Materials
Painting
Gesso - can be used to prepare your canvas
for painting. You can buy gesso ready made (I saw some pots in 'The Works'
shop recently) or make your own with baby powder, titanium white, water
and glue. Gesso is very similar to white acrylic paint, only thinner.
It dries hard, making the surface stiffer. Gesso prepares (or "primes")
the surface for painting, making the surface slightly textured and ready
to accept acrylic paint. Without gesso, the paint would soak into the
weave of the canvas. In Art Colleges, many simply use white emulsion paint.
(More...)
Watercolour - is a painting method in which
the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle.
The term "watercolour" refers to both the medium and the resulting
artwork.
Oil - is a type of slow-drying paint that
consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed
oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent
such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase
the glossiness of the dried oil paint film. Oil paints have been used
in Europe since the 12th century for simple decoration, but were not widely
adopted as an artistic medium until the early 15th century.
Gouache - also spelled guache, is a type
of paint consisting of pigment, a binding agent (usually gum arabic),
and sometimes added inert material, designed to be used in an opaque method.
It also refers to paintings that use this opaque method. The name derives
from the Italian guazzo.
Acrylic - is a fast-drying paint containing
pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints are water
soluble, but become water-resistant when dry. Depending on how much the
paint is diluted with water or modified with acrylic gels, media, or pastes,
the finished acrylic painting can resemble a watercolor or an oil painting,
or have its own unique characteristics not attainable with other media.
Drawing
Pencils - come in various forms, thicknesses
and hardness - grey to coloured, soft to hard. Most pencils are used dry,
but Caran d'Ache pencils are water-soluble and enable marks to be brushed
with water, offering more versatility and effects.
Charcoal - Artists' charcoal is a form of
dry (usually black) art medium, commonly made of finely ground organic
materials that are held together by a gum or wax binder. Charcoal can
be used like a pencil, but also dragged across surfaces on its side, and
easily smudged in different ways using a dry cloth, sponge, or fingers,
to create a variety of effects.
Pastel - is an art medium in the form of
a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments
used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all colored art
media, including oil paints; the binder is of a neutral hue and low saturation.
The color effect of pastels is closer to the natural dry pigments than
that of any other process. Dry pastels are chalk-like and oil pastels
have a soft, buttery consistency and intense colors.
Pastels have been used by artists since the Renaissance, and gained considerable
popularity in the 18th century, when a number of notable artists made
pastel their primary medium.
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Methods & Practices
Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro - (Italian for light-dark) in art is the use of strong contrasts
between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition
- often a monochrome picture made by using several different shades of
the same colour. It is also a technical term used by artists and art historians
for the use of contrasts of light to achieve a sense of volume in modelling
three-dimensional objects and figures. (read
more...) Session
Tue 28 April 2015 | Session
Tue 05 May 2015
Collage
Collage (from the French: coller, French pronunciation: is a technique
primarily used in the visual arts, where the artwork is made from an assemblage
of different forms, thus creating a new whole.
A
collage may sometimes include magazine and newspaper clippings, ribbons,
paint, bits of coloured or handmade papers, portions of other artwork
or texts, photographs and other found objects, glued to a piece of paper
or canvas. The origins of collage can be traced back hundreds of years,
but this technique made a dramatic reappearance in the early 20th century
as an art form of novelty.
The
term collage was coined by both Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso in the
beginning of the 20th century when collage became a distinctive part of
modern art.
Decoupage
Découpage is the art of decorating an object by gluing coloured
paper cut-outs onto it in combination with special paint effects, gold
leaf and so on. Commonly an object like a small box or an item of furniture
is covered by cut-outs from magazines or from purpose-manufactured papers.
Each layer is sealed with varnishes (often multiple coats) until the "stuck
on" appearance disappears and the result looks like painting or inlay
work. The traditional technique used 30 to 40 layers of varnish which
were then sanded to a polished finish.
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