In the arts Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, photography, sculpture, and paintings. The meaning of art is explored in a branch of philosophy known as aesthetics, media (plural of medium) are the materials and techniques used by an artist An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only. The term is often used in the entertainment business, especially in a business to produce a work.
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Drawing
In drawing Drawing is a visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, or various metals like silverpoint. An artist who practices or works in drawing may be, "media" refers to the type of held dry tool used and the base onto which it is transferred. The "held dry tool" normally means a pencil, or stick medium, referred to as a "crayon A crayon is a stick of colored wax, charcoal, chalk, or other materials used for writing, coloring, and drawing. A crayon made of oiled chalk is called an oil pastel; when made of pigment with a dry binder, it is simply a pastel. Oil pastels are a popular medium for color artwork. A grease pencil or china marker (UK chinagraph pencil) is made of". Small particles of broken-off stick medium are transferred to a base or plane of production on which the artwork is produced. A typical base is paper, but canvas and other surfaces can also be used.
Common drawing media
- Chalk pastel Pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation
- Charcoal Charcoal is the dark grey residue consisting of impure carbon obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis, the heating of wood, sugar, bone char, or other substances in the absence of oxygen . The resulting soft, brittle, lightweight, black, porous
- Colored pencil A pencil is a writing implement or art medium constructed of a narrow, solid pigment core inside a protective casing. The case provides an external scaffold to protect the structural integrity of the core, and also prevents the pigment from accidentally staining the hand during use
- Conté Conté, also known as Conté sticks or Conté crayons, are a drawing medium composed of compressed powdered graphite or charcoal mixed with a wax or clay base, square in cross-section. They were invented in 1795 by Nicolas-Jacques Conté, who created the combination of clay and graphite in response to the shortage of graphite caused by the crayon
- Graphite The mineral graphite is one of the allotropes of carbon. It was named by Abraham Gottlob Werner in 1789 from the Greek γράφειν : "to draw/write", for its use in pencils, where it is commonly called lead, as distinguished from the actual metallic element lead. Unlike diamond (another carbon allotrope), graphite is an electrical and graphite pencils A pencil is a writing implement or art medium usually constructed of a narrow, solid pigment core inside a protective casing. The case prevents the core from breaking, and also from marking the user’s hand during use
- Marker A marker pen, marking pen, felt-tip pen, or marker, is a pen which has its own ink-source, and usually a tip made of a porous material, such as felt or nylon
- Oil pastel Oil pastel is a painting and drawing medium with characteristics similar to pastels and wax crayons. Unlike "soft" or "French" pastel sticks, which are made with a gum or methyl cellulose binder, oil pastels consist of pigment mixed with a non-drying oil and wax binder. The surface of an oil pastel painting is therefore less
- Pen and ink A pen is a long, thin, rounded device used to apply ink to a surface for the purpose of writing, usually paper. There are several different types, including ballpoint, rollerball, fountain, and felt-tip. Historically, reed pens, quill pens, and dip pens were used. Modern-day pens come in a variety of colors and assortments. The most common contain
Painting
In painting Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects may be used. In art the term describes both the act and the result which is called a painting. Paintings may have for their support such surfaces as walls, paper,, "media" refers to both the type of paint Paint is any liquid, liquefiable, or mastic composition which after application to a substrate in a thin layer is converted to an opaque solid film used and the base (or ground) to which it is applied. A paint's medium refers to what carries a paint's pigments, and is also called a "vehicle" or a "base". A painter can mix a medium with solvents A solvent is a liquid, solid, or gas that dissolves another solid, liquid, or gaseous solute, resulting in a solution that is soluble in a certain volume of solvent at a specified temperature. Common uses for organic solvents are in dry cleaning (e.g. tetrachloroethylene), as a paint thinner (e.g. toluene, turpentine), as nail polish removers and, pigments A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. This physical process differs from fluorescence, phosphorescence, and other forms of luminescence, in which a material emits light, and other substances in order to make paint and control consistency.
Common paint media
- Acrylic paint Acrylic paint is fast-drying paint containing pigment suspended in an acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry. Depending on how much the paint is diluted or modified with acrylic gels, media, or pastes, the finished acrylic painting can resemble a watercolor or an oil painting, or
- Enamel paint An enamel paint is a paint that air dries to a hard, usually glossy, finish. In reality, most commercially-available enamel paints are significantly softer than either vitreous enamel or stoved synthetic resins
- Gesso Gesso is the Italian word for "chalk" (from the Latin gypsum from the Greek γύψος), and is a powdered form of the mineral calcium carbonate used in art. Gesso was traditionally mixed with animal glue, usually rabbit-skin glue, to use as an absorbent primer coat for panel painting with tempera paints. It is a permanent and brilliant
- Glaze A glaze in painting refers to a layer of paint, thinned with a medium, so as to become somewhat transparent. A glaze changes the color cast or texture of the surface. Drying time depends on the amount of medium used in the glaze; a higher ratio of medium to paint (producing a very thin, transparent glaze) decreases drying time, while unadulterated
- Gouache Gouache[p], the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor (the term preferred by art historians) is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. Gouache differs from watercolor in that the particles are larger, the ratio of pigment to water is much higher, and an additional, inert, white pigment
- Ink Ink is a liquid that contains pigments and/or dyes and is used to color a surface to produce an image, text, or design. Ink is used for drawing and/or writing with a pen, brush, or quill. Thicker inks, in paste form, are used extensively in letterpress and lithographic printing
- Latex LaTeX is a document markup language and document preparation system for the TeX typesetting program. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The term LaTeX refers only to the language in which documents are written, not to the editor used to write those documents. In order to create a document in LaTeX, a .tex file must be created paint
- Magna paint
- Oil paint Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the dried film. Oil paints have been used in England since
- Primer A primer is a preparatory coating put on materials before painting. Priming ensures better adhesion of paint to the surface, increases paint durability, and provides additional protection for the material being painted
- Sumi
- Tempera Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the first centuries AD still exist. Egg tempera was a primary method of painting
- Vinyl A vinyl compound is any organic compound that contains a vinyl group . Vinyl groups (formula −C paint (toxic/poisonous)
- Watercolor Watercolor or watercolour (UK), also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork, in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water soluble vehicle. The traditional and most common support for watercolor paintings is paper; other supports include papyrus, bark papers, plastics,
Common ground media
- Architectural A wider definition may comprise all design activity, from the macro-level to the micro-level (construction details and furniture). Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and constructing form, space and ambience that reflect functional, technical, social, and aesthetic considerations. It requires the creative structures
- Canvas Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other functions where sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used as a painting surface, typically stretched, and on fashion handbags and shoes
- Cloth A textile is a flexible material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw wool fibres, linen, cotton, or other material on a spinning wheel to produce long strands. Textiles are formed by weaving, knitting, crocheting, knotting, or pressing fibres together
- Glass Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle, and often optically transparent. Glass is commonly used for windows, bottles, and eyewear; examples of glassy materials include soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, Muscovy-glass, and aluminium oxynitride. The term glass developed in the late Roman
- Metal A metal is a chemical element that is a good conductor of both electricity and heat and forms cations and ionic bonds with non-metals. In chemistry, a metal is an element, compound, or alloy characterized by high electrical conductivity. In a metal, atoms readily lose electrons to form positive ions (cations). Those ions are surrounded by
- Paper Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets
- Wood Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many plants. It has been used for centuries for both fuel and as a construction material for several types of living areas such as houses. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression. In the strict sense wood is produced as
Application tools and methods
- Action painting Action painting, sometimes called "gestural abstraction", is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist
- Aerosol paint Aerosol paint – Paint in a sealed pressurized container that is released in a fine spray mist when depressing a valve button located on the top of the can. When applied correctly, aerosol paint leaves a smooth, evenly coated surface, unlike many rolled or brushed paints. Standard sized cans are portable, inexpensive and easy to store. Aerosol
- Airbrush An airbrush is a small, air-operated tool that sprays various media including ink and dye, but most often paint by a process of nebulization. Spray guns developed from the airbrush and are still considered a type of airbrush
- Batik Batik is a cloth that traditionally uses a manual wax-resist dyeing technique
- Brush The term brush refers to devices with bristles, wire or other filaments, used for cleaning, grooming hair, make up, painting, surface finishing and for many other purposes
- Finger painting Fingerpaint is a kind of paint intended to be applied with the fingers; it typically comes in pots and is used by small children, though it has occasionally been used by adults either to teach art to children, or for their own use
- Muralism Murals of sorts date to Upper Paleolithic times such as the paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Ardèche department of southern France . Many ancient murals have survived in Egyptian tombs (around 3150 BC), the Minoan palaces (Middle period III of the Neopalatial period, 1700-1600 BC) and in Pompeii (around 100 BC - AD 79)
- Palette knife A palette knife is a blunt tool with an extremely flexible steel blade and no sharpened cutting edge, although one edge can commonly become razor sharp after long term use. This is the result of the abrasive qualities of the powdered pigments in the paints that the palette knife is being used to mix. It is primarily used for mixing paint colors,
- Stick
Muralism techniques
Muralists Murals of sorts date to Upper Paleolithic times such as the paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Ardèche department of southern France . Many ancient murals have survived in Egyptian tombs (around 3150 BC), the Minoan palaces (Middle period III of the Neopalatial period, 1700-1600 BC) and in Pompeii (around 100 BC - AD 79) use many of the same media as panel painters, but due to the scale of their works, use different techniques. Some such techniques include:
- Cartoon The word cartoon has various meanings, based on several very different forms of visual art and illustration. The artists who draw cartoons are known as cartoonists
- Overhead An overhead projector typically consists of a large box containing a very bright lamp and a fan to cool it. On top of the box is a large fresnel lens that collimates the light. Above the box, typically on a long arm, is a mirror and lens that focusses and redirects the light forward instead of up and slide projection A slide projector is an opto-mechanical device to view photographic slides. It has four main elements: a fan-cooled electric incandescent light bulb or other light source, a reflector and "condensing" lens to direct the light to the slide, a holder for the slide and a focusing lens. A flat piece of heat absorbing glass is often placed in
- Pounce (technique)
Sculpture
Materials
- Beads A pair of beads made from Nassarius sea snail shells, approximately 100,000 years old, are thought to be the earliest known examples of jewellery
- Clay Clay is a naturally occurring material composed primarily of fine-grained minerals. Clay deposits are mostly composed of clay minerals, a subtype of phyllosilicate minerals, which impart plasticity and harden when fired or dried; they also may contain variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure by polar attraction. Organic materials
- Edible material
- Found objects
- Glue and other adhesives
- Ice
- Jewels
- Marble
- Metals
- Paperboard
- Papier-mâché
- Plaster
- Plastics
- Sand
- Stone
- Textile
- Wax
- Wire
- Wood
Tools
- Bristled brush
- Ceramic wheel and kiln
- Chisel
- Clamps
- cutting torch
- Hammer or mallet
- Knife
- Pliers
- Power tools
- Sandpaper
- Saw
- Scraper
- Snips
- Wirecutters
Printmaking
In the art of printmaking, "media" tends to refer to the technique used to create a print. Common media include:
- Engraving
- Etching
- Inkjet printing (sometimes called Giclée printing)
- Laser printing
- Linocut
- Lithography
- Moku hanga
- Offset printing
- Plate printing
- Photographic printing
- Screen-printing
- Woodcut
See also
- Plastic arts
- Art materials
- Recording medium
- Digital media
- Mixed media
- Multimedia
- New materials in 20th century art
External links
- Media (artists' materials) definition from the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus
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Categories: Art media | Art materials
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Q. I'm doing a mixed medium painting and i need some kind of spray or sealant to preserve the finished peice. It includes, watercolors, charcoals, oil pastels, graphic pen, and acrylic paint. After it dries I want to preserve it so that i can frame it and give it as a gift. Any ideas??
Asked by teaisawesome - Mon Dec 29 13:48:27 2008 - - 3 Answers - 0 Comments
A. This Golden Varnish should work for you: In particular the aerosol varnish. Since it is a spray varnish, you won't smear anything like you would applying something with a brush. I know artists that use this as an isolation coat over water soluble media when they wish to continue to work over it and don't want the water soluble stuff to lift. natalie
Answered by Natalie O - Tue Dec 30 15:44:58 2008
