, tailless kites incorporated a stabilizing bowline. Kites were decorated with mythological motifs and legendary figures; some were fitted with strings and whistles to make musical sounds while flying. From China, kite was introduced to Cambodia, India, Japan, Korea and western world.

After its introduction into India, the kite further evolved into the fighter kite, known as the patang in India, where thousands are flown every year on festivals such as Makar Sankranti.

Kites were known throughout Polynesia, as far as New Zealand, with the assumption being that the knowledge diffused from China along with the people. Anthropomorphic kites made from cloth and wood were used in religious ceremonies to send prayers to the gods. Polynesian kite traditions are used by anthropologists get an idea of early "primitive" Asian traditions that are believed to have at one time existed in Asia.

Boys flying a kite. Engraving published in Germany in 1828 by Johann Michael Voltz

Kites were late to arrive in Europe, although windsock-like banners were known and used by the Romans. Stories of kites were first brought to Europe by Marco Polo towards the end of the 13th century, and kites were brought back by sailors from Japan and Malaysia in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Although they were initially regarded as mere curiosities, by the 18th and 19th centuries kites were being used as vehicles for scientific research.

In 1750 Benjamin Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning was caused by electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. It is not known whether Franklin ever performed his experiment, but on May 10, 1752, Thomas-Fran�ois Dalibard of France conducted a similar experiment (using a 40-foot (12 m) iron rod instead of a kite) and extracted electrical sparks from a cloud.
Kites were also instrumental in the research of the Wright brothers when developing the first airplane in the late 1800s. Over the next 70 years, many new kite designs were developed, and often patented. These included Eddy's tail-less diamond kite, the tetrahedral kite, the flexible kite, the sled kite, and the parafoil kite, which helped to develop the modern hang-gliders.In fact, the period from 1860 to about 1910 became the "golden age of kiting". Kites started to be used for scientific purposes, especially in meteorology, aeronautics, wireless communications and photography; many different designs of man-lifting kite were developed as well as power kites.
The development of mechanically powered airplane diminished interest in kites. World War II saw a limited use of kites for military purposes (see Focke Achgelis Fa 330 for an example). Since then they are used mainly for recreation.