My Medium
I love to experiment with all types of traditional painting and drawing styles as well as mediums and drawing tools to convey myself while choosing concepts and techniques that fit my skills and artistic expression. I create my pieces using all of the following…….
Oil
This is a traditional art technique that started being recognized as an artistic medium in 15th century Europe. Oil paints usually contain linseed oil that makes them dry slower than others. The prolonged drying time is the advantage of using oil painting as an art medium. It offers artists an opportunity to change some segments of their work or paint a different scene altogether by adding another layer of paint onto the canvas.
Acrylic
Acrylic paints dry fast, as opposed to oil painting, and once they dry, they become water-resistant. However, you can dissolve acrylic paint with water before you apply it on canvas to achieve the effect of gouache or watercolors. Painting with acrylic allows artists to add layers or textures to their artwork, enhancing glossiness and giving it depth. Or they can add water to achieve a matte effect in their paintings.
Watercolors
Using watercolor paint as an art medium can be challenging. Many artists love watercolors because of their seemingly endless color palette. Once you apply these on paper, there is little you can do to change the result. However, watercolors add a translucent quality to paintings and are ideal for capturing the change of light.
Charcoal
This is one of the oldest art mediums used for drawing. You can use charcoal to make either pale lines or strong, expressive ones. This artistic material is easily erasable, so it is recommended to apply some fixatives on charcoal drawings to ensure the artwork’s longevity.
Pastels
Soft pastels are great for blending, while you use hard pastels to create sharp outlines or sketch the larger composition. There are also pan pastels, a modern version of this art medium that is applied with a soft sponge. You can choose to work with oil pastels that provide an intensity of colors, or water-soluble pastels if you want thinner layers of semi-transparent colors that blend easily.
Chalk
Artistic chalk usually comes in three versions, black, white, and sanguine, depending on the material. Black chalks contain soft black stone, whites are made from limestone, and sanguines contain red ochre. Chalks were originally used for sketching but became an independent art medium during the Renaissance.
Graphite pencils
These have been in use as an art medium since the 17th century France. You can use graphite for sketching, outlining, or shading. There are graphite pencils of varying hardness you can use in creating fine art. This is a convenient art medium because it allows you to remake your work by erasing parts of a drawing or an entire work.
Colored pencils
They gained considerable attention and respect in the modern art world because of the numerous advantages they offer. Colored pencils’ artwork is expressive, deep, and luminescent. At the same time, this art medium gives artists an opportunity to make photographically realistic pieces of art.
Pen and ink
This is also a familiar art medium where you use a pen for outlining and adding color in art forms like pen art or hand lettering and calligraphy. You can choose between different types of pens, like graphic pens, fountain pens, or drafting pens, depending on what you want to do with it. Ink is a powerful but unforgiving art medium, so you really need to master ink drawing skills before you start creating with it. What makes pen and ink artworks so expressive is the ratio of the blank spaces and the ink-filled spaces on paper.
