Art Techniques
Painting - Works of art made with paint on a surface. Often, the surface, also called a support, is either a tightly stretched piece of canvas or a panel. How the ground (on which paint is applied) is prepared on the support depends greatly on the type of paint to be used. Paintings are usually intended to be placed in frames, and exhibited on walls, but there have been plenty of exceptions. Also, the act of painting, which may involve a wide range of techniques and materials, along with the artist's other concerns which effect the content of a work.
Drawing - Depiction of shapes and forms on a surface chiefly by means of lines. Color and shading may be included. Drawing is the basis of all pictorial representation, a major fine art technique in itself, and an early step in most art activities. Though an integral part of most painting, drawing is generally differentiated from painting by the dominance of line over mass. The artist's choices of drawing media — tools and surface — tend to determine whether a drawing will be more or less linear or painterly in quality. There are many sorts of drawing techniques, varying according to the effect the artist wants, and depending on whether the drawing is an end in itself — an independent and finished work of art -- or a preliminary to some other medium or form — although distinct from the final product, such drawings also have intrinsic artistic value. Preliminary drawings include various exercises (e.g., contour drawing, gesture drawing, figure drawing, drawing from the flat), as well as sketches and studies, cartoons and underdrawings.
Sculpture - A three-dimensional work of art, or the art of making it. Such works may be carved, modeled, constructed, or cast. Sculptures can also be described as assemblage, in the round, and relief, and made in a huge variety of media.
Photography - The art, craft, and science of producing permanent images of objects on light-sensitive surfaces. Louis Daguerre (French, 1787-1851) developed the first permanent photographic images in 1839, having continued the pioneering work of Joseph Niepce. Daguerre's process is called the daguerreotype.
Mosaic - A picture or design made of tiny pieces (called tesserae) of colored stone, glass, tile or paper adhered to a surface. It is typically decorative work for walls, vaults, ceilings or floors, the tesserae set in plaster or concrete.
This technique was used by the Romans in regularly shaped pieces of marble in its natural colors to decorate their villas. It was later adopted by Byzantine artists using pieces of glass with irregular surfaces to tell the Christian story on the walls of their churches. Mosaics are among the ten classes of patterns.
Printmaking - A print is a shape or mark made from a block or plate or other object that is covered with wet color (usually ink) and then pressed onto a flat surface, such as paper or textile. Most prints can be produced over and over again by re-inking the printing block or plate. Printmaking can be done in many ways, including using an engraved block or stone, transfer paper, or a film negative. The making of fine prints is generally included in the graphic arts, while the work of artists whose designs are made to satisfy the needs of more commercial clients are included in graphic design.
Etching - An intaglio printing process in which an etching needle is used to draw into a wax ground applied over a metal plate. The plate is then submerged in a series of acid baths, each biting into the metal surface only where unprotected by the ground. The ground is removed, ink is forced into the etched depressions, the unetched surfaces wiped, and an impression is printed. Also, both the design etched on a plate and an impression made from an etched plate. Too often confused with engraving.
Silkscreen or silk-screen - A stencil process of printmaking in which an image is imposed on a screen of silk or other fine mesh, with blank areas coated with an impermeable substance, and ink is forced through the mesh onto the printing surface. Also called serigraphy and screen-printing. Andy Warhol and Robert Raushenberg used silkscreens as a means of applying paint to canvases. Also, a print made by this method, sometimes called a screenprint.
Lithography - In the graphic arts, a method of printing from a prepared flat stone or metal or plastic plate, invented in the late eighteenth century. A drawing is made on the stone or plate with a greasy crayon or tusche, and then washed with water. When ink is applied, it sticks to the greasy drawing but runs off (or is resisted by) the wet surface, allowing a print — a lithograph — to be made of the drawing. The artist, or other print maker under the artist's supervision, then covers the plate with a sheet of paper and runs both through a press under light pressure. For color lithography, separate drawings are made for each color.
Woodcut - A print made by cutting a design in side-grain of a block of wood, also called a woodblock print. The ink is transferred from the raised surfaces to paper.
Collage - A picture or design created by adhering such basically flat elements as newspaper, wallpaper, printed text and illustrations, photographs, cloth, string, etc., to a flat surface, when the result becomes three-dimensional, and might also be called a relief sculpture / construction / assemblage. Most of the elements adhered in producing most collages are "found" materials. Introduced by the Cubist artists, this process was widely used by artists who followed, and is a familiar technique in contemporary art. "Collage" was originally a French word, derived from the word coller, meaning "to paste."
Montage - A single pictorial composition made by juxtaposing or overlapping many pictures or designs. The art or process of making such a composition. Also, a rapid succession of different images or shots in a movie.
Basketry, and basketwork - A basket is a woven container made of such tough and bendable materials as twigs or strips (veneer) of wood, cane, rattan, reed, rush, wire, or plastic, often with a handle or handles; or something that resembles a basket, especially in shape or function.
Baskets are usually lightweight. Among the most commonly used basketry techniques are plaiting, twining, coiling, and imbrication. Basketry is the art or craft of making baskets, or objects woven like baskets, and is one of the oldest and most universal of crafts, practised among even the most primitive of peoples. It may be that basketry preceded the development of both textiles and fired pottery. Many baskets produced in Europe have, by long tradition, been produced using the rod-like twigs, harvested from willow trees (osier). Much furniture employing basketry techniques has been made using cane, rattan and rush.
Ceramics or ceramic ware—Pottery or hollow clay sculptures fired at high temperatures in a kiln or oven to make them harder and stronger. Types include earthenware, porcelain, stoneware, and terra cotta. The following are examples, along with their definitions.
Pottery - Objects, and especially vessels — pots, which are made from fired clay, including earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. Pots are functional ceramic objects, and may take such forms as plates, bowls, cups, jars, vases, urns, ewers (pitchers), bottles, and boxes. A pottery can also be a place where pots are made.
Porcelain - A hard, white, translucent, impervious, resonant ceramic body, also known as china, invented in China between 600 and 900 CE. This clay is primarily made of kaolin, a fine white clay. Also, an object made of porcelain; and sometimes any pottery that is translucent, whether or not it is made of kaolin. Porcelain is regarded as the most refined of all ceramic wares.
Genre and genres
Genre painting depicts subjects and scenes from everyday life, ordinary folk, and common activities. It achieved its greatest popularity in seventeenth-century Holland (the Netherlands) with the works of Jan Steen (1626-1679) and Jan Vermeer (1632-1675).
When used in the plural form, genres are the various categories of subject matter in the traditional academic hierarchy, in descending order of importance: history, megalography, mythology, religion, portraiture, genre (see the first sense above), landscape, still life, rhopography, and vernacular.
Portrait (or portraiture) - A work of art that represents a specific person, a group of people, or an animal.
Portraits usually show what a person looks like as well as revealing something about the subject's personality.
Portraits can be made of any sculptural material or in any two-dimensional medium.
Portraiture is the field of portrait making and portraits in general.
Portrait is a term that may also refer simply to a vertically oriented rectangle, just as a horizontally oriented one may be said to be oriented the landscape way. (see separate post of the Mona Lisa for example of Portrait, and separate post with Sacajawea statue and separate post for Bust of a Jurist)
Landscape - A painting, photograph or other work of art which depicts scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers and forests. There is invariably some sky in the scene. (see the separate post for the example of a landscape - The Harvesters)
Seascape - A picture of a scene at sea or a scene prominently including a portion of the sea. (for an example, see separate post, "Boats at Argenteuil")
Still life or still-life - A picture of inanimate objects. Common still life subjects include vessels, food, flowers, books, clothing.
This genre flourished particularly among Dutch painters of the seventeenth century, and the term itself originated in the Dutch language as "and ". Jean Chardin (French, 1699-1769) is the most universally admired painter of still lifes. Chardin painted many pictures of everyday items, including kettles, vegetables, and earthenware vessels, with superb modeling of color, light, and texture. The plural form is "still lifes." (for example, see separate post, "The Luncheon of the Boating Party")Cartoon - A kind of drawing done to get people thinking, angry, laughing, or otherwise amused, often accompanied by a caption. A cartoon usually has simple lines, uses basic colors, and tells a story in one or a series of pictures called frames or panels.
Medium/Media
Medium (plural is media)- The material or technique used by an artist to produce a work of art. Medium can also refer to what carries a paint's pigments, and is also called a vehicle or a base. The medium is what determines what kind of paint is produced. A painter can mix a medium with its solvents, pigments and other substances in order to make paint and control its consistency. A variety of mediums are available that provide a matte, semi-gloss, or glossy finish.
Oil paint - Slow drying paint made when pigments are mixed with an oil, linseed oil being most traditional. The oil dries with a hard film, and the brightness of the colors is protected. Oil paints are usually opaque and traditionally used on canvas. They can have a matte, semi-gloss, or glossy finish.
Watercolor or watercolour - Any paint that uses water as a solvent. Paintings done with this medium are known as watercolors. What carries the pigment in watercolor (called its medium, vehicle, or base) is gum arabic. An exception to this rule is water miscible oil paints, which employ water as their solvent, but are actually oil paints. When made opaque with white, watercolor is generally called gouache or bodycolor. Tempera is another exception.
Colors are usually applied and spread with brushes, but other tools can also used. The most common techniques for applying watercolor are called wet-on-dry and wet-on-wet, along with the dry brush techniques dry-on-dry and dry-on-wet. Colors can be removed while still wet, to various degrees by blotting. Most watercolor painting is done on paper, but other absorbent grounds can also be employed. The papers most favored by those who paint with watercolor is white, very thick, with high rag content, and has some tooth.Tempera and temper - A paint and process involving an emulsion of oil and water. It was in use before the invention of oil paints. Traditionally, it involves an egg emulsion; thus, the term egg tempera. The pigments or colors are mixed with an emulsion of egg yolks (removed from their sacs) or of size, rather than oil, and can be thinned and solved with water. Also known as egg tempera and temper. A varnish for tempera paints, called glair may be prepared by mixing egg whites with a little water, then beating them, and applying once the bubbles are gone.
Ink - Liquid or paste media containing pigment(s) and used for writing, pen and brush drawing, and printing. Writing inks, even blacks, are rarely sufficiently permanent to be used for art purposes. Black drawing ink, known as India ink in the United States, is especially made for use in permanent works. When it dries it is water resistant, enabling it to be gone over with a wash or watercolor. Also available is a water-soluble drawing ink; though otherwise permanent, it is capable of being washed away with water, and may be preferred to water-resistant ink for certain work. Chinese ink is similar to India ink, although various minor ingredients are added to enhance its brilliancy, range of tone, and working qualities. Most colored drawing inks are not permanent; those made with permanent pigments are usually labeled with names of pigment ingredients rather than the names of hues. Printing ink is actually more closely related to paints than to the pen and brush inks.
Pastel - Pigments mixed with gum and water, and pressed into a dried stick form for use as crayons. Works of art done with such pigments are also called pastels. Chalk is similar to pastel, but more tightly bound. A picture made with pastels may be called either a drawing or a painting. The principal reason to call it one or the other has nothing to do with whether it has ever been wet. It has entirely to do with whether the resulting image is more linear or more painterly — showing shapes or forms created with patches of color, exploiting color and tonal relationships. The term "pastel" has been used by some to mean tints or pale colors — soft colors, lightened with white — having little saturation and great lightness. (Brilliant colors, although they too are very light in value, are strongly saturated.) Pastel was first used in this sense by American fashion writers in 1899. The use of "pastel" in this sense might be understood in context, but art writers are generally wise to avoid using it in order to avoid confusing their readers.
Crayon - Traditionally, any drawing material made in stick form, including chalk, pastel, conté crayons, charcoal, lithographic and other grease crayons, as well as wax crayons. To children, the term invariably refers to these last sticks of color made of paraffin, and marketed under various trade names, available in several sizes and shapes, either water-soluble.
Clay - Mud; moist, sticky dirt. In ceramics, clay is the basic material, usually referring to any of a certain variety of mixtures of such ingredients — fine-grained, firm earthy material that is plastic when wet, brittle when dry, and very hard when heated. There is a temperature with ceramic clays at which their particles fuse (vitrification), and this is most commonly controlled by heating (firing) them in a kiln. The most common types of ceramic clays are earthenware (terra cotta when fired, terra cruda when not), stoneware, and porcelain. Also, a hardening or nonhardening material having a consistency similar to clay, often called modeling clay or Plasticine, and others, including polymer clay.
Marble - A type of stone traditionally used in sculpture and architecture. A metamorphic rock (metamorphosed calcite or dolomite), finely grained, dense, with a nondirectional structure, capable of taking a high polish, and often irregularly veined and colored by impurities. White marble has been quarried in Greece, Italy, Turkey, India, China, and the USA. Among the most renowned sources has been the quarries of Carrara in the Apuan Alps of Italy. Confusingly, the name marble is sometimes used to refer to any stone that takes a polish, although such stones may include alabasters, granites, and serpentines, as well as true marbles. Mottling or streaking that resembles the veined texture of marble is called marbling.
Fresco - A method of painting on plaster, either dry (dry fresco or fresco secco) or wet (wet or true fresco). In the latter method, pigments are applied to thin layers of wet plaster so that they will be absorbed and the painting becomes part of the wall. (see separate post for example, "The Delphic Sybil")
Types of Support
Support - The material providing a surface upon which an artist applies color, collage, etc. Also, holding up, as a base or column often does.
Canvas - Commonly used as a support for oil or acrylic painting, canvas is a heavy woven fabric made of flax or cotton. Its surface is typically prepared for painting by priming with a ground. Linen — made of flax — is the standard canvas, very strong, sold by the roll and by smaller pieces. A less expensive alternative to linen is heavy cotton duck, though it is less acceptable (some find it unacceptable), cotton being less durable, because it's more prone to absorb dampness, and it's less receptive to grounds and size. For use in painting, a piece of canvas is stretched tightly by stapling or tacking it to a stretcher frame. A painting done on canvas and then cemented to a wall or panel is called marouflage. Canvas board is an inexpensive, commercially prepared cotton canvas which has been primed and glued to cardboard, suitable for students and amateurs who enjoy its portability. Also, a stretched canvas ready for painting, or a painting made on such fabric. Canvas is abbreviated c., and "oil on canvas" is abbreviated o/c.
Linen - A cloth woven from thread made from fibers of the flax plant. Although it has been used in many ways, linen has been an especially desirable support for painting. As such it is one of several textiles that may be called canvas.
Paper - A mass of interlaced cellulose fibers in sheet or roll form, used as a combination ground and support in drawing, watercolor and pastel painting, and the various graphic arts techniques. Fine arts papers are made of pulped linen and cotton rags; while lower quality, impermanent papers, such as newsprint, construction paper, coated papers, and butcher paper, are made of wood pulp or a combination of wood pulp and cotton rag.
Parchment - An ancestor to contemporary paper, parchment is a material on which to write or paint prepared from the skin of a sheep or goat. It replaced the use of papyrus during the ancient Roman period. Monastic scribes of the Middle Ages practically monopolized its use in Europe preceding the introduction there of papermaking techniques utilizing plant fibers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Parchment may also refer to paper made in imitation of this material.
Wood - A plant product, fibrous material found as the primary content of the stems of such "woody" plants as trees and shrubs. These perennial plants are characterized by stems and branches that grow outward year after year, and are composed of cellulose held together with lignin (also called xylum tissue), which conducts sap upward from the roots to the leaves, stores food, and provides support.
Methods of Painting
Pointillism: A method of painting developed in France in the 1880s in which tiny dots of color are applied to the canvas. When viewed from a distance, the points of color appear to blend together to make other colors and to form shapes and outlines. Georges Seurat (French, 1859-1891) was its leading exponent. His most famous painting is A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884-1886, oil on canvas, 81 x 120 inches, Art Institute of Chicago. Occasionally used synonyms for pointillism have been "divisionism" and "confetti-ism."
Feathering: In drawing and painting, to feather is to blend an edge so that it fades off or softens. To feather is also to overlap values and colors in the manner of a bird's overlapping feathers.
Divisionism: A system of painting in small dots of color placed in relation to each other based on certain color theories.
Art Tools
Brush: A tool used to apply paints and inks to a surface, consisting of hairs, or bristles held in place by a ferrule attached to a handle. The hair may be from any of several sources, some of which are badger, ox, fitch, squirrel (called "camel hair"), and synthetics, though perhaps the finest is red sable. Bristles are usually from hogs, bristle brushes having a characteristic taper, or curve. Brushes for acrylic and polymer paints generally have nylon bristles compatible with those paints.
Brayer: A tool used to roll ink onto a surface by hand, usually in block printing and in monoprinting.
Easel: A tool allowing the stable support and display of a painter's canvas or panel. Sturdier easels typically involve a blocky and heavy structure, while portable easels are light-weight and three-legged. Most contemporary easels can be folded for storage.
Eraser: A tool used in the erasure of parts of drawings. Graphite pencil drawings are erased with any of several types of rubber. (It was after this use that the substance called rubber received its name.) Lighter parts of charcoal drawings can be erased with either a kneaded eraser (also called putty rubber) or a kneaded piece of fresh bread. Wax crayons and lithographic crayons cannot be erased unless they are on non-absorbent surfaces.
Camera: In photography, a tool for producing photographs, having a lightproof enclosure with an aperture and a shuttered lens through which the image of an object is focused and recorded on a photosensitive film or plate.
In a video, a device that receives the primary image on a light-sensitive cathode tube and transforms it into electrical impulses.
Chisel: A cutting tool consisting of a metal shaft beveled at one end to form the cutting edge. A chisel is specially designed for cutting a particular material — wood, metal or stone.
Hammer
bush hammer - A steel stone-carving tool, often with a large, brick-like head, having two striking ends, each covered with rows of pyramidal metal points. Found in several sizes, some with a longer, thinner head. Bush hammers are used to dress the surface of stone by breaking down the rock surface, pounding and removing small amounts at a time. The textures achieved are typical among finish in traditional French masonry. Granite and other igneous rock is worked with a bush hammer, although now it is usually an electrically motorized version. Also called by its French name, "bouchard" or "boucharde."
ballpein hammer - A hammer which has one side of the head flattened for striking, and the other rounded for flattening rivets or forming a dome.
claw hammer - The head of a claw hammer has a flat striking face on one side and two heavy metal prongs on the other used to trap and lever out nail heads.
Kiln: A special oven or furnace that can reach very high temperatures and is used to bake, or fire clay. Kilns may be electric, gas, or wood-fired. The one pictured here is an electric model.
Palette: A slab of wood, metal, marble, ceramic, plastic, glass, or paper, sometimes with a hole for the thumb, which an artist can hold while painting and on which the artist mixes paint. Anything from ice trays to disposable paper or Styrofoam plates might be used as a palette. A pane of glass with a white piece of paper attached to its underside makes a fine palette. It's especially versatile because the color of the paper back can be made to match a painting's ground, making colors easier to choose.
Potter’s Wheel: A revolving horizontal disk, sometimes called a head, on which clay is shaped manually into pottery vessels. The simplest form of wheel is the kickwheel. To operate it, the potter kicks or propels some form of disk, crank, or treddle in order to keep the turntable spinning. Also commonly used today are power-driven wheels whose speed can be regulated by the potter as he or she works. The potter's wheel was probably invented either by the Sumerians of the Tigris-Euphrates Basin or by the Chinese around 5000 BCE, perhaps even before the use of wheels for transportation. Potter's wheels continue to be used today, though commercial ceramic manufacture is dominated by slip casting. Nevertheless, they are part of the basic equipment of the artist-potter.
Scissors: A hand-held cutting tool made up of two crossed and connected blades whose (inner) cutting edges slide past each other as they pivot to open and close. Each blade is extended from a ring-shaped handle (called bows) through which a user inserts opposing fingers. Scissors are commonly employed to cut such thin materials as string, hair, fabric, paper and sheets of other kinds, such as cellophane, foil, etc. "Scissors" can be used either as a singular or as a plural word, and is often referred to as a pair of.
Source: ArtLex Art Dictionary at www.artlex.com