Module 1 (for midterm)

Topic: Painting and Drawing

Objectives:
After reading the information, the students are able to:
 Define painting
 Define, identify and list the different vehicles used in
painting, drawing
 Differentiate tempera from gouache
 Define, tempera, oil, acrylic, fresco, gouache, ink,

Introduction
Mostly paintings and drawings are executed through
use of the following:
1. oils
2. watercolors
3. tempera
4. acrylic
5. fresco
6. gouache
7. ink
8. pastels
9. pencils
As civilization progress towards modernization and
industrial revolution, more materials are available
nowadays. Artists may combine these media, and may
use other medium. Each medium has its own
characteristics and to a great extent dictates what the
artist can or cannot achieves as an end result. Painting
may be defined as the application of colored pigments to
a flat surface, usually canvass, paper, wood, or plaster.
Pigment used in making colors come from different
sources; (a) clay, (b) coal tar, (c) vegetable matter, etc.
Some are manufactured; some are found in nature
almost as they are used.
Some have been newly discovered. Some have been
known for a long time. The chemists also have made
many pigments. The source of many colors was the same
throughout the ages, but the way the color is applied to
the surface has changed. Since the color is procured
either from nature or from artificial sources are dry. They
must be mixed with something in order to be spread on a
surface. This substance usually a fluid is called vehicle.
The vehicle determines the surface on which the paint is
spread. Canvass is not a good surface for watercolor, nor
is paper a good surface for oil.
Since the pigments are essentially the same no matter
what the surface or vehicle is used, a medium is
commonly distinguished by the surface and vehicle used.
We do not speak of painting in earth colors but painting
in oil or acrylic on canvas. Each medium determines its
brush stroke and produces its own effect.
The following are the vehicles used in painting:
1. oil
2. acrylic
3. watercolor
4. plaster
5. egg
6. wax
7. stained glass
8. colored glass
9. fabrics
10.color powder or sticks

1. Oil as a vehicle
In oil painting pigment ground in linseed oil applied
to primed canvas. Traditionally, artists either ground
their own colors or had the work done by
apprentices. Present-day oil paint, however, is
factory-prepared and comes in tubes. Since it is
rather thick, it has to be thinned with oils,
turpertine, or any other solvent before it is applied
on canvas.
Oil paint is a very flexible medium. It was the most
widely used medium for painting at present time.
The use of oil has developed since their
development near the beginning of the fifteenth
century. Their popularity stems principally from the
great variety of opportunity they give the painter. Oil
offers a tremendous range of color possibilities; they
can be reworked; they present many options for
textual manipulation; and above all, they are
durable.
When an artist does a painting work in oil, the
vehicle is oil and the surface is usually canvas,
though various other surfaces may be used. Using a
brush, an air brush, a palette knife, or even his bare
hands. The artist can apply the paint thinly or thicky,
as a transparent film or an opaque surface.
Sometimes it is applied so smoothly that we cannot
aware of the artist’s brush strokes. A three-
dimensional character is added to a painting by
impasto. This achieves by dabbing; lumps of thick
paint on the canvas with a knife.
The special advantage of oil is
that it stays moist for a long time. There are two
methods of painting in oil, the direct and the
indirect.
-in the direct method, the paints are opaque and are
applied to the surface just as they are to look in the
finished picture. The direct method is the more
flexible medium of expression. The artist can use
 pigment very freely and express in it any fleeting
thought.
-in the indirect method, the paint is put on in many
thin layers of transparent colors. The effect
produced in this way is very rich and luminous.
The disadvantage of oil has to do with the
preservation of the picture. Because the paint takes
along time to dry, the oil has a tendency to rise to
the surface and form a film over the picture, thus
dulling the colors. Moreover, it tends to become
yellow, and in time the paint cracks. When it dries, it
forms a tough glossy film on the surface.

2. Watercolor
Watercolor is tempered paint made of pure ground
pigment bound with gum Arabic. Painters apply
watercolor in thin, almost transparent films. The
surface of the paper then show through, giving a
delicate, luminous texture to the painting.
Watercolor is a broad category that includes any
color medium that uses water as a thinner. However,
the term has traditionally referred to a transparent
paint usually applied to paper. Since watercolors are
transparent, an artist must be very careful to control
them. This transparent effect gives watercolors a
 delicacy that cannot be produced in any other
medium.
In watercolor the pigments are mixed with water
and applied to a good quality paper, pale and light in
color. The paper shines through the paint and makes
the color brilliant. It is difficult to produce warm, rich
tones in watercolor. Watercolor is best for
spontaneous evanescent expression.

3. Gouache
Gouache is paint in which the pigment has been
mixed with chalklike material. This material makes
the paint opaque. Gouache is watercolor medium in
which gum is added to ground opaque colors mixed
in water.
Transparent watercolors can be made into gouache
by adding Chinese white to them. Chinese white is a
special white opaque, water soluble paint. The final
product, in contrast to watercolor is opaque.
Opaque watercolor is called “gouache”. It differs
from the dominant brilliant quality of translucent
watercolor painting, whose effects are caused by the
light color of the paper itself.

4. Tempera
Tempera is an opaque watercolor medium whose
use spans recorded history. Tempera paints are
earth and mineral pigments mixed with egg yolk and
egg white. Since the paint dries quickly, corrections
are difficult to make. Thus, the artist using this
medium must plan his design well. In the past,
tempera was most often used for painting on vellum
to the production of books.
Now, tempera is normally applied on wooden panels
carefully surfaced with gesso, a combination of
gypsum and chalk and gelatin or glue. The Egyptians
employed it and is still used today by such familiar
painters as Andrew Wyeth. Tempera refers to
ground color pigments with binders.
The three-color binders used in tempera are gum or
glue, but is best known in its egg tempera form. It is
a fast-drying medium that virtually eliminates brush
stroke and gives extremely sharp and precise detail,
Colors in the medium of tempera result in paintings
that appear almost gemlike in their clarity and
brilliance when displayed for the public to see.
Tempera painting is usually done on wooden panel
that has been made very smooth with a coating of
plaster called “gesso”. The color is mixed with egg
yolk (with or without the white). The paint dries
 immediately. There is little blending or fusing of
colors in tempera painting.
The colors are laid on side by side or are
superimposed. Hence painting is composed of a
large number of successive small strokes and the
effect is largely linear. The advantage of tempera is
its great luminosity of tone, the colors being clear
and beautiful.

5. Acrylic
Synthetic paints using acrylic polymer emulsions as
binder are the newest mediums and the ones that
are widely used today’s painters. They have many
advantages. For one thing, they combine the
transparency and quick-dying characteristics of
watercolor and the flexibility of oil. They are
completely insoluble when dry, and they can be used
on almost any surface, they can be applied thinly
with water dipped brush or laid on in thick impastos
with a knife. Unlike oil, acrylic paints do not tend to
crack, turn yellow, or darker with age.
In contrast with tempera are modern synthetic
products. Acrylic is a synthetic medium for color
pigments. Most acrylics are water-soluble and the
binding agent for the pigment is an acrylic polymer.
 Acrylics are flexible media offering artist a wide
range of possibilities both in color and technique.
An acrylic paint can be either opaque or transparent,
depending upon dilution. It is fast dying, thin, clear
and glasslike, but will neither yellow nor crack like
the oil-based pigments. It is the most adaptable of
mediums for painting depending on the amount of
water used in diluting its color effect. Since it dries
almost immediately, one color can be used to paint
over another color to obtain an optical mixture or
glaze. When it is used as an under paint, almost any
pigment-bearing vehicle can be used to over-paint it.

6. Fresco
Fresco painting is the application of earth pigments
mixed with water on a plaster wall while the plaster
is damp. Color then sinks into the surface and
becomes an integral part of the wall. The image
becomes permanently fixed and lasts as long as the
wall exists.
The most famous example of fresco painting is that
done by Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Leonardo da Vinci painted his Last supper on the
refectory wall of the Santa Maria de Grazie Convent
in Milan. However, his experiment in painting on a
dry wall with a medium that has not been mixed
with water resulted in a work that began to
deteriorate not long after he had finished it.
In Asia, the paintings are executed on dry wall
surfaces- - - what the Italians call fresco secco. The
technique used hardly differs from painting on
papers or silk.
Fresco is a wall-painting technique in which
pigments suspended in water are applied to fresh,
wet plaster. Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel frescoes
are the best-known examples of this technique.
Since the end-result becomes part of the plaster wall
rather than being painted on it, fresco provides a
long- lasting work. However, it is an extremely
difficult process, and once the pigments are applied,
no change can be made without re-plastering the
entire section of the wall.
In fresco painting a wall is prepared with successive
coats of plaster. Designs are prepared in advance on
large sheets of paper (cartoons), each sheet
accounting for a section of the wall.
The artist marks off on the wall the approximate
amount that can be covered in a day’s work and
gives it the final coat of fresh (Italian fresco) plaster,
to which that section of the drawing is transferred.
The artist is then ready to paint. The pigment is
mixed with water and applied to the wet plaster. The
color dries into the plaster, and the picture, thus
become apart of the wall. Since fresco must be done
quickly, it is a very exciting medium.
There is no rubbing out and no changing once the
design is began. Because of the chemical action of
the plaster on the paint, only earth pigments may be
used and these colors lack intensity.
There are two advantages of fresco work of art:
 First, it is impossible to move a fresco
 Second, the painting being permanently fixed to
the wall, is subject to any of the disasters that
may happen to the wall.