ENG 102: Art Appreciation

Module 5: MEDIUMS & TECHNIQUES:

PAINTING
Intended Learning Outcomes:

 Identify the various mediums or

techniques; and

 Illustrate and describe the meaning of a

famous painting and relate to the student’s
own context through photo appropriation.
 The Mediums and Techniques

MEDIUMS refer to materials used

in the work of art. For instance, in
painting one could use pigments; with
sculpture and architecture, it could be
from wood and stone; and for music, it
would be for sound and for dance body
movement.
 The Mediums and Techniques

While TECHNIQUE on the other hand

refers to the ability of the artist to make
his medium work for him or her to produce
effects for his or her artwork that he or she
would like to attain. Hence, technique is
what actually differentiates an artisan and
an artist.
 Painting Mediums
It is the process of applying pigment on a smooth
surface securing interesting arrangements of
forms, lines and colors. It is the most popular
medium used. The following are the various kinds
of painting mediums used.

1. ENCAUSTIC was the oldest painting medium

that is made from bee’s wax and resin. It is also one
of the mediums applied to Egyptian coffins to
provide its colorful and shiny textures. Art and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt: An anthropoid shaped
wooded coffin for 
“the Servant of the Great Place,” from about 1339-1308 B.C. 
 Painting Mediums
2. TEMPERA is another example of the oldest painting. It is
made of earth or mineral pigments mixed with egg yolks and
egg white. Tempera painting is mostly applied in wood panel
and dries quickly. Since it dries quickly, corrections are
difficult to make.

Panel painting or mixed painting is a method of painting

where egg in tempera is used to build up volume, then glazed
with oil paints mixed with resin, thus producing a jewel-like
effect. Many altarpieces are made from panel painting.
 Painting Mediums
3. FRESCO is the application of earth pigments mixed with
water on a plaster wall while the plaster is damp. Color sinks
into the surface and becomes an integral part of the wall. The
image becomes permanently fixed. Sistine Chapel by
Michaelangelo best illustrates this.

The Asians also came up with its own version of Fresco. The
Fresco Secco or a secco or fresco finto is a wall painting
technique where pigments mixed with an organic binder
and/or lime applied onto a dry plaster as form of art.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/).
Sistine Chapel(Michaelangelo)
Created: 1508-1512
 Painting Mediums

The Asians also came up with its own

version of Fresco. The Fresco Secco or a
secco or fresco finto is a wall painting
technique where pigments mixed with an
organic binder and/or lime applied onto a
dry plaster as form of art.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/).
Sittanavasal is a small hamlet in Pudukkottai
district of Tamil Nadu, India. The Sittanavasal
Cave is a Jain monastery of the 7th century.
 Painting Mediums
4. WATER COLOR is tempered paint made of pure ground
pigment bound with gum Arabic. Gouache is a material in the
paint in which the pigment has been mixed with chalk like
material making the painting opaque.

5. OIL is a very flexible medium made of thick pigment that

requires the application of turpentine or any solvent before
application. It is slow to dry, and it can be worked over a long
period of time. When it dries, it forms a tough, glossy film on
the surface. Three dimensional characters called Impasto, a
technique used in oil, can be created by dabbing lumps of
thick paint on the canvas with a knife.
 Painting Mediums
6. ACRYLIC is a synthetic paint used as binder. It is the
newest medium and the ones that are widely used by today’s
painters. It has quick drying characters of watercolor and
flexible oil. It is insoluble when dry and can be used in all
surfaces. It can be applied thinly with a water-dipped brush or
laid on in thick impastos with knife. It does not crack, turn
yellow or darken with age.

Spray paint is an art form utilizing spray paint and

performed on poster board or wood or even food like cake.
Graffiti is of the examples to this.
 Painting Mediums
7. MOSAIC is related to painting only because it creates
pictures on flat surface. It is a wall or floor decorations made
of small cubes or irregularly cut pieces of colored stones or
glass called Tesserae(i.e. small pieces of glass or materials
like stones fitted together to form a pattern glued on a surface
with plaster or paint). It was an important feature of
Byzantine churches. Its purpose is to inspire and for religious
intentions. However, now, it is aesthetically used as part of
architecture and landscape.
 Painting Mediums
8. STAINED GLASS is an artwork that
creates pictures on a flat surface with the
use of glass cut into small pieces. It is an
important part of Gothic Cathedral. Since it
allows light, it livens the place. It provided
a means of religious instructions. It depicts
scenes from the Bible and from the lives of
the saints.
 Painting Mediums
9. TAPESTRY is fabrics into which
colored designs have been woven. It added
colors to the drab interiors. It also served to
retain in the room whatever heat was
generated from the fireplace. Now tapestry
is added to the features of every home to
provide privacy and provide illusion of
space to the rooms and spaces.
 Painting Mediums
10. DRAWING is the most fundamental of all skills needed
in the arts. The pencil, a medium used in drawing, is used for
preliminary sketches, shades and shadows. One of the oldest
materials also still used today is ink.

Pastel and Chalk, a drawing medium made of dry pigment

held together with gum binder and compressed into sticks.
Crayons are also another familiar drawing medium made of
pigments bounded by wax and compressed into sticks. It is
popularly used not only by children but also by adults as
preparatory or basic experience in coloring.
 Painting Mediums
Charcoal is another drawing medium that comes from a
burned twig or piece of wood. It is useful in representing
broad masses of light and shadow. A soft charcoal
produces a dark surface. The hardest charcoal produces
lightest, greyest ones.

Silver Point is a pointed instrument or a silver wire

drawn over a sheet of paper prepared beforehand with
zinc white. It was popular during the Renaissance but
not in general use today. Sometimes a feather is
attached or added to it for precision and control.
 Painting Mediums

11. VELVET PAINTING is another

variation of painting that emerged with the
use of black or any color of velvet cloth or
textile as in support for paper, silk or any
materials as its canvas. The velvet provides
especially dark background against which
colors stand brightly.
 Techniques in painting
The use of techniques in painting provides an
illusion of depth, colors and meaning to the work.
It adds mystery, clarity and conceptual meaning to
an artist’s work of art.

1. Wet-on-wet Technique. 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.
 Techniques in painting
2. Chiaroscuro Technique. This is characterized
by strong difference between light and dark. It
is usually bold contrasts affecting a whole
composition. It is also a technical term used by
artists and art historians for using contrasts of light
to achieve a sense of volume in modeling three-
dimensional objects such as the human body.
Chiaroscuro lighting was developed by Leonardo
Davinci, Caravaggio, Vermeer, and Rembrandt.
 Techniques in painting
3. Sfumato Technique. The word sfumato means
“smoky” and is derived from the Italian word
fumo meaning “smoke”. In the painting Mona
Lisa, Da Vinci used this technique to create
perceptions of depth, volume and form. He
described sfumato as “without lines or borders” in
the manner of smoke or beyond focus plane. As a
painting technique, it refers to the Italian term
which overlays translucent layers of color to create
depth, volume and form.
 Techniques in painting
4. Repoussoir Technique. It conditions where an
object along the right or left foreground directs
the viewer’s eye into the composition by
bracketing edge. It is a French verb which
roughly translates “to push back”. This technique
puts a figure or objects in the extreme foreground
and uses it as a contrast in order to increase the
illusion of depth and focus our attention on the
main subject.
 Print Making
Print making is a graphic image created as a
result from a duplicating process, wherein each
print considers as an original work. The following
are the four major processes:

1. Relief printing involves cutting away from a

block of wood or linoleum the portions of the
designs the artist does not want to show. The art of
carving wood or wood cut is called xylography.
 Print Making
2. Intaglio printing is wherein the image or design is
scratched, engraved or etched into a small metal plate.
The incised line or depressed area is filled with ink, which
under considerable pressure leaves a sharp impression on
damp paper.

3. Lithography is a planographic process that makes use

of immiscibility of water and grease. Ink is applied to a
grease treated image on the flat printing surface. Then the
blank image that is moist repels the lithographic ink. Most
books, all types of high-volume text, are now printed using
offset lithography.
 Print Making
4. Screen printing is also known as “screen
printing”, “silk-screening”, or “serigraphy” which
creates bold color using a stencil technique. It is
arguably the oldest form of graphic arts. It is a
printing technique that uses a woven mesh to
support an ink blocking stencil. The squeegee is
used to spread the ink across the screen, over the
stencil, and through the open mesh onto the paper
and materials.
 Other Print Making Process
Engraving is one of the most lightly skilled
methods of incising lines into a hard surface.
Historically, lithic flakes or a special sharp stone is
used for engraving until Hugo Grotius, a well-
known artist famous for engraving who suffered
from a carpal tunnel syndrome, a medical
condition that causes numbness and pain as well as
discomfort in the hand, introduced the burin, a tool
he designed to enable him to continue his work.
 Other Print Making Process

Sand Painting is also referred to as dry painting. It is the art

of pouring colored sands onto a surface to make a painting.
These are often ritual paintings for religious or healing
ceremonies.

Photography is literally drawing or writing with light. The

camera is used to capture the images and recorded in a film or
negative in the old days. These are the steps: (1) choosing the
subject; (2) mechanical process with the use of a camera; and
(3) chemical process on the development of the film with the
use of negative.
 Other Print Making Process
Digital Prints refer to editions of images created with a
computer using drawings, other prints, photographs, light
pen and tablet, and so on. Digital images can now be
printed on desktop-printer paper and transferred to
traditional art papers. Even these images can turn into 3-D
printing!

Foil Imaging by Virginia Myers is a printmaking

technique made using the Iowa Foil from the
commercial foil stamping process. This used gold
leaf and acrylic foil in the printmaking process.
 Other Print Making Process
Trompe-lóeil (Tarpaulin) came from the French
word meaning “trick the eye”. It is a new and
unique art technique that is used and involved in
creating extremely realistic imagery in order to
create the optical illusion that depicts three-
dimensional objects instead of actual two-
dimensional painting.
This was also used and employed by Donald
O’Connor in his famous musical as “Running up
the wall” scene in the film “Singing in the Rain”.
 Other Print Making Process

The process of making fine art prints from a digital source using ink-
jet printing is called Gicle while a picture or image or series of
images or pictures that represent a continuous scene is called
cyclorama.
 Module 5: Activity and/or Quiz
The students’ tasks as agreed by all Art Appreciation instructors are:

 As an Activity, the COFFEE PAINTING deadline is set after Module 6;

 As a quiz, showcasing the God-given Talents and Potentials thru Art (recorded
video; individual or a group work) deadline is set after Module 6. Students will
choose which of the Module 5 and 6 they are very interested at as their talent, and
they will video themselves not more than 3 minutes showcasing their God-given
talents;

 As Performance Task in the Midterm, Photo Appropriation (PIT) deadline is set

before Midterm Exam.