ART APPRECIATION (GE 103)+) The Artist’s Medium

CHAPTER Course Description

2
A course covering the nature, function and appreciation of the arts
in contemporary society.

Total Learning Time: 6 hrs.

Pre-requisites: None
Overview:
The distinctive character of the medium determines the way it can be worked on and tuned
into a work of art. Each medium has its own characteristics which determine the physical appearance
of the finished work of art.

This module include worksheets to work on to process your understanding and learning.
Rubrics for outputs is also included to guide you on the desired performances and learning outcomes.

Most Essential Learning Competencies

At the end of the chapter, the students must have:

 Familiarized oneself of how an artwork is made, put together, or organized;

 Determined the meaning conveyed by the art and how an artwork makes life
more meaningful;
 Appreciated the vase of self-trust in producing art;
 Compared and contrast the different mediums in art production; and
 Come up with a simple art presentation.

Indicative Content

Medium and Technique

Medium of the Visual Arts
Common Color Medium
Related Visual Arts
Performing Arts

LET’S DISCUSS THIS!

Medium and Technique
In art, a medium is the material that artists use to create their art. It's that simple. Whatever a
piece of art is made out of is its medium. The plural of medium is media. So, one piece of art can be
made of one medium or several media.

All of the items are media. They describe each item the artist used to make the art.
Therefore, oil and canvas are both media used to describe that particular work. Sometimes this can be
a very important part of how the piece of art is interpreted. Different materials carry different
 ART APPRECIATION (GE 103)+) The Artist’s Medium

significance. For example, if a certain wood is considered sacred, then using it indicates that this piece
of art is very special. Or if an artist uses an uncommon medium, say garbage, it helps that artist make
a statement.

Oil painting is the process of painting with

pigments that are held together with a type of oil that
dries when exposed to air, called drying oil. When the
oil is mixed with a powdered pigment, it creates a color
of paint. Different pigments create different colors. Since
prehistoric times, natural pigments, such as minerals and
shells, were used. After the industrial revolution, people
were able to create new colors using machines that could
create synthetic pigments.

The first artists to use oil as a base for their H HTTPS://RACHEL-SHIRLEY.BLOGSPOT.COM/2013/01/GUIDE-TO-WATER-MIXABLE-OIL-MEDIUMS-FOR.HTML

paints were Indian and Chinese Buddhists, working in
Afghanistan as early as the fifth century. By the 15th century, painters in the Netherlands began using
oils for their paintings, and this soon took off as the most popular medium in Europe during the Italian
Renaissance. Since then, oil paints have been the most common media in Western art. Oil paints are
almost always used to paint canvas, a woven fabric.

Tempera is another common medium. Before oil

painting became popular, most painting was done with
tempera paints. Rather than oil, the pigments are held
together with a sticky material, most commonly egg yolk.
Egg yolk holds the pigments together, but it dries very fast
and can sometimes give the paint a slightly yellow color.
Nevertheless, it was a very common way to make paint
before oils came around and is still used by many artists
who enjoy working with fast-drying paints to create certain
effects. Tempera is often used to paint wood, another
common medium before the Italian Renaissance.

In sculpture, marble is one of the most common

media. Marble is a soft stone that is easy for sculptors
H https://shop.kremerpigments.com/us/information/recipes/tempera-grassa-rich-tempera/

to carve, chip, and polish into smooth and beautiful

works of art. Small impurities in the white marble can give the sculpture unique color and shine. The
Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) was one of the most famous sculptors of all time
and famous for saying that he could see an image in a block of marble and that it was his job to
remove the excess.
Mediums of the Visual Arts
Visual arts are those arts that can be perceived with our eyes. The most common visual arts
are painting, sculpture and architecture. Their mediums are discussed as follows:

Painting
ART APPRECIATION (GE 103)+) The Artist’s Medium

The medium of painting is color. Color is applied on surfaces such as canvass, cloth, wood,
paper and the likes to produce images and meanings.

Pigment is that part of painting that provides the color, and pigment is taken from organic
sources like trees, vegetables and other natural elements.
The Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da
Common Color Medium Vinci, is one of the world's most
recognizable paintings.
a. Oil. Features: Color pigments are ground and mixed with linseed oil to produce a liquid-
like constituency whose viscosity (thickness or fluidness) can be thinned by turpentine or
any other solvent. It is a flexible medium. It is slow to dry, but it can be applied by any
kind and size of airbrush. It can cover or overlay previous layers, thus, create translucent
effects in the combinations of colors, or even erase what a painter may wish to change.

b. Acrylic. Features: This is the most common medium, easily accessible and inexpensive.
It is versatile as this synthetic paint may be mixed with water to tamper thickness or
thinness. It is flexible and can be applied to any space. It is quick to dry and does not
crack or turn yellow with age.

c. Watercolor. Features: Pigment in watercolor is mixed with water rather than with oil. It
dries quickly, hence, it is a difficult medium to control. It is characterized by the
transparency of its texture which is controlled by the amount of water that the artist mixes
with the paint.

d. Tempera. Features: Pigments are taken from organic pigments mixed with egg. It is
usually applied on wooden panels surfaced with gesso (combination of gypsum and
gelatine). It dries quickly.

e. Fresco. Features: Fresco painting is produced when organic pigments are mixed with
water and applied to a damp plaster wall. This allows water to seep into the surface and
become a part of the wall and remains so until the wall falls. This was the process that
Michelangelo used in painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

f. Encaustic. Features: Encaustic process adds colored pigments to heated beeswax. The
mixture is then applied to porous surfaces like wood. This is an ancient technique used to
paint portraits and other images on coffins.

Related Visual Arts

Drawing

Drawings are the outlined designs of paintings. It is the most fundamental of the skills in the
visual arts and is the route artists take to acquire technique. It often sets the final designs in paintings,
the rough draft of a proposed work. The mediums used in drawing are pencil, lead, ink, pastel, chalk,
charcoal, crayons and silverpoint.

Mosaic

Mosaic is the art of creating a picture by assembling pieces of colored glasses, stones, and
other materials. These small cubic pieces glued to a surface by glue or plaster to create images are
ART APPRECIATION (GE 103)+) The Artist’s Medium

called tesserae. Mosaic art was important in the interiors of cathedrals which depicted the life of
Christ or the various events in the Bible.

Stained Glass

Stained glass art uses assembled pieces of colored glass to create pictures. The translucent
glass pieces allow light to produce various color values to affect a glorious atmosphere. These pieces
are assembled with strips of lead or iron placed in positions that will hold the glass pieces. Subjects
were religious personages and images complementing the teachings of the Church.

Tapestry

Tapestries were the art forms of royalty, as tapestry artists were usually members of royal
families who wove these from expensive silk and gold threads. These were hung on walls of castles,
palaces and cathedrals. It is produced by weaving two sets of interlaced threads on a vertica loom: one
set running parallel to the length (called the warp) and the other, width (called weft).

Printmaking

This involves creating images from ink that is transferred to paper from another material,
either wooden block or metal plate that are etched or carved with designs in the reverse position. This
is so when ink is applied over the surface and this mold is pressed over paper, an image is printed out.
Prints have been produced in 4 different ways:

a. Relief printing (woodcut). The ink sits on the top surface of a plate or block that has
been carved.
b. Intaglio printing (etching and engraving).The ink sits in the grooves.
c. Planographic printing (lithography). The matrix is flat, and the printing part is treated to
hold ink, the other parts, to repel it.
d. Stencil printing (silkscreen). There is a hole cut in the matrix and the ink is pushed
through it.

Tarpaulin

Tarpaulin (or tarp) is a durable plastic sheet that is water resistant and waterproof. It is easy to
reproduce. A designer makes the art work using digital graphic design softwares (like Photoshop) and
bring these files to shops for printing.

Sculpture

It is a 3-dimensional work of art made of material like stone, metal, glass, wood, bronze, clay,
iron, steel, paper, metal, marble, wood and even soap, chocolate, butter, balloons, ice, snow and sand.
These are carved, assembled, constructed, fired, welded, molded, or cast and its final forms are often
painted. Most of these are called statues, 3-dimensional images of persons or animals shaped from
solid substances.

Medium. Depending on objective of the sculptors, they use medium such as bronze and stone
(like marble, limestone and granite), precious materials (like gold, silver, jade and ivory), hard wood
(like narra, molave), glass, terracotta, ceramics.

Photography

Photography (from the Greek 'phos' which means

light and 'graphis' which means representation by
ART APPRECIATION (GE 103)+) The Artist’s Medium

drawing) is the process of creating pictures using light projected on a light-sensitive medium (the
photographic film). It is the art of recording light on a sensitive material called film made from thin,
transparent base coated with light sensitive chemicals

Photography uses light as its prime source and the chemical processing of light-sensitive
materials, its medium, to produce its composition: the picture. Photography requires the manipulation
of a camera that captures images through the reflection of light from a subject. The inventions of
photography allowed artists to faithfully "copy" images in the real world.

Traditionally, the images are reproduced in 'negatives' (because these images are in their
reversed states: dark spots are light and light spots are dark) and processed to produce these images'
opposite ('positive') states on photographic paper.

The art in photography does not solely reside on the

camera, but on the skills and techniques of photographer in https://myrepublica.nagariknetwork.com/news/beginner-s-guide-to-street-photography/

controlling the tool. Some of the basic concepts that a

photographer needs to control:

a. Focus. The adjustment to place the sharpest focus where it is desired on the subject.
b. Exposure. The amount of light that reaches the film.
c. Aperture. The aperture (or diaphragm) is like the iris of our eyes that controls the amount
of light passing through the lens.
d. Shutter speed. It controls the time during which the image is captured. The shutter is the
mechanical device in a camera that controls the amount of time light is allowed to expose
the film.

Architecture

Architecture is a passion, a vocation, a calling – as well as a science and a business. It has

been described as a social art and also an artful science. Architecture must be of the highest quality of
design. Architecture provides, in the words of Marcus Vitruvius, the great Roman architect and
historian, “firmness, commodity and delight.”

Architecture provides a sense of place and support of all types of human activity. Architecture
helps the man-made fit in harmony with the environment while promoting health and well-being,
enriching lives aesthetically and spiritually, providing economic opportunities, and creating a legacy
that reflects and symbolizes culture and traditions.

Firmness refers to structural integrity and durability;

Commodity refers to spatial functionality or in other words, “serving its purpose” and
fulfilling the function for which the building was constructed;

Delight means that the building is not only aesthetically and visually pleasing, but also lifts the spirits
and stimulates the senses.

Performing Arts

Performing arts may include dance, music, opera, theatre and musical theatre, magic, illusion,
mime, spoken word, puppetry, circus arts, performance art.
ART APPRECIATION (GE 103)+) The Artist’s Medium

There is also a specialized form of fine art, in which the artists perform their work live to an
audience. This is called performance art. Most performance art also involves some form of plastic art,
perhaps in the creation of props. Dance was often referred to as a plastic art during the Modern dance
era.

Theatre

Theatre is the branch of performing arts; concerned with acting out stories in front of an
audience, using a combination of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle. Any one or
more of these elements is performing arts. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style of plays.
Theater takes such forms as plays, musicals, opera, ballet, illusion, mime, classical Indian dance,
kabuki, mummers' plays, improvisational theatre, comedy, pantomime, and non-conventional or
contemporary forms like postmodern theatre, post dramatic theatre, or performance art.

Dance

In the context of performing arts, dance generally refers to human movement, typically
rhythmic and to music, used as a form of audience entertainment in a performance setting. Definitions
of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic artistic and moral constraints and
range from functional movement (such as folk dance) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet.

There is one another modern form of dance that emerged in 19th- 20th century with the name
of Free-Dance style. This form of dance was structured to create a harmonious personality which
included features such as physical and spiritual freedom. Isadora Duncan was the first female dancer
who argued about "woman of future" and developed novel vector of choreography using Nietzsche’s
idea of "supreme mind in free mind"

Dance is a powerful impulse, but the art of dance is that impulse channeled by skillful
performers into something that becomes intensely expressive and that may delight spectators who feel
no wish to dance themselves. These two concepts of the art of dance—dance as a powerful impulse
and dance as a skillfully choreographed art practiced largely by a professional few—are the two most
important connecting ideas running through any consideration of the subject. In dance, the connection
between the two concepts is stronger than in some other arts, and neither can exist without the other.
Choreography is the art of making dances, and the person who practices this art is called a
choreographer.

Music

Music is an art form which combines pitch, rhythm, and dynamic to create sound. It can be
performed using a variety of instruments and styles and is divided into genres such as folk, jazz, hip
hop, pop, and rock, etc. As an art form, music can occur in live or recorded formats, and can be
planned or improvised.

ASSESSMENT
Name:______________________________________ Course and Year:______________________

1. Which of the following describes an artist’s medium?

ART APPRECIATION (GE 103)+) The Artist’s Medium

a. Refers to the material that artists use to create their art.

b. Refers to the description an artist used to describe an art.
c. Refers to the resources needed to construct a building.
d. Refers to the materials used in transferring artworks.
2. In sculpture, it is one of the most common media used that is soft and easy for sculpture to
carve, chip, and polish into smooth and beautiful artwork.
a. Wood
b. Raisin
c. Marble
d. Clay
3. He was an Italian artist and famous sculptor of all time for saying that he could see an image
in a block of marble and that it was his job to remove the excess.
a. Raphael Santi
b. Michelangelo Buonarroti
c. Leonardo da Vinci
d. Sandro Botticelli
4. Refers to the type of art that can be perceived with our eyes.
a. Performing arts
b. Poetry arts
c. Visual arts
d. Theatrical arts
5. This is the most common medium, easily accessible and inexpensive. It is versatile as this
synthetic paint may be mixed with water to tamper thickness or thinness.
a. Water color
b. Tempera
c. Fresco
d. Acrylic
6. This painting is produced when organic pigments are mixed with water and applied to a damp
plaster wall.
a. Water color painting
b. Tempera painting
c. Fresco painting
d. Acrylic painting
7. A visual art that is the most fundamental of all skills and is the route artists take to acquire
technique.
a. Drawing
b. Mosaic
c. Printmaking
d. Tapestry
8. A visual art forms of royalty, it is usually done by members of royal families who wove from
expensive silk and gold thread. It is produced by weaving two sets of interlaced threads on a
vertical loom.
a. Drawing
b. Mosaic
c. Printmaking
d. Tapestry
9. Refers to the process of creating pictures using light projected on a light-sensitive medium
called the photographic film.
a. Drawing
b. Photography
c. Tarpaulin
d. Sculpture
ART APPRECIATION (GE 103)+) The Artist’s Medium

10. Which of the following is the branch of performing arts concerned with acting out stories in
front of an audience, using a combination of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and
spectacle.
a. Dance
b. Music
c. Role play
d. Theatre

Rubric for Essay

REFERENCES

Panisa, W.P. et al.(2015). Art Appreciation. Mutya Publishing House Inc., Malabon City.

REFERENCES
Ariola,M.M., 2014 Introduction to Art Appreciation, C & E Publishing, Inc. Quezon City.
pg 12-41
Barerra, L. (2020). Module in Art Appreciation. Capiz State University, Dumarao Campus