Medium and Technique in Art

• Medium refers to the materials utilized by an artist.
• Technique is the artist's manipulation of the medium for a desired effect.
• Combined arts use mediums that can be seen and heard, existing in space and time.
• Painting involves creating meaningful effects on a flat surface using pigments.
• Architecture is the art of designing and constructing structures.
• Sculpture involves constructing figures or assembling material modules.

Medium and Technique

• Medium, derived from the Latin word "medium", is how an artist communicates ideas, using materials to express feelings or thoughts.
• Architects use materials like wood, bamboo, bricks, stone, and concrete.
• Painters use pigments on surfaces like wood or canvas.
• Sculptors use materials like steel, marble, bronze, metal, and wood.
• Musicians use sound and instruments and literary writers use words.
• The medium is essential in arts.

Visual and Auditory Arts

• Arts are classified as visual and auditory based on the medium used.
• Visual arts, whose mediums occupy space, are grouped into dimensional and two-dimensional forms like painting, drawing, and photography.
• Three-dimensional arts include sculpture, architecture, community planning, industrial designs, and crafts.
• Auditory arts like music and literature are expressed over time while combined arts like dance, opera, drama, and movies exist in both space and time.
• All arts convey meaning through either visual or auditory senses.
• Technique involves how an artist controls the medium to achieve the desired effect.
• Technique is the ability to fulfill technical requirements and manipulate the medium to express ideas.

The Artist and Medium

• Artists shape their visions using a medium they believe best conveys their ideas and often employ multiple media.
• Selecting a medium is part of the artistic inspiration, and an artist usually chooses materials that are easy to handle and suit their plan.
• Artists respect the medium and believe it enhances their artwork.
• A medium's distinctive character determines how it can be worked and turned into an artwork.
• Stone must be chiseled, metal cast, and wood carved, with each medium responding to the artwork's needs.
• Each medium's characteristics determine the physical appearance of the finished art, determining how fine the details of art can be.
• A smooth, glossy finish can be achieved by using wood with varnish
• Stone and marble can withstand the test of time.

The Artist and Technique

• Artists differ in technique, even when using the same medium.
• A musician's technique manipulates sound, while a sculptor handles tools to produce a desired effect and a pianist interprets musical composition.
• Technique differs across art forms such that a painter can be excellent in watercolor but poor in oil.
• The distinction between art and craft lies in the technique used with technique being a means to an end for an artist
• Technique is the end itself for a craftsman.
• Creativity plays a role in sculpture, distinguishing art from craft, even though both require technique, knowledge, and competence

Mediums of the Visual Arts

• Visual arts are perceived with our eyes, the most common being painting, sculpture, and architecture.

Painting

• Painting creates meaningful effects on a flat surface using pigments.
• Different mediums are used in painting, each exerting a strong effect on the finished product and determining its stroke.
• Pigments are applied to wet plaster, canvas, wood, or paper.

Watercolor

• Watercolor is a difficult medium characterized by brilliance and a wide range of hues, inviting clear spontaneity
• Changes to the paint may reduce the color's luminosity, but artists can rectify with specific techniques.
• Gouache is an opaque watercolor method utilizing whitepaper to create a somber appearance.
• Gouache is made by mixing zinc white with watercolor paints.

Fresco

• In fresco, painting is done on moist plaster with colors ground in water or a limewater mixture.
• As colors dry, the picture becomes part of the wall and must be done quickly.
• The moment paint is applied makes Fresco an exacting medium
• Once the paint has been applied, the image becomes fixed and almost impossible to remove.
• Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam" in the Sistine Chapel ceiling is an example of fresco painting.

Tempera Paints

• Tempera paints consist of mineral pigments that are mixed with egg yolk or white and ore,
• Tempera is commonly used as binders because of their film-forming and rapid-drying properties, but presents the difficulty of correction.
• Temper is more deliberate than oil in technique because it does not possess the flexibility of oil.
• Tempera was a favorite medium of many painters throughout the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, being usually done on wooden panels smoothed with plaster called "gesso" (chalk and gum).
• Tempera requires precision from the artist because it dries quickly, rendering corrections difficult and is known for its luminous, clear colors.

Pastel

• Pastel is made of pigment round with chalk and gum water and is a stick of dried paste.
• Pastels are luminous and flexible but difficult to preserve and have never won a prize.
• To preserve pastels, some artists use a fixing medium or a protective surface, such as glass; however, when the chalk rubs, the picture loses some of its brilliance.

Encaustic

• Encaustic is an early medium employed by Egyptians for portraits on mummy cases.
• Encaustic is painting with wax colors fixed with heat.
• The use of wax produces luster and radiance.

Oil Painting

• Oil Painting is one of the most expensive art activities because of the prohibitive cost of materials.
• Oil paints are the heaviest of painting media, that admit corrections and allows much working over.
• Pigments are mixed with linseed oil and applied to the canvas.
• Flexibility is one good quality of oil paints.
• An artist uses a brush, palette knife, or bare hands to apply oil paints to the canvas.
• Oil paints dry slowly, and the painting can be changed and worked over for an extended duration and typically is glossy and long lasting.

Acrylic

• Acrylic is popular among contemporary painters for its transparency, quick-drying characteristics, and flexible nature like oil paint
• Synthetic paint is mixed with acrylic emulsion for coating artwork surfaces
• Acrylic paints do not tend to break easily when compared to other oil paints, which turn yellowish or darker over durations of time

Mosaic Art

• Mosaic art is a picture or decoration made of tesserae (small pieces of inlaid colored stones or glass, cut into squares) that are glued on a surface with plaster or cement.
• Mosaic is usually classified as painting even though the medium used is not strictly pigment.
• Mosaic art is a feature of Byzantine churches.
• The altar of the church of Sta. Cruz in Manila has religious mosaic art.

Stained Glass Art

• Stained Glass is a common artwork in Gothic cathedrals and churches.
• Stained Glass is made by combining small pieces of colored glass held together by lead bands and is a kind of patchwork.
• HEavy iron bars reinforce the lead which creates heavy black lines in large windows.
• The stained glass pictures reflect saints' lives, serving as religious instruction.

Tapestry

• Tapestry is a fabric made of colored threads woven on a warp to produce designs, pictorials, wall hangings, and furniture covers.
• Tapestries provided warmth and were displayed on the walls of palaces and cathedrals during festive occasions in the Middle Ages.

Drawing

• Drawing is usually done on paper using pencil, pen and ink, or charcoal
• Drawings are fundamental skills necessary in art.
• Drawing is a good training activity for artists because of its concentration on using lines, and also shading can be used to make drawings more lifelike.
• Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is known for drawings of animals, birds, and ideas for flying machines.
• The most common drawing medium is pencil, and the degree of hardness and softness will depend on artist's preference or the kind of drawing expected.
• Hard pencil leads are good for line work, and soft pencils work well with granular surfaces because they invite effects of mass and texture of gray.
• Ink, one of the oldest mediums in the art medium, can be used to create qualities depending on the tools and techniques.
• India ink is liquid and is a favored choice of comic strip illustrators and cartoonists.
• Chinese ink comes in solid sticks that are dissolved in water before they are used.
• Bistre is a brown pigment extracted from wood soot, and is used in pen and wash drawings.
• Crayons are pigments bound by wax and compressed into painted sticks used for drawing.
• Crayons are especially common with children, and they adhere to paper surfaces better.
• Charcoal consists of carbonaceous material obtained by heating wood or organic substances without oxygen.
• Charcoal is used to represent broad masses of light and shadow.
• Soft charcoal produces the darkest value, with drawing pencils, while the darkest produces the lightest tone.
• Silverpoint is a specialized technique where a silver stylus is used on prepared paper to produce thin grayish lines.
• The silverpoint medium was popular within the Renaissance period.

Printmaking

• Printmaking involves printing on a surface that directly results from the duplicating process.
• Graphic images or paintings are commonly done in black ink on white paper to serve as the artist's plate.
• Printmaking makes many copies of the original drawing.
• Printmaking is an independent art.

Types of Printmaking

• There are five major types of prints: woodcuts, engraving, relief, intaglio, and stencil process.
• Each print is distinguished by the plate used to make it.
• Woodcut involves removing the remaining surface off of a piece of wood, with the design standing as relief.
• Woodcuts print just as a typewriter's letters, and the lines of the wood design, being made from wood, aren't fine, identified by firm, clear, and black lines.
• Engraving is the art of forming designs by cutting and corrosion by acids.
• The lines are cut into a metal plate which has ink and is transferred to the paper.
• Engraving is done by hand with a burin, which is a steel tool with an oblique point and rounded handle designed for carving stone and engraving metal.
• Since the copper plate is hard to cut, the resulting lines are finely detailed.
• Etching is a development of engraving, where a copper or zinc plate is covered with a ground- a coating of wax mixed with pitch and amber- after which the artist scratches ground and puts the plate in acid, which etches picture into plate.
• For relief artwork, cutting away wood or linoleum from a block leaves the design to be seen.
• Colour prints are made by preparing separate blocks for each colour and precision is required.
• Intaglio artwork involves engraving the design or text into the surface of the place, and the ink is transferred.
• Typically, this is done with a metal late, with the line incised and filled with ink under pressure which leaves a sharp impression.
• Stencil printing is done by highschool students and involves cutting a design on paper, metal, or cardboard to reproduce through rubbing ink over it.

Sculpture

• Selecting a subject for sculpture depends on the desired material, which presents a challenge to the sculptor's creativity.
• Stone is a hard, brittle substance formed from minerals and earth, used for headstones in cemeteries.
• There are many examples of stones like sandstone, granite, basalt, marble, and limestone.
• Granite, which is an igneous rock comprised of feldspars and quartz, is quite difficult to chisel, but good for large work.
• Egyptian pharaohs were mostly sculpted out of granite.
• Marble is a fine-texture limestone useful for polishing and there are many varieties like brecciated which has angular stone fragments.
• Serpentine is also a finer stone marble preferred for its variegated patterns used in large flat planes and is relatively softer.
• Limestone has a fine, even texture with colors that range from light cream to buff, and from light gray to a darker, bluish-gray that lends carving very well.
• Jade is a fine and often green stone, used as a fashionable and ornamental stone for carvings and jewelry in ancient china.
• Jade represents virtues like faithfulness, wisdom, and charity.
• Ivory, derived from elephant tusks, is a hard white substance used for carvings and billiard balls.
• Ivory faces and hands are used on images of saints in wealthy Filipino homes.
• Metals are a class of elementary substances that are solid, crystalline, and known for capacity, ductility, conductivity, and luster when fractured

Metals

• Ductile metals can be transformed into fine wires and threads and can be shaped without breaking.
• Copper, brass, bronze, gold, silver, and lead are traditional sculpting metals while aluminum is a new addition.
• Bronze, made chiefly of copper and tin is universally popular for sculpture and is cast into shape being strong, durable, and resistant to corrosion.
• Bronze is ideal for plazas, and parks and can be polished for high brilliance.
• Brass, which is an alloy of copper and zinc, is not popularly used though is doesn't rust and takes a brilliant polish.
• Copper has brilliance and is shaped by hammering into relied forms and has a reddish color with great strength.
• Gold and Silver are used for small objects like coins, medals, and jewelry because they are expensive.
• Lead is a bluish-gray, flexible material used for forging and casting with the help of a welding torch.
• Plaster is a composition of lime, sand, and water applied to the armature of metal wires, rods, and fibers.
• Plaster is used a lot for architectural decorations, indoor sculptures, models and manikins.
• Clay is an earthy material with plasticity when wet, and consists of hydrated silicates of aluminum, used for ceramics and bricks which may be cheap compared to stone/bronze and pottery.
• Terra cotta, a baked earth, is commonly used in oriental sculpture.

Glass

• Glass is a hard, brittle, non-crystalline medium that is produced by fusing silica and silicates withsoda and lime together.
• Glass can be molded in various colors or shapes to create statues and is generally fragile because of it's brittle composition.
• Wood is an easier medium to carve intricately than other available mediums and can be treated unlike stone.
• Wood is lighter to carve than stone although has greater tensile strength.
• Common woods like dapdap, white lauan, oak, walnut, mahogany, Narra, and Dao are selected for beauty and permanence to wood sculptures.

Architecture

• Architecture is the art of designing buildings and supervising construction and realizing ideas.
• Architecture is a shelter that provides protection for work, recreation and sleep.
• Meeting man’s needs such as physical, emotional, intellectual, and psychosocial, are among its purposes.

Types of needs

• Physical needs consist of the necessities and comforts of the shelter.
• Emotional needs involves rich beauty and interest of the shelter.
• Intellectual needs are buildings like schools, governments and any building or structure that will help promote learning.
• Psychosocial needs are prestige, civic and personal buildings, love, friendship, sociability and self expression.
• Identifying the style of architecture is a complex undertaking that consist of function, the future and unknown function.

Factors in the Choice of Architectural Materials

• Structural property is workability with tools such as compressive strength, tensile, porosity, lightness, durability, rigidity, gracefulness and flexibility of use.
• Physical property is the aesthetic use of the material for beauty like texture, tonal qualities and colors.
• Weakness of the material includes susceptibility to rotting, corrosion, termites, decolorization, solar radiation and fungus growth.
• Longevity is the life span of the material, which is between 10 years to more than a century.
• There are other inherent properties like weight, water resistance, heat resistance and acoustic values.
• Non-inherent properties includes availability and economy

Classification of Architectural Materials

• Architectural materials are classified into three: materials of nature, materials manufactured or made by man, and indigenous materials.
• Materials of nature as gift from forests and they requires minor shaping/conditioning.
• Stones, wood, granite, sandstone, marble, and limestone are all materials of nature.
• Stone is a material used in most of the great architecture of the world.
• Made of cement, sand and gravel, concrete is similar to stone because it has high compressive strength, it does not crumble or break down easily subjected to heavy weight and It does not rot or corrode.
• Fire proof concrete is concrete reinforced with steel and or ferro-concrete for stronger structures.

Types of Stones

• Limestone ranges from a light cream to a buff from a light gray to a darker, bluish gray.
• Limestone has fine even texture which makes it useful and excellent for carving.
• Granite is coarse-grained, useful for large, bold forms with little carving, the hardest, most durable of the stones and polished often as shafts for columns w/ capitals.
• marble has two types that're used in larger flat panes, serpen琀椀ne (for variegated pa琀琀erns) and brecciated (fragments with angular shapes).
• Sandstone is one of the stones mostly seen with colors from blue/gray to white/red/brown in buildings of informal character.
• Wood has disadvantages and is prone to destruction and not as permanent other than by using proper treatment on construction.
• Plywood (stronger than any known material when sheets are thin) has advantages of high-tension strength, relative durability, and abundance

Materials Manufactured by Man

• These materials usually need more steps (man made) to obtain the raw material of clay made to new product.
• These man-made ingredients are plastic (hollow blocks, washout stone, gravel/sand/ synthetic cement) , ceramic (glass, terra cotta, tile/brick) and metal (steel,nickel silver,bronze,aluminum ,copper,chrome/nickel,monel,etc...)
• Glass is a transparent substance fused of lime/lead oxide base and form Silica and helps to keep lighting from rain. It takes equipment/ panel form to many architecture uses.
• Cast metal that gets rolling/press is an important method in iron and new type of metal/bronze which has permanency.
• Wrought Iron is used for brackets, grills, hinges, locks, gates, and balconies and it's cast wrought/iron for cooling rods after it gets hammered by twisted iron.
• Copper Metal can provide water protection and adds protective green as quality.
• Chrome Steel is polished metal used for welding/welding and provides doors for interiors on railing.
• Aluminum has lightness and won't stain by corrosion when architecture is made with doors/hardware and storefronts.
• silica Monel metal is used to give zinc/copper mixture to use for door/screen.
• soft Nickel and marble/wood match greatly to be used for interiors.
• Concrete is very prevalent (availability/ fluid/ durable use). Broken Glass mixes together/synthetic mortar w/pebble that provide concrete texture design used as buildings are made.
• Laminated plastics are thin sheets capable of withstanding wear use.
• Abar, bagasse, Bamboo ,cogon, earth bricks, Mud sawli coco coir, coco coil are various indigenous common components widely local to architecture construction .

Natural Materials

• Sawali is an outer covering material made of bamboo poles and woven for backing purposes.
• Coco coil is used to minimalize use of the cement material.
• Bagasse material offers a sugar for cement/ insolation
• Abaca (Bicol area has material of cellulose plant).
• Bamboos are low/unelastic + help form many architectural/sculpted patterns.
• Palm frond stems/mud are sustainable but is termite prone and needs replacements each 4-5 terms (protected material after 1.5 terms.)
• Mudbricks are low thermal.

Mediums of the Performing Arts

• Performing arts are done by those on stage (theatre, dance, and the art of literature) in addition to only music and literature of different mediums that the book entails.

The Vocal Music

• The instruments/sound medium of nature helps represent music that consists of different components.

Vocal Music

• It is the most natural/old music form, to make clear that vocal range comes from lungs, mouth (body position) for vocal cords to have range.
• Posture affects the volume/quality of tone (breath control) that one has- so standing upright is key or breathing, exhaling/inhaling will have a large impact

Vocal placement and diction

• Vocal projection happens so that it has good tones to keep high volume under control (not throaty.)
• Good enunciation+ articulation+dicition affects the the meaning of lyrics sung.
• To interpret and convey a song properly to an audience you convey/display feeling using face.

Long and short forms

• In concert, theatrical based areas utilize various drama/chorus and recitative/ensemble styles .
• Forms include non - secular types for small concert types + music to set mood from cultural Philippine drama.
• Form range changes because of the timbre quality/ from man or women.
• High clear Coloratura, Flute Lyrically mezzo+Altro of contraltos (richer ranges) are most commonly performed.
• Base of the Baritone/Tenor qualities makes vocal instruments of music/sounds what the book entails.

Properties of Musical Sound

• String/wood sounds instruments in Philippines are high tone types, and sound is affected by size with larger sound and longer sound.
• four properties dictate sound ,volume + duration of time from pitch.
• Musical note/noice both vibrates + regular /Periodic vibration forms high notes.
• Definite /indefinite (irregular results) pitches has many ranged qualities from long to high range.
• Length dictates the vibrational rate which is affected on that/ volume is defined as softness vs loud+ timbres can vary instrument with materials

Literature

• Mediums are the Languages for Art.
• Original books are best/ translations still lose impact to what original version meant.
• Good versions of texts still fail one or the other to be good because not similar/ not good to origin + English is flexible quality.

Methods of Art Production and Presentation

• Artists use different methods to deliver message.
• Methods used in art include: realism, abstraction, fauvism, dadaism, symbolism, expressionism and futurism.

Realism

• Realism tries to picture subjects as is as possible and realistically/objectively (accurately under honesty + observation to the senses from the perspective.
• "Realism", (literature) tends render the true form of objective quality+ is why it began, so it's said real because is normal in detail form.
• Reyes/Abueg were novelists who used vivid/realistic tones

Abstraction

• Abstraction means (move separately from the topic itself) which is why the artist wants to illustrate idea away from original quality.
• Art Sculpture used can be of more form than substance.

Abstract subjects

• In abstraction, art subjects are also displayed in cut/ elongated or deformed form ,and can use spherical + cubical qualities of math.

Abstract Symbolism

• Geometric form use to present a view based on Sam + Paul Picasso .
• After time "Abstract expressionism" which is a verve for new ideas/ deliberate for lack of refined qualities-was formed."
• Jackson Pollock was amongst abstract artist of new school.
• To be unique to painter or display association of poetry (visible or invisible), symbol use is important If I didn't love God, I can't find reason why is last two lines is symbolic of desire to die + meet god.

Other art forms

• Known Filipino artist's have created unique forms (inspired of some of these forms).
• Early art movements led by Matisse/other French artists wanted "joy and pleasure" style that was not moral.
• The arts by Dada were formed in 1916 in Switz.