Materials and Techniques

abrupt value change

Sudden changes from light to dark created by sharp edges or grooves on objects.

Acrylics

Acrylic polymer emulsion paint are permanently flexible, can be thinned into glazes ilke oils, but have unchanging color. 
Acrylic paints are very versatile.  They can be applied thick or thin in any sequence, need little surface preparation, are cheaper than oils, and require no toxic or flammable materials.  Their ease of working and cleaning up with water make them practical as well as exciting to use.  When the water suspension evaporates, the acrylic plastic resin binder becomes a permanent, protective shield for the pigments.

additive sculpture

Sculpture made by the accumulation of individual elements by gluing, nailing, screwing, stapling, etc.

Alla prima

When artists use this method of painting, they must work to achieve their final effect from the beginning, or “all at once,” so they must work quickly.  Typically, the bristles of the brush, or the movement of a small sponge, drags still-wet colors into one another creating interesting blends of color.

Alloys

Metals made from a mixture of other metals.  The most well-known alloy in sculpture is bronze, an alloy of copper and tin.

Analogous colors

On the color wheel, important color relationships can be determined.  The two most important are Analogous and Complementary colors.  Analogous colors are those next to one another and usually produce a harmonious color scheme.

art a la grecque

Literally, “in the Greek style,”  this referred to the Neo-Classic style’s emphasis on “the noble simplicity and quiet grandeur” of Greek sculpture.

Atelier

The studio or workshop of a master artist is referred to by the French word, “atelier.”  The atelier system was established by the guilds of the Middle Ages to provide artistic training for students or apprentices who lived and worked in the master’s workshop, learning all aspects of the artist’s craft.  Eventually, having learned enough skills, the student/apprentice would work on parts of the master’s commissions.

Atmospheric perspective

Using this method, the artist imitates the effect of the haziness of the atmosphere to create a sense of distance.  In atmospheric perspective, objects that are supposedly closer to the viewer, stand out cleary with bright, warmer colors, while objects further away are more blurred, hazy and cooler in color.

Binder

A liquid substance that holds powdered pigment particles in suspension so they can be spread onto a surface.

Broken value

When surfaces are uneven they break up light.  Thus, through broken, fragmented patches of light and dark, we perceive texture.

Brushes

Painting brushes can be of either natural hair (hog bristles or sable tail), synthetic ibers, or a mix of tehse.  Common brush types are the round, filbert, flat, and bright.

Canvas and easels

A heavy, sturdy fabric, usually of cotton or linen, used as a support for oil and acrylic painting. Canvas is lighter than the wooden panels that had been used for painting, and since it was more portable and could reach larger dimensions, it gained favor around the 1500s.  Because canvases were lighter, easels could be used for support rather than heavy tables.

Carving

A subtractive process whereby the sculptor roughs out the general geometric masses of the artwork, being sure to leave the parts that project the further.  Next successive layers are cut away creating the general shapes.  It is important to realize that the basic shapes of the forms are ordered from the outside in.  The sculptor must always have a clear vision of the total finished form, since any material mistakenly carved away cannot be reattached.

Cast

There are several meanings for this word.  It can refer to something that is formed by pouring material like metal or plaster into a mold or form. The cast I what gives the substitution method its other name.  In that method, a shape is given to a substance by pouring in liquid or plastic into a mold and letting it harden without pressure.  Casting is a highly skilled process, and metal casting is usually done by a professional foundry because of the cost of the necessary equipment.

Charcoal

There are various types of charcoal used in art.  Compressed charcoal is much more dense and black than, for example, vine charcoal. 

Vine charcoal comes from thin wooden sticks, or willow or berry vines which have been heated in an oven until only dry carbon remains. Because vine charcoal sticks have not been mixed with a binder, they have an even, soft texture and rub off easily.  That’s why they are  favored for sketching out the composition of paintings. 

Since vine charcoal can be messy and hard to work with for drawings, compressed charcoal is more frequently used.  Compressed sticks are made by grinding charcoal and mixing it with a binder.  This mixture is then compressed into sticks making them much denser for rich, dark areas of value.  Manufactured charcoal is available in a range of hardness and also can be found in more convenient pencil form.

Clay

Certain types of soil are amazingly malleable (pliable).  Depending on how much moisture it contains, clay can be chiseled, scraped and scratched when very dry, or poured into molds when it is very liquid.  There are many grades of clay, from fine porcelains to coarse terra cottas.  They range in colors too, from pure white to reds, yellows and browns.  Some clays are more appropriate for sculpture than others.  Artists in the past have guarded their high-quality clay beds and kept their location secret.  Besides being malleable, clay also becomes permanently hard through a proce4ss called firing.  When it is heated in the kiln, it loses al its water, and  becomes nearly imperishable.

Closed composition

In sculpture, this refers to works that reflect the block of material from which the object was carved.  The mass of the sculpture is not penetrated by the volume or space arount it, nor is the surrounding space penetrated by the mass of the sculpture.

Contour drawing

A technique using a line to difine the edge of an object creating the illusion of mass.  Contour drawing is a simple yet elegant style of drawing.

Cross-hatching

A drawing and printmaking technique that lays down a series of parallel lines at angles on top of a previously drawn set of parallel lines.  By bulding up layers of cross hatches, the artist can achieve a great variety of densities of valueand achieve illusions of three-dimensions.

Cut-outs

A method used by Henri Matisse after a serious illness left him often bedridden and unable to paint at an easel.  Instead, he occupied himself with this totally new way of working by cutting out shapes from brilliantly colored sheets of paper and arranging them on canvas, paper, even the walls of his apartment with an unerring sense of design.  These cut-outs were then reproduced in book form, as prints, book illustrations, or even stained glass panels.

Fiberglass

This material contains tiny, fine filaments of glass embedded in resins.  It can be shaped into an infinite variety of forms.

Foundry

This is a workshop that produces castings from molten metal.  Because of the often elaborate and costly equipment and specific techniques involved, sculptors often use professional foundries to create their final artworks.

Gesso

This plaster-like preparation, usually made of extremely frine-grained plaster and rabbit skin glue, is applied to a suitable surface like panel or canvas, preparing it for painting.  Each of several coats is allowed to dry and is then anded for a smooth finish.

Glazing

Thin, transparent films of color applied one on top of another to intensify or modify each other.  See Old Master’s Technique.

Glycerin

A type of binder that, combined with water, allows particles of pigment to be held in suspension. See tempera

Graphite

Graphite is a form of carbon that has a greasy texture.  You can get it in sticks or powdered forms, which, added to benzene or turpentine, can be dissolved to create a liquid wash.  Drawing a line with a pencil lays down a series of crystalline plates that form a shiny surface.  The hardness of the pencil is varied by changing the amount of clay added to the graphite.  The more clay, the harder the pencil.

Gum Arabic

This material is a soluble gum obtained from several species of acacia trees grown in Africa, India, and Australia.  The watery gum exudes from the trees in a mucilaginous form and is then boiled.  The best gum is white or colorless and translucent.  It is used in a variety of applications, and in paints it acts as a stabilizing emulsion.

Hard-edged painting

Crisp, abrupt changes between colors that convey a mechanical rather than hand-painted effect.  Its opposite is the painterly approach which emphasizes the loose application of color, paint stroke and texture.

Hatching

A method of shading a drawing or engraving by using fine lines to create the illusion of three-dimensions.  Artists use it to create value (shading, tone) using parallel lines.  Variations include cross-hatching and scribbge hatch.

Impasto

A painting technique in which the paint is laid on thickly, usually with a palette knife, or sometimes directly out of the tube.

Imprimatura

This dreawing technique uses a middle value placed over the canvas, panel or paper, as a ground.  The drawing or painting then proceeds by adding lights and darks to build up the images, thus creating the illusion of three-dimensions and texture.  See also verdaccio.

India ink

Also known as Chinese Ink, this dense black drawing medium is made by mixing lampblack (soot) with glue.

Kiln

A large oven in which pottery is fired to a temperature high enough to change its chemical make-up and prevent it from returning to clay.

Ladder perspective

Ladder perspective places closer objects toward the bottom of the picture plane, and receding elements move up the surface of the picture plane.  Essentially, “what goes up goes back.”

Linear perspective

In linear perspective, the illusion of deep space is created by the mathematical and geometric means.  Using vertical, horizontal and diagonal intersecting lines, an artist can create imaginary yet mathematically calculable space.  With this system, parallel lines or edges of objects that move away from the viewer appear to converge as they move into the distance towards “vanishing points.”

Linseed oil

An oil made by pressing flax seed.  It is the most common binder medium for oil paints because of its slow drying time, but poppyseed and nut oils have also been used.

Lithography

A printing process done on a flat stone that capitalizes on the repulsion between Greece and water.  The artist draws with greasy crayon, then water and printing ink are successively applied.  The greasy marks repel water but absorb the greasy ink thus making an impression.

Local color

This term refers to the color of an object as it normally appears in nature.  Using non-local colors for objects is a technique by which artists can shock the viewer into new ways of thinking and seeing.

Maquette

A small version of the proposed finished sculpture.  A maquette acts as a scuptor’s three-dimensional sketch.  Most often artists use a small maquette to get an idea of what the finished work will look like.  This is how an artist will be sure that no necessary pieces are mistakenly chiseled away.

Middle value

That value midway between lightest light and darkest dark.

Multiple views

Sculpture is three-dimensional and often allows the viewer to move around the object.  Hence, the artist must consider a variety of viewpoints to afford the viewer interesting compositions all around the object.

Neon

A rare, colorless, and inert gaseous chemical element, found in small quantities in the earth’s atmosphere and used by artists in tubing, gas lasers, etc.  Although we call the light derived from exciting the gas with electricity “neon,” the various colors artists can use are actually created by other gases like argon and krypton.

Oil paint

A painting medium in which particles of pigments are suspe4nded in a medium of oil, usually linseed oil. The slow drying time of oils allows the artist to make many corrections and additions.  Thinning the paint with more inseed oil and/or turpentine allows the artist to create delicate transparent layers for a high degbree of detail and luminescence.  There are basically two qualities of oil paint—artist’s colors and student’s colors, and they are graded by the amount and quality of the pigments, how finely they are ground, and how much extender is used.

Oils

In painting, linseed, poppy or safflower are the most frequently used oils as binding mediums.  In order to paint in oils, artists much make the thick oil paints less dense by mixing more medium into the oil colors on a flat surface called a palette.  They mix binders into the color and create new colors b y blending using palette knives with varying sizes and shapes of blades.

Old master’s technique

This technique of oil painting demands much preparation.  The initial sketch is applied to the canvas then covered with one color (monotone) with all its light and dark values, to crate the illusion of three-dimensions in all the objects.  The picture is then virtually complete except for its color.  The color is applied using thin, transparent glazes.  Each glaze layer must dry before the next is applied.  The artist must also be careful to keep the glazes thin so that underlying layers continue to show through.  The thin layer of glazes is modified from light to dark by the underlying monochrome under-painting that continues to show through.

Painterly

A method of painting which emphasizes the loose application of color, paint stroke and texture.  See its opposite technique, hard-edged painting.

Parallel hatching

A method of drawing or printmaking alternatively known as hatching.

Pastels (soft pastels, oil pastels and oil painting sticks)

Pastels are a dry drawing medium which uses colored pigments combined with chalk and pressed into sticks.  Pastels allow artists to draw with color.  There are over 500 colors and values of pastels available to allow artists to create a “painted drawing.”  Because they can be used to create lines, but also add color at full intensity, pastels are difficult to classify.  You can make your own pastels by mixing pigments with chalk and pressing it into sticks.

Pen

This tool can be as simple as the quill of a lrge bird, or a reed from the garden.  Metal points, or nibs, have varying sharpness and shapes.

Perspective

To create the illusion of three-dimension (space) on a flat, two-dimensional surface like a canvas or a wall, artists use many illusionistic techniques.  See ladder perspective, linear perspective and atmospheric perspective.

Photo-mechanical reproduction

A printing method that used light and photo-sensitive emulsions to reproduce images.  The process worked best with crisp black and white.  Gradations of value had to be achieved by varying black ink using stippling and hatching techniques.

Pigment

The coloring matter of paint.  Materials from natural sources or from chemical synthesis are finely ground.  When combined with a binder, usually oil, egg yolk, acrylic resin or gum Arabic, it becomes paint.

Pigmental color system

This is a system for understanding important relationships between man-made colors created by mixing pigments with binders.  A simple example is the Color Wheel.  When referring to the color found in pure white light, we use the Prismatic color system.

post and lintel system

A basic building principle in which two vertical uprights support a horizontal beam or slab. (See also cromlech and dolmen.)

Primary colors

The tree colors from which all others can be mixed in the pigmental color system:  red, yellow and blue.

Prismatic color system

This is a color system based upon the colors created by pure white light as opposed to the man-made colors made with pigments.  See pigmental color system.

Scribbling

This is a drawing or printmaking technique that uses a random build-up of multi-directional lines to create value and the illusion of three-dimensions and textures.

Sculpture

The expressive arranging of three-dimensional forms.  For thousands of years this method of producing three-dimensional figures was limited to carving and modeling.  The ancient Greeks established a tradition of sculpture based upon “ideals” or proportion.  Harmony, balance, and realism dominated much of sculpture in the Western world until the “discovery” of tribal art in the late 19^th century.  Tribal sculpture favored abstracted forms, often simplified into basic shapes, and inspired innovative artists who were searching for an alternative approach away from traditional  style.

Today’s sculpture, however, ;is not limited to carving and modeling, nor traditional sculptural materials.  Of all the artists, sculptors have the greatest challenges because of the vastness of the materials and techniques available to them.  Sculptors have an enormous range of materials that have allowed their works to be larger, lighter and stronger.  New materials and techniques have  also allowed them to engage space more daringly, and even allowed sculpture to go into motion.  Whatever the material or technique the artist chooses, it will dictate the kinds of objects he or she can make.  By understanding their materials and techniques, artists can use the right ones to express their ideas.

Scumbling

This painting technique is the opposite of glazing in the Old Master’s Technique.  Here opaque layers of paint are applied wet on wet so that the lower layer is not obliterated, but shows through or is dragged into the color on top.  This creates a broken, uneven effect upon the surface.  Scumbling is often very much a part of the all prima style of painting.

series painting

A method artists use to study a sequence or group of similar, related things.  For Monet, series painting allowed him to study the sequence of color changes at different times of day.  His famous series paintings included subjects of Rouen Cathedral, haystacks, poplar trees and train stations.  For Cezanne his series paintings focused on the depiction of three-dimensional objects on the two-dimensional surface and varying points of view.

Shadow

The dark shape visible on a surface when an object blocks light.  Shadows vary in their size and length depending on the relationship between the object and light source.  Impressionist artists always used the complementary color of an object in the color of its shadow.

Silverpoint

Popular in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, this drawing technique is done using a silver wire encased in wood, much like a modern pencil.  The silver-gray indelible mark is made upon paper coated with opaque white. Gold or lead were used in place of silver. The subtle, indelible, delicate line of silverpoint demands much control from the draftsman.

Solvent

A solvent dissolves or disperses substances.  The most widely used solvent, or medium, in painting is a combination of linseed oil, which comes from the flax plant, and turpentine, distilled from the resin of pine trees.  It is important to mix the right balance of oil paint, linseed oil and turpentine in order for the paint to adhere best to the painting surface.  Turpentine alone is an excellent thinner and solvent, and is especially useful to clean brushes. 

The primary solvent for acrylics, watercolor, gouache and tempera paints is water.  Acrylic paint is generally non-removable when it’s dry, but some might be lifted off with isopropyl alcohol or acetone.

Stippling

With this technique, artists paint, draw, engrave, or apply their medium in small points or dots rather than in lines or solid areas.

Stippling

With this technique, artists paint, draw, engrave, or apply their medium in small points or dots rather than in lines or solid areas.

Stretched canvas

The stretched canvas is a good, flexible surface that responds to the pressure of the artist’s brush or palette knife.  Canvas is lighter than the wooden panels that had been used for painting, and since it was more portable and could reach larger dimensions, it gained favor around the 1500s.  Because canvases were lighter, easels could be used for support rather than heavy tables, and paintings could be more easily be transported from one place to another.

Synthetic resins

During the 1930’s these paint ingredients replaced natural resins used in paints and varnishes.  Most important to the artists are acrylic resins, most popular of all the plastics.  In solid form we know it as Plexiglas.  When emulsified, it is the milky liquid used as the basis for acrylic paints.  It is clear, non-yellowing and fast-drying.  The types of synthetic polymers most widely employed as paint vehicles are alkyd resins.

Tempera

A water-based paint combined with a binder of egg yolk, glycerin, casein, or gum binders. The wall paintings of ancient Egypt and Babylonia, and of the Mycenaean period in Greece, were probably executed in tempera with a medium of egg yolk, to which a little vinegar was sometimes added.  The use of tempera subsequently became widespread throughout Europe and reached its height in Early Renaissance Italy.

Tertiary colors

These colors are produced by an equal mixture of a primary color with a secondary color adjacent to it on the color wheel.  The term can also refer to a color produced by mixing two secondary colors.

Three-dimensional

An object is three-dimensional when it has length, width and depth.  We use this phrase to describe sculpture and architecture.  Sculpture needs no illusionism like two-dimensional drawing, painting or printmaking. 

Vanishing points

Wherever one looks, several common visual phenomena can be obsereved:  objects seem to diminish in size as they recede from the eye; parallel lines appear to converge toward a distant point; lines known to be horizontal assume various angles.  In short, the appearance of objects differs from reality.  These lines, although actually parallel in space, appear to converge at the horizon.  The point of convergence is called the vanishing point, often abbreviated as VP.

Verdaccio

This term refers to the green-earth pigment early Italian painters used as their underpainting as they prepared to create three-dimensional effects.  The underpaint helped the artist colve problems of drawing and tone before applying the final color.  The final color was painted over the monochrome veerdaccio in several thin, transparent layers.  Because this foundation painting was done in varying values of one color, it is also termed monochrome painting.  If done in gray or neutral tones, it is also called grisaille (“gree-sigh”)

Wash

This term refers to a large, thinned layer of color often applied rapidly with a wide brush.  In watercolor, a wash is often used to define the sky, large expanses of land, or to block in major forms.

Watercolors

The medium of watercolor became a serious medium for the artist in the 16^th century.  Watercolor did not become immediately accepted because it is a sophisticated and demanding medium that needs planning and restraint.

White areas had to remain the white of the paper, and all tinted colors are made by diluting them with water, not white paint.  A favorite quality of watercolors is their sparkle achieved from leaving the brilliant white of the paper show through the thin transparent veils of color.

The white paper ground also causes the thin paints to have greater luminosity since light is reflected off the white surface, back to the viewer’s eyes.  Watercolors, however, remain water-soluble forever which means that they are susceptible to moisture.