Medium of the Visual Arts

Medium

• the means by which an artist communicates an idea.

• It is the stuff out of which the work of art is created.

Technique

• The manner in which an artist uses the medium chosen for a specific work. The artist’s technique expresses his or her individuality and helps enhance the sensual qualities of medium.

• Major Arts: Music, Literature, Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture

• Minor Arts or Applied Arts: Metalwork, Weaving, Ceramics, Glass, Furniture, Photography, Lettering, Bookmaking, etc.

Classification of Arts According to Medium

• Visual Arts: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Tapestry, Glassware, etc.

• Auditory Arts: Music & Literature• Combined Arts: Theater, Opera, and Film

Sculpture

• It is a three-dimensional form constructed to represent a natural or imaginary shape.

Techniques used in Sculpture

• Carving– It involves removing unwanted portions of the raw

material to reveal the form that the artist has visualized.

Stone carver carving stone, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York, 1909.

Techniques used in Sculpture

• Modeling– It builds the form using highly plastic material such

as clay or wax.

Techniques used in Sculpture

• Fabrication– It employs any method of joining or fastening,

such as nailing, stapling, soldering, and welding.

Techniques used in Sculpture

• Casting – It can faithfully reproduce in bronze or other

metals the spontaneity achieved in the modeling process.

Mediums in Sculpture

• Stone – it is durable; it resists weather, fire, and all ordinary hazards. On the other hand, it is heavy and expensive and breaks easily.

Marble

• Of the stones, marble is the most beautiful. It takes a high polish and is almost translucent.

• Praxiteles, Hermes and Dionysus.

Limestone

• Limestone is soft, but it does not polish well.

Granite• Granite is coarse, but hard and is suitable for bold effects.

• Augustus Saint-Gaudens,The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth Understanding (often called Grief)

Bronze

• traditionally, bronze is the most commonly used of the metals. In small statues, the bronze is solid, but in large ones, solid metal would be too heavy and too expensive. Most bronze statues are hollow.

Wood

• it is cheap, readily available, and easy to cut. It can be painted or gilded. It is not brittle and permits the sculptor to work in thin, extended forms. It is capable of fine detail and polishes well.

• Wood Bodhisattva, Jin Dynasty (1115-1234 AD)

Ivory

• it is used for small pieces, like crosses, chess pieces, etc., in which very delicate carving is needed because it is expensive and securing large pieces is difficult. The color of ivory is a rich, creamy yellow.

• A piece of carved ivory from the Pushkin Museum representing Christ blessing Emperor Constantine VII.

Dated back to 945, the piece passed from the treasury at Echmiadzin to the collection of Count Sergey Uvarov in the mid-19th century.

Terra Cotta

• the term means “baked earth.” It is made by firing clay. It is usually painted and covered with a heavy glaze. It is very cheap, and brilliant colors are made possible by the glazing. However, like all pottery, terra cotta is easily broken and chipped.

• Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses of Qin Shi Huang the First Emperor of China. The terracotta figures, dating from 210 BC, were discovered in 1974

Painting

• It is the process of applying pigment on a smooth surface—paper, cloth, canvas, wood, or plaster—to secure an interesting arrangement of forms, lines, and colors.

Pigments

• Its the part of the paint which supplies the color. It may come from natural or artificial sources.

Vehicle

• The substance that is mixed with the pigment that allows the powder to be spread over a flat surface.

Mediums in Painting

• Oil –this is the most widely used medium for painting. Oil can be applied so thinly that canvas shows through or so thickly as to produce a textured surface.

• Paul Gauguin"Fatata te Miti" ("By the Sea")

• Vincent Van Gogh, Self-Portrait,Summer 1887

Acrylic

• is a synthetic medium for pigments. It is the most adaptable of mediums for painting; depending on the amount of water, it can be used as paint or watercolor.

• Natalja Picugina,Acrylic On Artist Canvas

Watercolor

• the pigments are mixed with water and when applied to a good-quality paper, it is pale and light in color.

• Thomas Girtin , Jedburgh Abbey from the River, 1798-99 (watercolor on paper)

• The Blue Boat (1892) by Winslow Homer

Gouache

• it is an opaque watercolour. It differs from dominantly brilliant quality of translucent watercolour painting.

• Friedrich Schwinge, Self Portrait in Garden (1888),Gouache

Fresco

• Fresco painting is the application of earth pigments mixed with water on a plaster wall while the plaster is damp. Color then sinks into the surface and becomes an integral part of the wall.

• Detail of mural by José Clemente Orozco at Baker Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire.

Egg tempera

• it is usually done on a wooden panel that has been made very smooth with a coating of plaster. Because of its great luminosity of tone, the colors are clear and beautiful.

Egg tempera

• Madonna and Child by Duccio, tempera and gold on wood, 1284

Encaustic

• Wax was used by the Egyptians for portraits painted on mummy cases. There were several ways of preparing the wax, but in general the color was mixed with warm wax and burned in.

• Painted mummy cover of a young boy, dating to the Roman Period, 2nd century A.D., made of encaustic on wood. On display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

• A 6th-century encaustic icon from Saint Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai.

Pastel

• They are pigments in the form of powders are compressed lightly into sticks. Its colors are brilliant, and it is a very flexible medium, one in which very rich and varied effects may be produced.

• Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin. Self Portrait in pastel 1771

Drawing, Printmaking, and Photography

Drawing

• Art or technique of producing images on a surface, usually paper, by means of marks in graphite, ink, chalk, charcoal, or crayon.

• It is often a preliminary stage to work in other media.

• Male nude by Annibale Carracci, 16th century

Printmaking

• Art form consisting of the production of images, usually on paper but occasionally on fabric, parchment, plastic, or other support, by various techniques of multiplication, under the direct supervision of or by the hand of the artist.

Woodcut

• The technique of printing designs from planks of wood incised parallel to the vertical axis of the wood’s grain. It is one of the oldest methods of making prints from a relief surface, having been used in China to decorate textiles since the 5th century ad.

• Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1798-1861) 1845-46 (late Edo)mulberry paper, pigments. General Taira no Tomomori

Engraving

• The technique of making prints from metal plates into which a design has been incised with a cutting tool called a burin.

• Modern reproduction of Rembrandt's 1639 self portrait

Etching

• a method of making prints from a metal plate, usually copper, into which the design has been incised by acid.

• Christ Preaching, known as The Hundred Guilder print; etching c1648 by Rembrandt.

Lithography

• In the lithographic process, ink is applied to a grease-treated image on the flat printing surface; nonimage (blank) areas, which hold moisture, repel the lithographic ink. This inked surface is then printed—either directly on paper, by means of a special press (as in most fine-art printmaking), or onto a rubber cylinder (as in commercial printing).

• Charles Marion Russell's The Custer Fight (1903). Note the range of tones, fading out towards the edges.

Serigraphy

• A sophisticated stenciling technique for surface printing, in which a design is cut out of paper or another thin, strong material and then printed by rubbing, rolling, or spraying paint or ink through the cut out areas.

• A silk screen design.

Photography

• is the art, science, and practice of creating pictures by recording radiation on a radiation-sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or electronic image sensors.

• Ansel Adams' The Tetons and the Snake River (1942).

Other Related Arts

Illumination

• It is a handwritten book that has been decorated with gold or silver, brilliant colours, or elaborate designs or miniature pictures.

Illumination

Folio 4 verso of the Aberdeen Bestiary. The illumination shows the Christ in Majesty.

The illuminated letter P in the Malmesbury Bible. The script is blackletter, also known as Gothic script

Mosaic

• Surface decoration of small coloured components—such as stone, glass, tile, or shell—closely set into an adhesive ground.

Mosaic

• Casa del Poeta tragico a Pompei

Stained Glass

• Coloured glass used to make decorative windows and other objects through which light passes.

Stained Glass

• Detail of a 13th-century window from Chartres Cathedral

Tapestry

• Heavy, reversible, patterned or figured handwoven textile, usually in the form of a hanging or upholstery fabric.

• They are usually designed as single panels or as sets of panels related by subject and style and intended to be hung together.

Tapestry

• Boar and Bear Hunt, The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, late 1420s V&A Museum no. T.204-1957