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.

Paint is made of pigment, powdered color, compounded with a medium or vehicle, a liquid that holds
the particles of pigment together without dissolving them. The vehicle generally acts as or includes a
binder, an ingredient that ensures that the paint, even when diluted and spread thinly, will adhere to
the surface. Without a binder, pigments would simply powder off as the paint dried.

Artists’ paints are generally made to a pastelike consistency and need to be diluted to be brushed freely.
Aqueous media can be diluted with water. Watercolors are an example of an aqueous medium.
Nonaqueous media require some other diluent. Oil paints are an example of a nonaqueous medium;
these can be diluted with turpentine or mineral spirits. Paints are applied to a support, which is the
canvas, paper, wood panel, wall, or other surface on which the artist works. The support may be
prepared to receive paint with a ground or primer, a preliminary coating.

ENCAUSTIC

Encaustic paints consist of pigment mixed with wax and resin. When the colors are heated, the wax
melts and the paint can be brushed easily. When the wax cools, the paint hardens. After the painting is
completed, there may be a final “burning in” as a heat source is passed close to the surface of the
painting to fuse the colors.

FRESCO

With fresco, pigments are mixed with water and applied to a plaster support, usually a wall or a ceiling
coated in plaster. The plaster may be dry, in which case the technique is known as fresco secco, Italian
for “dry fresco.” But most often when speaking about fresco, we mean buon fresco, “true fresco,” in
which paint made simply of pigment and water is applied to wet lime plaster. As the plaster dries, the
lime undergoes a chemical transformation and acts as a binder, fusing the pigment with the plaster
surface.

Fresco is above all a wall-painting technique, and it has been used for large-scale murals since ancient
times. Probably no other painting medium requires such careful planning and such hard physical labor.
The plaster can be painted only when it has the proper degree of dampness; therefore, the artist must
plan each day’s work and spread plaster only in the area that can be painted in one session.

There is nothing tentative about fresco. Whereas in some media the artist can experiment, try out
forms, and then paint over them to make corrections, every touch of the brush in fresco is a
commitment. The only way an artist can correct mistakes or change the forms is to let the plaster dry,
chip it away, and start all over again.

TEMPERA

Tempera shares qualities with both watercolor and oil paint. Like watercolor, tempera is an aqueous
medium. Like oil paint, it dries to a tough, insoluble film. Yet whereas oil paint tends to yellow and
darken with age, tempera colors retain their brilliance and clarity for centuries. Technically, tempera is
paint in which the vehicle is an emulsion, which is a stable mixture of an aqueous liquid with an oil, fat,
wax, or resin. A familiar example of an emulsion is milk, which consists of minute droplets of fat
suspended in liquid. A derivative of milk called casein is one of the many vehicles that can be used to
make tempera colors. The most famous tempera vehicle, however, is another naturally occuring
emulsion, egg yolk. Tempera dries very quickly, and so colors cannot be blended easily once they are set
down. Although tempera can be diluted with water and applied in a broad wash, painters who use it
most commonly build up forms gradually with fine hatching and cross-hatching strokes, much like a
drawing. Traditionally, tempera was used on a wood panel support prepared with a ground of gesso, a
mixture of white pigment and glue that sealed the wood and could be sanded and rubbed to a smooth,
ivorylike finish.

OIL

Oil paints consist of pigment compounded with oil, usually linseed oil. The oil acts as a binder, creating
as it dries a transparent film in which the pigment is suspended. The word “painting” in Western culture
was virtually synonymous with “oil painting.” Only since the 1950s, with the introduction of acrylics, has
the supremacy of oil been challenged.

When oil paints were first introduced, most artists continued working on wood panels. Gradually,
however, artists adopted the more flexible canvas, which offered two great advantages. For one thing,
the changing styles favored larger and larger paintings. Whereas wood panels were heavy and liable to
crack, the lighter linen canvas could be stretched to almost unlimited size. Second, as artists came to
serve distant patrons, their canvases could be rolled up for easy and safe shipment. Canvas was
prepared by stretching it over a wooden frame, sizing it with glue to seal the fibers and protect them
from the corrosive action of oil paint, and then coating it with a white, oil-base ground. Some painters
then applied a thin layer of color over the ground, most often a warm brown or a cool, pale gray.

Unlike tempera, oil paint dries very slowly, allowing artists far more time to manipulate the paint. Colors
can be laid down next to each other and blended softly and seamlessly. They can be painted wet on wet,
with a new color painted into a color not yet dry. They can be scraped away partially or altogether for
revisions or effects. Again unlike tempera, oil paint can be applied in a range of consistencies, from very
thick to very thin.

WATERCOLOR AND GOUACHE

Watercolor consists of pigment in a vehicle of water and gum arabic, a sticky plant substance that acts
as the binder. As with drawing, the most common support for watercolor is paper. Also like drawing,
watercolor is commonly thought of as an intimate art, small in scale and free in execution. Eclipsed for
several centuries by the prestige of oil paints, watercolors were in fact often used for small and intimate
works. Easy to carry and requiring only a glass of water for use, they could readily be taken on sketching
expeditions outdoors and were a favorite medium for amateur artists.

The leading characteristic of watercolors is their transparency. They are not applied thickly, like oil
paints, but thinly in translucent washes. Although opaque white watercolor is available, this is reserved
for special uses. More usually, the white of the paper serves for white, and dark areas are built up
through several layers of transparent washes, which take on depth without ever becoming completely
opaque.
Gouache is watercolor with inert white pigment added. Inert pigment is pigment that becomes colorless
or virtually colorless in paint. In gouache, it serves to make the colors opaque, which means that when
used at full strength, they can completely hide any ground or other color they are painted over. The
poster paints given to children are basically gouache, although not of artist’s quality. Like watercolor,
gouache can be applied in a translucent wash, although that is not its primary use. It dries quickly and
uniformly and is especially well suited to large areas of flat, saturated color.

ACRYLIC

The enormous developments in chemistry during the early 20th century had an impact in artists’
studios. By the 1930s, chemists had learned to make strong, weatherproof, industrial paints using a
vehicle of synthetic plastic resins. Artists began to experiment with these paints almost immediately. By
the 1950s, chemists had made many advances in the new technology and had also adapted it to artists’
requirements for permanence. For the first time since it was developed, oil paint had a challenger as the
principal medium for Western painting.

These new synthetic artists’ colors are broadly known as acrylics, although a more exact name for them
is polymer paints. The vehicle consists of acrylic resin, polymerized (its simple molecules linked into long
chains) through emulsion in water. As acrylic paint dries, the resin particles coalesce to form a tough,
flexible, and waterproof film.

Depending on how they are used, acrylics can mimic the effects of oil paint, watercolor, gouache, and
even tempera. They can be used on both prepared or raw canvas, and also on paper and fabric. They
can be layered into a heavy impasto like oils or diluted with water and spread in translucent washes like
watercolor. Like tempera, they dry quickly and permanently.