Visual Arts

Medium – in art refers to the material or means which the artist uses to objectify his feeling or
thought, i.e. pigment in painting; stone, wood, and metal in sculpture; various building materials
in architecture; sound in music; words in literature; and body movements in the dance.

Classification of arts according to medium.

1. Visual or Space arts – whose mediums can be seen and which occupy space.
Two categories
a. Two-dimensional arts – painting, drawing, printmaking, photography.
b. Three – dimensional arts- sculpture, architecture, landscaping, community
planning, Industrial design, and the crafts like ceramics and furniture making.
2. Auditory or time arts – those whose medium can be heard and which expressed in time.
i.e. music and literature.
3. Combined arts – those whose mediums can be both seen and heard, and which exist in
both space and time. i.e. dance, drama, opera, and movies. along with music , these are
also known as the performing arts, because each art work is apprehended as a
“happening”. Each requires time in which to occur. These arts depend for their continued
existence on repeated performance.

Painting
- 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.
- Pigment, that part of the paint which supplies the color, is fine powder ground from
some clay, stone or mineral, extracted from vegetable matter, or produced by a
chemical process. It is mixed with a binder, usually a liquid that allows the powder to
be spread over the flat surface until it dries. This substance is called the vehicle.

Painting mediums
1. Encaustic – one of the early mediums, is the application of a mixture of hot beeswax,
resin, and ground pigment to any porous surface, followed by the application of heat to
set the colors and bind them to the ground. When the surface cools, it is polished with
cloth, this gives the wax a soft luster that heightens its translucent quality. Disadvantage
of encaustic is very difficult to prepare. Egyptians, Greek, and Romans used this to paint
portraits on coffins.
2. Tempera – earth or mineral pigments mixed with egg yolk and egg white. Advantage is it
dries fast. Disadvantage is it is difficult to make. Gesso is a combination of gypsum or
chalk and gelatin or glue. Application is painting for vellum (animal skin parchment: high quality
parchment made from calfskin, kidskin, or lambskin)in the production of books
3. Fresco – application of earth pigments mixed with water on a plaster wall while the
plaster is damp. Advantage: the image becomes permanently fixed and lasts as long as
the wall exists. Disavantage: when medium is not mixed with water it easily deteriorates.
4. Watercolor – tempered paint made of pure ground pigment bound with gum Arabic.
Gouache is paint in which the pigment has been mixed with a chalklike material.
Disadvantage: no corrections can be done. Advantage: can be done in one sitting,
spontaneity is its very essence.
5. Oil – pigment ground in linseed oil is applied to primed canvass. Advantage: very flexible
medium can be applied thinly or thickly with a brush, air brush, a palette knife, or even
with bare hands.
 6. Acrylic – synthetic paints using acrylic polymer emulsions as binder are the newest
mediums and the ones that are widely used by today’s painters. Advantages: the
transparency and quick-drying characteristics of watercolor and the flexibility of oil is
combined, completely insoluble when dry, and they can be used on almost any surface,
can be applied thinly with a water-dipped brush or laid on in thick impastos with a knife.

Mosaic
- Made of small cubes or irregularly cut pieces of of colored stone or glass called
tesserae.

Stained Glass
- Introduces a bright and warm atmosphere, highly sophisticated and beautifully
artwork.

Tapestry
- Are fabrics into which colored designs have been woven.

Drawing
- The most fundamental of all skills needed in the arts.
- It may be a study made for the sake of learning how to draw some forms or as a
means of investigating a particular detail of what may eventually become a larger
composition.
- It may be a sketch showing the general organization or design of a product being
planned.
- Can be done with various medium such as pencil, the lead (graphite) comes in
various hardness, Ink, Pastel and chalk, charcoal, crayons, and silverpoint.

Printmaking
- A print is a graphic image that results from a duplicating process. Technique involves
the preparation of the master image on a plate made of wood, metal, or stone from
which the impression is taken.
Four Major processes involved in printmaking.
1. Relief printing – subtractive process, involves cutting away from block of wood or
linoleum the portion of the design to stand out on the block. i.e. stamp pad.
2. Intaglio printing – opposite of the relief printing, the design is scratched, engraved,
or etched into a metal plate. i.e. nameplate
3. Planographic process – or surface printing – done from an almost smooth surface
which has been treated chemically or mechanically so that some areas will print and
others will not. i.e. calendar.
4. Stencil process – done by cutting designs out of special paper, cardboard or metal
sheet in such a way that when ink is rubbed over it the design is reproduced on the
surface beneath. i.e. test papers and books

Photography
- Drawing with light, an actual likeness of the object unlike in painting or drawing, the
production of which may not actually involve an artist’s creativity.

Sculpture
- A three dimensional form constructed to represent a natural or imaginary shape.
Traditional methods employed in sculpture
 1. Carving – subtractive process, involves removing of unwanted portions of the raw
material to reveal the form that the artist has visualized.
2. Modeling – additive process, it means building the form, using high plastic materials
such as the clay or wax.
3. Casting – can faithfully reproduce in bronze or other metals the spontaneity achieved
in the modeling process.
4. Fabrication – additive process, employs a method of joining or fastening, such as
nailing, stapling, soldering, and welding

Architecture
- Art of designing, and constructing a building which will serve a definite function,
ranging from providing the simplest shelter to meeting the technological demands of
our modern cities.

Vocal Colors
Female singing voice.
A. Soprano (Italian sopra, “above”), highest female voice. The normal range of the
soprano is about two octaves, generally with its lowest note at middle C, although
many sopranos exceed these limits. Sopranos are classified as dramatic, lyric, or
coloratura.
1. Dramatic soprano has a powerful and theatrical voice;
2. Lyric soprano, a lighter, smoothly flowing voice;
3. Coloratura soprano, an extremely flexible and light voice capable of
performing highly ornamented virtuoso passages such as trills and runs.
4. boy soprano, The similar unchanged boy's voice. Male sopranos who were
castrated as boys in the 18th century in order to keep their soprano voices
were known as castrati.
5. mezzo-soprano is used for a female voice that has a range between the
soprano and contralto, the lowest female singing voice. The term soprano
also denotes the highest in range of a family of instruments, such as the
soprano saxophone.

B. Mezzo-soprano (Italian mezzo, “middle,”sopra, “above”) in Western music, a

female voice that lies in range between soprano and alto. Its range extends from
below middle C to nearly two octaves (interval of eight notes between two tones)
above middle C. Most untrained voices fall into intermediate ranges such as
mezzo-soprano.

An outstanding mezzo-soprano voice has a rich and full quality and is considered
effective in transmitting a sense of dramatic power and deep emotion. A number
of composers have written music specifically for the mezzo-soprano voice. In
opera, the best-known parts for the voice include Princess Eboli in Don Carlos
(1867) and Amneris in Aïda (1871), both by Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi.
Also composed for a mezzo-soprano is the title role in Carmen (1875), by French
composer Georges Bizet.
 C. Alto or Contralto lowest of the three principal ranges of voice found in women or
young boys. The contralto has a range of about two octaves upward from E or F
below middle C. Originally the term also was applied in choral music to the
highest male voice, the countertenor, or male alto. In modern times it generally
refers to the vocal part below the soprano part of a musical composition;
contralto is the term for the voice or the performer. Today women who have a
rich, weighty quality in the lower register are called contraltos. In combination
with the name of an instrument (alto trombone, alto saxophone), the word alto
denotes an instrument with a range just below the highest range reached by that
family of instruments. The alto clef is the C clef, so placed as to indicate that
middle C is on the third line of the staff.
Male singing voice.
A. Tenor, highest natural adult male voice, having an approximate range of two
octaves, starting usually at C below middle C.

Two classes of tenor are generally recognized

1. Tenore robusto - The dramatic tenor (“robust tenor”), with a quality in
its lower register that resembles that of the baritone, and the lighter
and more agile lyric tenor.
a. Heldentenor - less common tenor voices, (German Held, “hero”), a
dramatic voice naturally powerful enough to project over the large
orchestras required for some German operas;
2. Countertenor, or male alto, a light voice above and overlapping the
normal tenor range, which can be produced either by falsetto or by full-
voice singing by a tenor having a very high range.

The term tenor is derived from the Latin tenere (“to hold”). In medieval
music the tenor part was so named because it “held” the basic melodic
line, known as the cantus firmus, to which the other voices furnished
countermelodies.

B. Baritone, a voice range and a wind instrument. The baritone voice is the male
singing voice intermediate between the bass and the tenor, having a normal
compass of about two octaves upward from the second A below middle C.

The instrument called a baritone is brass, with a cup mouthpiece, a conical bore, three
valves, and the same general range as the trombone. The term baritone is often also
applied to similarly pitched brass instruments such as the euphonium, which has a
narrower bore and four or five valves, and the tenor horn, which is a three-valved
relative of the cornet.

C. Bass (voice) (Latin basis, “base, foot, pedestal”; influenced by French basse and
Italian basso), deepest, or lowest, male singing voice. The normal range of the
 bass voice is about two octaves, with its lowest note usually an octave and a
sixth below middle C. Trained basses can reach notes considerably lower and
higher; for example, the contrabass (an especially deep voice developed
principally in Russia) can range nearly an octave below the normal lowest note.

Basses classification

1. basso profondo (Italian, “deep bass”), a powerful, low-ranging voice.

2. basso cantante (Italian, “singing bass”), a voice with a well-developed upper

range.

3. basso buffo (Italian, “comic bass”), an agile voice suited to comic operatic
roles. A bass baritone combines both basso profondo and basso cantante
qualities, with a slightly higher than normal range.

The term bass also is used for the normally lowest-pitched member of a family of
instruments, for example, the bass clarinet; a contrabass instrument has a range below
the usual bass member of the family. Bass also denotes the lowest part in a musical
composition.