An artwork's medium refers to the different 

materials or supplies
that an artist utilizes in order to create a work of art. In painting,
medium can refer to both the type of paint used (oil, acrylic,
watercolor, etc) and the base or ground to which the paint is
applied (canvas, wood, paper, etc).
A medium refers to the materials that are used to create a work
of art. The plural of medium is media. Some of the most common
media are oil paints (paints that use oil to hold pigments together),
tempera (pigments held together with egg yolk), marble (soft,
white stone), and bronze (a metal used to cast sculptures).

A medium refers to the materials that are used to create a

work of art. The plural of medium is media. Some of the
most common media are oil paints (paints that use oil to
hold pigments together), tempera (pigments held together
with egg yolk), marble (soft, white stone), and bronze (a
metal used to cast sculptures).
Techniques
Acrylic painting, painting executed in the medium
of synthetic acrylic resins. Acrylics dry rapidly, serve as a vehicle for
any kind of pigment, and are capable of giving both the transparent
brilliance of watercolour and the density of oil paint.
Action painting, direct, instinctual, and highly dynamic kind of art
that involves the spontaneous application of vigorous, sweeping
brushstrokes and the chance effects of dripping and spilling paint onto
the canvas.
Aerial perspective, also called atmospheric perspective,
method of creating the illusion of depth, or recession, in a painting
or drawing by modulating colour to simulate changes effected by the
atmosphere on the colours of things seen at a distance.
Anamorphosis, in the visual arts, an
ingenious perspective technique that gives a distorted image of the
subject represented in a picture when seen from the usual viewpoint
but so executed that if viewed from a particular angle, or reflected in a
curved mirror, the distortion disappears and the image in the picture
appears normal.
Camaieu, plural camaieux, painting technique by which an image is
executed either entirely in shades or tints of a single colour or in
several hues unnatural to the object, figure, or scene represented.
Casein painting, painting executed with colours ground in a solution
of casein, a phosphoprotein of milk precipitated by heating with an
acid or by lactic acid in souring. In the form of homemade curd made
from soured skim milk, it has been a traditional adhesive and binder
for more than eight centuries. Refined, pure, powdered casein, which
can be dissolved with ammonia, has been used for easel
and mural paintings since the latter 19th and early 20th centuries,
and, more recently, ready-made casein paints in tubes have come into
very wide use.
Chiaroscuro, (from Italian chiaro, “light,” and scuro, “dark”),
technique employed in the visual arts to represent light and shadow as
they define three-dimensional objects.
Divisionism, in painting, the practice of separating colour into
individual dots or strokes of pigment. It formed the technical basis
for Neo-Impressionism. Following the rules of contemporary colour
theory, Neo-Impressionist artists such as Georges Seurat and Paul
Signac applied contrasting dots of colour side by side so that, when
seen from a distance, these dots would blend and be perceived by the
retina as a luminous whole.
Easel painting, painting executed on a portable support such as a
panel or canvas, instead of on a wall.
Encaustic painting, painting technique in which pigments are
mixed with hot liquid wax. 
Foreshortening, method of rendering a specific object or figure in a
picture in depth.
Fresco painting, method of painting water-based pigments on
freshly applied plaster, usually on wall surfaces. 
Gouache, painting technique in which a gum or
an opaque white pigment is added to watercolours to produce opacity. 
Graffiti, form of visual communication, usually illegal, involving the
unauthorized marking of public space by an individual or group.
Grisaille, painting technique by which an image is executed entirely
in shades of gray and usually severely modeled to create
the illusion of sculpture, especially relief. 
Impasto, paint that is applied to a canvas or panel in quantities that
make it stand out from the surface.
Miniature painting, also called (16th–17th century) limning,
small, finely wrought portrait executed on vellum, prepared card,
copper, or ivory. The name is derived from the minium, or red lead,
used by the medieval illuminators.
Mural, a painting applied to and made integral with the surface of
a wall or ceiling.
Oil painting, painting in oil colours, a medium consisting
of pigments suspended in drying oils.
Panel painting, painting executed on a rigid support—
ordinarily wood or metal—as distinct from painting done on canvas.
Panorama, in the visual arts, continuous narrative scene or
landscape painted to conform to a flat or curved background, which
surrounds or is unrolled before the viewer.
Perspective, method of graphically depicting three-dimensional
objects and spatial relationships on a two-dimensional plane or on a
plane that is shallower than the original (for example, in flat relief).
Plein-air painting, in its strictest sense, the practice
of painting landscape pictures out-of-doors; more loosely, the
achievement of an intense impression of the open air (French: plein
air) in a landscape painting.
Sand painting, also called dry painting, type of art that exists in
highly developed forms among the Navajo and Pueblo Indians of the
American Southwest and in simpler forms among several Plains
and California Indian tribes. Although sand painting is an art form, it
is valued among the Indians primarily for religious rather
than aesthetic reasons.
Scroll painting, art form practiced primarily in East Asia. The two
dominant types may be illustrated by the Chinese landscape scroll,
which is that culture’s greatest contribution to the history of painting,
and the Japanese narrative scroll, which developed the storytelling
potential of painting.
Sfumato, (from Italian sfumare, “to tone down” or “to evaporate like
smoke”), in painting or drawing, the fine shading that produces soft,
imperceptible transitions between colours and tones.
Sgraffito, (Italian: “scratched”), in the visual arts, a technique used in
painting, pottery, and glass, which consists of putting down a
preliminary surface, covering it with another, and then scratching the
superficial layer in such a way that the pattern or shape that emerges
is of the lower colour.
Sotto in su, (Italian: “from below to above”) in drawing and painting,
extreme foreshortening of figures painted on a ceiling or other high
surface so as to give the illusion that the figures are suspended in air
above the viewer.
Tachism, French Tachisme, (from tache, “spot”), style of painting
practiced in Paris after World War II and through the 1950s that, like
its American equivalent, Action painting, featured the intuitive,
spontaneous gesture of the artist’s brushstroke. 
Tempera painting, painting executed with pigment ground in a
water-miscible medium. 
Tenebrism, in the history of Western painting, the use of extreme
contrasts of light and dark in figurative compositions to heighten their
dramatic effect. (The term is derived from the Latin tenebrae,
“darkness.”)
Trompe l’oeil, (French: “deceive the eye”) in painting, the
representation of an object with such verisimilitude as to deceive the
viewer concerning the material reality of the object.