MEDIUMS

OF
VISUAL ARTS

PAINTING
AND
PRINT
MAKING
 MEDIUM
 It refers to the materials or means which
the artist uses to objectify his feelings.
 Pigments in Painting.
 Stone, metal, wood in sculpture.
 Various building materials in
architecture.
 Sound in Music.
 Words in Literature
 Body Movement in a dance.
 Classification of Arts according to
Mediums.
Visual or Space Arts – mediums
that can be seen and which can occupy
space.
Two- Dimensional –painting, drawing.
Three-dimensional – sculpture,
architecture
Auditory or Time Arts – can be heard
and expressed in time.
Combined Arts – can be seen and
heard, exist in time and has space.
 THE PAINTING MEDIUM
 Painting Mediums –process of
applying pigment on a smooth surface
securing interesting arrangements of
forms, lines and colors.
 Pigment – part of the paint that
supplies the color.
 Vehicle – a binder made of liquid and
mixed with pigment before applying it in a
flat surface.
 KINDS OF PAINTING MEDIUMS

1. Encaustic.
It is one of the earliest
mediums. Beeswax + Resin +
Ground Pigment.
Greeks, Romans and Egyptian
coffin.
2. Tempera.
They are mineral pigments. Egg
white +egg yolk.
Since it dried quickly, corrections
are difficult to make. Applied in
wood panels.
Panel Painting
Mischtechnik (mixed technique).
 It is a method of painting where egg
tempera is used to build up volume, and is
then glazed with oil paints mixed with resin,
producing a jewel-like effect.
The Ghent Altarpiece by Jan Van Eyck and his brothers, 1432. A
large altarpiece on panel. The outer wings are hinged, and painted
on both sides.
 3. Fresco
 It is the application of earth pigments
mixed with water on a damp plaster
wall.
 Images becomes permanently fixed.
Sistine Chapel – Michaelangelo
Last Supper – Leonardo da Vinci
Fresco Secco – the Asian type of
fresco applied on paper or silk.
 4. Water Color
It is a tempered paint made of pure
ground pigment bound with gum
Arabic.
 It is done in one sitting.
 There can be no corrections to be
made.
 Gouache – paint in which the
pigment has been mixed with chalk like
material, thus making the paint opaque.
Artist working on a watercolor using a round brush
JMW Turner, Alpine Scene, 1802, Tate Britain.
Mädchen,
Egon Schiele
1911
 Other
Techniques
using
Watercolor
 Wet-on-wet
It is a painting technique in which
layers of wet paint are applied to
previous layers of wet paint.

 It is a technique that requires a

fast way of working, because the art
work has to be finished before the
first layers have dried
Portrait of Jan
Six, 1654.
Rembrandt
van Rijn.
A painting in
which there
are numerous
wet-on-wet
passages.
 Rowing Home, 1890. Winslow Homer.
An example of the wet-on-wet technique in watercolor, especially prevalent in
the sky
 5. Oil
 It is the flexible of all the mediums.
It is slow to dry, thus changes can be
made.
It can be worked for a long period of time.
Glossy, tough when it dries.
Impasto – a three –dimensional
character added to an oil painting
either by dabbing lumps of thick paint
on the canvas with a knife.
 6. Acrylic
 It is a synthetic paint used as a
binder.
Newest medium and widely
used by today’s painters.
A quick drying character
similar to watercolor.
Insoluble when dry, used in all
surfaces.
 Composite
body, painted,
and glazed
bottle. Dated
16th century.
From Iran.
New York
Metropolitan
Museum of Art.
Ceramic Glaze
Spray Paint Art
It is an art form utilizing
spray paint and performed
on poster board or wood.
Airbrush Painting
Graffiti
A spray art performed on
buildings, trains and the
like, as opposed to more
traditional art surfaces
Venus Mural by
Knox Martin.
South side of
Bayview
Correctional
Facility, Chelsea,
New York City.
[Golden Glaze
Acrylic]
Animal print" art car Leopard Bernstein, with owner/creator
Kelly Lyles dressed in matching motif.
A Zanelle is
an artwork
painted by
a robot

A robotic
brush head
painting a
Zanelle
An example
of a Zanelle.
 7. Mosaic
 It is related to painting only because
it creates pictures on flat surface
using pieces of materials Tesserae.
Tesserae –small pieces of glass or
materials fitted and glued together
to form a pattern.
Features of the Byzantine
Churches.
Sta. Cruz Church
Icon at Malacanang
 8. Stained Glass
 It is an artwork that creates pictures on a
flat surface with the use of glass cut into
small pieces.
Important part of the Gothic Cathedral.
It allows light to liven the place.
A means of religious instructions.
Depicts the saints and their lives.
CEU Chapel
San Beda Church
Loreto Church
Sto. Domingo Church
 9. Tapestry
 It is a fabrics in which colored
designs have been woven.
It added colors to the drab
interiors.
 Generates room temperature.
 10. Drawing
 It is the most fundamental of all
skills.
Study – for the sake of learning
or investigation
Sketch – shows the general
design of the planned
product.
 May be cartoon.
 May be a finished work itself.
 MEDIUMS IN DRAWING

2. Pencil.

 It is made of lead of which comes

in different hardness.
 2. Ink
 It is one of the oldest materials still in
use depending on the tools and
technique applied.
 Sepia – a dark brown ink coming
from the sac of the squid or cuttlefish.
 Bistre – a gray brown ink made from
the soot produced by burning some
resinous wood.
a. Indian Ink
1. SEPIA INK
2. Bistre
b. Chinese Ink.

 It is an ink in a solid
stick that are dissolve in
water before use.
 3. Pen and Ink

 They are characterized by precisely

controlled and uniformly wide lines.
◦ In China, it is usually executed in silk.
Pen and Ink by Magsaysay-Ho
 4. Pastel and Chalk
 It is a dry pigment held together with a
gum binder and compressed into sticks.
◦ Chalk is usually employed in
preliminary sketches.
 5. Charcoal
 It comes from the burn twig or
piece of wood.
In modern times, it is made from
particles of carbon mixed with a
binder and compressed.
It is useful representing a broad
masses of light and shadow.
A soft charcoal produces a dark
shadow.
The hardest charcoal produces
lightest, grayest ones.
7. Silver point
 It is a pointed instrument or a
silver wire drawn over a sheet
of paper prepared before hand
with zinc white.
It was popular during the
Renaissance.
The present uses ball point
pens.
6. Crayons

It is a pigment
bounded by wax and
compressed into
sticks.
Trompe-l'œil
 It came from the French word
meaning “trick the eye.”

 It is an art technique involving

extremely realistic imagery in order to
create the optical illusion that the
depicted objects appear in three-
dimensions, instead of actually being
a two-dimensional painting.
Trompe-l'œil is employed in Donald
O'Connor's famous "Running up the wall"
scene in the film Singin' in the Rain.

During the finale of his "Make 'em Laugh"

number he first runs up a real wall. Then
he runs towards what appears to be a
hallway, but when he runs up this as well
we realize that it is a large trompe-l'œil
mural
Trompe l'œil in Jackie Kennedy dressing room
by Pierre-Marie Rudelle (1970)
Whole building trompe-l'œil in Havana, Cuba
Trompe-l'œil mural Tunnelvision by Blue Sky located in
Columbia, South Carolina
The original façade of the Saint-Georges Theatre,
Paris, France, before mural painting
 Velvet Painting
 A is a type of painting distinguished by
the use of velvet (usually black velvet) as
the support, in place of canvas, paper, or
similar materials.

 The velvet provides an especially dark

background against which colors stand
out brightly.
 Rosemaling
It is a name of a form of
decorative flower painting that originated
in the low-land areas of eastern Norway
around 1750, when Baroque, Rengeny and
Rococo, artistic styles of the upper class,
were introduced into Norway's rural
culture.
 It’s designs use C and S
strokes and feature scroll and flowing
lines, floral designs, and subtle colors
An example
of
Norwegian
rosemaling
on a tine
 Sfumato
 In Italian sfumato means
"smoky" and is derived from
the Italian word fumo meaning
'smoke'. Leonardo da Vinci
described sfumato as "without
lines or borders, in the manner
of smoke or beyond the focus
plane".
40 layers
Of paints and dots
CHROMOSKEDASIC PAINTING
 Black and white fotopaper and
fotochemicals are used for this paintings.
 The color effect is based on regions of
homogeneous silver grain sizes on the
photopaper which reflect a specific
spectrum of light.
 The name chromaskedasic is derived
from the Greek words chroma (color) and
skedasis (scatter).
Chromoskedasic Painting
It is novel method for producing color images on black-and-white
photographic paper without using pigments of dyes
Pin striping
 It is the application of a very
thin line of paint or other material
called a pin stripe, and is
generally used for decoration.
Pin striping
on a
motorcycle
fuel tank
The New Mediums
in Visual Arts
The Use of Straw
And
Fabric Art
Art works from natural materials