MEDIUMS OF ART

Dr. James Loreto C. Piscos

 Medium and Technique
 Various building
Medium in art refers
materials
to theinmaterial
architecture
or
 means
Sound inwhich
musicthe artist uses to objectify
 his feeling
Words or thought.
in literature andThis could be:
 Pigment in painting
 Body movements in the dance
 Stone, wood and metal in sculpture
Examples of Medium
Traditional Classification of Arts
according to Medium
1. Visual or
Space Arts
2. The Auditory
or Time Arts
3. Combined
Arts or
Performing
Arts
1. Visual or Space Arts

 B.
Arts
three-dimensional
whose mediumsarts cansuch
be seen
as and
which occupy
sculpture, architecture,
space. landscaping,
 community
Categories:planning, industrial design and
a.crafts of ceramics arts
Two dimensional and such
furniture making.
as painting,
drawing, printmaking and photography
 2. Auditory or Time Arts
• Arts whose mediums can be heard and
which are expressed in time.
• Categories:
a. Music
b. literature
 3. The Combined Arts
• Arts whose
medium
can be
both seen
and heard
and which
exist both
in space
and time.
 Categories of Combined Arts
1.Dance
2. Drama
3. Opera
4. Movies
• Combined arts is
also known as
performing arts
 Contemporary Categories for Visual Arts
(Main source: Lazzari, Exploring Art, read pp. 12-16)
• 1. Fine Arts
• 2. Popular culture
• 3. Kitsch
• 4. Craft

Theodore Gericault, The Raft of the Medusa. 1819

 FINE ARTS

• Western category
• Supreme achievements
believed to transcend
average human works
• Produced by artists of
unique sensibilities
• What is showcased in the
Museums
Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci
• Historically boxed into
painting, sculpture and
architecture
• Shifting and
deconstructing status quo
starting in 18th century of
the Romanticism down to
the avant-garde in the
20th century (art for art’s
sake)
The Scream
Edvard Munch
 2. Popular Culture: more accessible, inexpensive,
entertaining, commercial, political, naïve,
colorful than fine arts
• Magazines, • Video games
• Comics • Posters
• TV • Websites
• Tourist art • Calendars
• Advertising • Greeting cards
• Folk arts • Dolls, toys
• Tattoo • Movies
• Customized cars • Commercial photography
• graffiti • Photomontage
• collage
 3. Kitsch
• Art of a pretentious
but shallow kind
calculated to have
popular appeal
• Opposite of an
original experience, a
uniquely felt emotion,
thoughtful
introspective moment
used in advertising or
political propaganda
 4. Craft
• Utilitarian purpose
• Includes ceramics,
glass, jewelry,
weaving,
woodworking and
surface decoration as
opposed to image
manipulation
Stonehenge of Southern England
The Artist and His Medium
 Each medium has
 Artist’s choice is inherent limitations
usually influenced and potentials
by the availability
 Instances where artist
of the material
had no choice of
 Artists select the medium: when he/she
material he can has a patron
handle well
 Mediums out the
qualities he wants
to do
The Artist and His Technique
 It is in the use of technique where the artist differs from a
craftsman
 The artist objectifies an original, imagined design and in the
 Technique is an artist’s
process
knowledgeof making his material, he exploits every possibility
of his medium
that
andthehismedium offers, never
skill in making it really knowing his work will turn
out until itwhat
achieve is finished.
he wants it to
Artist and His Technique
 Originality is what  Craftsman unlike artist
distinguishes an art is not free to innovate.
from a craft. He is a mere copyist,
 Craftsman follows the using technique as an
dictates of the designer end in itself.
and is concerned  Artist uses technique as
exclusively with the a means to an end
manipulation of the
material in order to
produce the kind of
product that he is
expected to turn out.
 The Mediums of Visual Art
1. Photography • Photography is drawing
A type of visual art or writing with light.
medium that shows the • Steps:
actual likeness in the 1. Choosing a Subject
actual world. However, 2. Mechanical One
its production may not
3. Chemical Process
involve the artist’s
creativity.
 SOCIAL PHOTOGRAPHY
• Dehumanization
• Marginalization
• Discrimination
• Oppression
• Slavery
• Dominion
• Human rights
violation
 2. Painting
Painting 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.
Pigment supplies the
color, and is made up
of fine powder ground
from some clay, stone
or mineral, extracted
from vegetable matter
or produced by a
chemical process.
• Pigment 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 a vehicle.
 Painting Mediums
1. Encaustic – one of the early
mediums which 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 a cloth. This
gives the wax a soft luster
that heightens its translucent
quality.
• Egyptians, Greeks and
Romans used encaustic to
paint portraits on coffins.
Example of Encaustic Medium
 2. Tempera
• Tempera paints are • In the past, tempera
earth or mineral was often used for
pigments mixed with painting on vellum in
egg yolk and egg white. the production of
Since the paint dries books. Now tempera is
quickly, corrections are normally applied on
difficult to make. Thus, wooden panels
the artist using this carefully surfaced with
medium must plan his gesso, a combination of
design well. gypsum or chalk and
gelatin or glue.
Botticelli, The Birth of Venus,
1482 Tempera
 3. Fresco
• Fresco painting is the • In Asia, the paintings
application of earth are executed on dry
pigments mixed with wall surfaces –what
water on a plaster the Italians call
wall while the plaster Fresco Secco
is damp. Color sinks
into the surface and
becomes an integral
part of the wall.
 Example:
Michangelo’s
Sistine Chapel
ceiling

Sistine Chapel
Last Supper by Leonardo Da Vinci
(Renaissance)
 4. Watercolor
• Watercolor is tempered • The surface of the paper
paint made of pure then shows through,
ground pigment bound giving a delicate,
with gum arabic. Painters luminous texture to the
apply watercolor in thin, painting.
almost transparent films.
 Sunrise
Claude Monet
 Watercolor
• Watercolor painting has Gouache is paint in which
to be done in one setting. the pigment has been
Spontaneity is its very mixed with a chalklike
essence. There can be material. This material
very little or no makes the paint opaque.
corrections made at all
with watercolor.
 5. Oil
• Oil painting is made of • Present-day oil paint is
pigment ground in factory-prepared and
linseed oil applied to comes in tubes. Since it
primed canvas. is rather thick, it has to
• Traditionally, artists be thinned with oils,
either ground their own turpentine or any other
colors or had the work solvent before it is
done by apprentices. applied on canvas.
 Oil
• Oil paint is a very • Sometimes, it is applied
flexible medium. Using smoothly that we are
a brush, an air brush, a not aware of the stroke.
palette knife or even his • Vincent van Gogh’s
bare hands, the artist painting has the
can apply the paint distinctive rhythm and
thinly or thickly as a tremendous vitality
transparent film or an communicated by his
opaque surface. bold strokes.
Vincent van Gogh’s Paintings
The translucent quality • Oil paints are slow to
of oil allows one color dry and the painting
painted underneath can be changed and
another to show worked over a long
through. The direct period of time. When
method of oil dries, it forms a
superimposing tough, glossy film on
transparent layers of the surface.
colors can result in an
exciting mingling of
tones and fine
gradations of light
and dark.
 6. Acrylic
• Synthetic paints using acrylic • Advantages:
polymer emulsions as binder a. They combine the
are the newest mediums and transparency and quick
the ones that are widely used drying characteristics of
by today’s painters. watercolor and the flexibility
of oil
b. Completely insoluble when
dry
c. They can be used in almost
any surface
d. They can be applied thinly
with a water-dipped brush
e. Unlike oil, acrylic do not tend
to crack, turn yellow or
darken with age
 3. Mosaic
• Mosaic Art is related to
painting because it
creates pictures on flat
surfaces. Mosaic are 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.
 Mosaic
• Tesserae are fitted • Modern process, the
together to form a pattern
and glued on a surface
with plaster or cement.
• Traditional mosaic
consisted in embedding
individual tesserae into a
wall of damp mortar,
following a well-planned
design or cartoon.
tesserae are glued with a
special paste to sheets of
paper on which segments
of the whole design have
drawn in reverse. These
sheets are pressed,
tesserae side down
against the wet mortar
freshly applied on the
wall.
 Mosaic
• Mosaic art is an
important feature of
Byzantine churches.
• Example:
• Church of San Vitale,
Ravenna, Italy
• Examples of Mosaic Art
in the Philippines:
• Sta. Cruz Manila
• Victorias Church in
Negros Occidental
 4. Stained Glass
Stained glass
developed as a
major art when
it appeared as
important part
of Gothic
cathedral.

York Minster, 15th Century One of the greatest of all

European cathedrals, this Gothic masterpiece of northern
England incorporates a giant east-facing window that is
the largest expanse of stained glass anywhere before the
modern era.
 Stained Glass
Purposes: • Example of best
1. Enlivened the stained glass in the
tomblike interiors and Philippines:
introduced a bright - Sto. Domingo Church
and warm perspective in Quezon City
2. For religious
instruction and
catechism likes
scenes from the Bible
and lives of saints
Christ of Wissembourg, late 11th Century Stained-glass windows
served as a ‘poor man’s Bible’ in the Middle Ages, allowing believers who could
not read Latin to learn the story of the Gospels. This portrait of Christ, now in a
museum in Strasbourg, France, is believed to have come from a Benedictine
abbey in the north of Alsace, where its somber expression and harsh frontal
gaze would have had a terrific force.
(Cancre/Head of Christ from Wissembourg)
 Chartres Cathedral, early 13th Century Demand for stained glass reached its height in the late
Middle Ages. The cathedral at Chartres, France, features sturdy flying buttresses that allowed for
huge windows, including the glorious rose window detailing the birth of Christ. The density of the
compositions bathes the interior of the cathedral in a deep, colorful glow. (Eusebius/Rosace Nord)
 Sainte-Chapelle, mid-13th Century
To modern viewers stained-glass windows may seem purely decorative, but in the Middle
Ages they illustrated not only biblical narratives but also local history and political authority.
The 15 tall windows of Sainte-Chapelle, on Paris’s central Ile de la Cité, depict tales from
the Old and New Testaments – and also holy relics being brought to Paris by King Louis IX
– now known as Saint Louis. (Michael D Hill Jr/Sainte Chapel Stained glass Interior/)
 5. Tapestry
Tapestries are fabrics • The walls of palaces,
into which colored castles and chapels in
designs have been Eurpe were decorated
woven. in the Middle Ages
with these hanging
arts.
The Unicorn Tapestries, circa 1500 The greatest prizes of the Cloisters, the museum constructed from
five medieval abbeys imported from western Europe to the north of Manhattan, are this suite of seven
tapestries depicting the hunting of a unicorn, probably made in Brussels or Liège five centuries ago.
Yet although scholars have been examining them for years, they remain mysterious: does the unicorn
represent Christ, for example, or are the tapestries a secular celebration of love and marriage? Even
the monogram “AE” that appears on the works has never been deciphered. (Heritage Image
Partnership Ltd /Alamy)
The Rape of Helen, early 17th Century
In the early modern era, the textile trade expanded into a worldwide
enterprise, linking markets and manufactories from Asia to Europe to the New
World. This extraordinary tapestry, in the collection of the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, is a prime example from the early days of
globalisation. Made in China but destined for the Portuguese market, the
cotton weaving is embroidered with silk and gold, and it depicts a scene of
Greek mythology – Helen’s capture by the Trojans – with Sinitic motifs such
as roaring dragons and geometric waves. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art)
 The Devonshire Hunting Tapestries, circa 1440–50
In the medieval period, tapestries had a dual purpose: they did not just
decorate a room, they also insulated it. These Netherlandish tapestries, now in
London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, are believed to have been hung in
Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, owned by the impressive Bess of Hardwick
(1521-1608), who married four times and got richer with each wedding. The
tapestries, which depict pursuits of boars, bears, swans and otters, show
hunting as not just a sport but a courtly endeavor, full of pageantry, fashion and
flirting. (Interfoto/Alamy)
 6. Drawing
• Drawing is the most Popular Types:
fundamental of all skills 1. Sketch –design of a
needed in the arts. All product being planned
designed objects are first 2. Cartoon – full size work
visualized in drawings meant to be a basis for
before they are actually some other work like
made. tapestry
3. Or the finished work
itself
 Mediums of Drawing
1. Pen and Ink 3. Charcoal –
drawings –precisely representing broad
controlled and masses of light and
uniformly wide lines shadow
2. Pastel and chalk – 4. Crayons – pigment
held together with bound by wax and
gum binder and compressed into
compressed with sticks
sticks
 Krzysztof Lukasiewicz
Krzysztof is a pencil artist from Poland. He created fabulous gallery of portraits with 2b,8b
pencils.
 “This is so poignant, and I picked it to show off the range of New Yorker cartoons,”
Mankoff explains. “It doesn’t work like the others, it really has mixed resonance. Mick is a
saxophonist, and the cartoon shows off a barren landscape which is broadly symbolic. It’s
not funny, but to me it’s about life without art. This is something that could only have
appeared in The New Yorker.” Mick Stevens, December 17, 1979.
“This is about the unbridgeable gulf between what each of us wants and how to interpret
another’s feelings,” says Mankoff. “It’s a wonderfully complicated sentence, and we
understand it transfers to the very complicated psychological dimensions that separate
them from each other.” Bruce Eric Kaplan, October 26, 1998.
 7. Printmaking
A graphic image that results • Each print is considered
from a duplicating an original work not a
process. reproduction.

The technique of
printmaking involves the
preparation of a master
image on a plate made of
wood, metal or stone
from which the
impression is taken.
Mediums of
Three
Dimensional
Visual Arts
 Three-dimensional Visual arts
• General Types:
1. Sculpture
2. Architecture
3. Landscaping
4. Community planning
5. Industrial design
6. Crafts like furniture making and ceramics
 1. Sculpture

• A three-
dimensional form
constructed to
represent a
natural or
imaginary shape.
It can be: free
standing, carved
in relief or kinetic
 Types of Sculpture
1. Free-standing or
sculpture in the
round which can be
seen from more than
one position.
This is also termed as
statuary.
2. Carved in Relief
project from a
flat background
3. Mobiles – a kind
of kinetic
sculpture made
of strips of metal,
glass, wood or
plastic arranged
with wires and
hung where they
can be moved.
Traditional Methods in Sculpture
1. Carving
2. Modeling
3. Casting
4. Fabrication
 Methods in Sculpture
1. Carving – a subtractive process that involves removing
unwanted portions of the raw material to reveal the
form that the artist has visualized.
Wood, stone and ivory are materials that can be employed
for this process.
 Methods
2. Modeling – additive process
by means of building the
form using highly plastic
material such as clay or
wax.
3. Casting – a complex
process that begins with
the production of a
negative mold. This mold
consists of 2 or more
tightly fitting parts that
can be taken apart and
reassembled with ease.
When the mold is done it
is then fired. Then it is
allowed to cool and
solidify and the outer
mold is peeled off.
4. Fabrication –an
additive process
that employs
any method of
joining or
fastening such
as nailing,
stapling,
soldering and
welding. In this
process, the
artist builds his
form piece by
piece. He may
even combine
different
materials
together.
 Materials/Medium of Sculpture
4. Metals
1. Wood
2.
- bronze
Stone
-copper
-granite and basalt
-brass
-marble
-gold
-jade
3. Ivory
-silver
-aluminum
and lead
 Materials for Sculpture
5. Plaster – burned limestone
6. Clay –used for ceramics
7. Glass
8. Plastic
9. ice
 2. Architecture
Architecture is the 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.
 Mediums of Architecture
• The
BasicwidePrinciples:
variety of construction naterials
1. Post and lintel – makes use of 2 vertical
supports spanned by a horizontal beam
(lintel)
2. Arch –separate pieces of wedge-shaped
blocks called voussoirs
 Principles…
5. Skeleton
3. Dome – hemispherical
construction –roof
employs
resembling
reinforced
a pingpong
concrete
ball
and
steel – a system of triangular forms assembled into a
4. Truss
6. Centilever
rigid framework
– makesand use
functioning
of a beam or slab extending
horizontally into space beyond its supporting post, yet
strong enough to support walls and floors.