Preamble
This is the first post in a new Art Resource series that specifically focuses on techniques used in creating artworks. For your convenience I have listed all the posts in this new series below:
Drawing Art
Painting Art - Part I
Painting Art - Part II
Painting Art - Part III
Painting Art - Part IV
Painting Art - Part V
Painting Art - Part VI
Home-Made Painting Art Materials
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part I
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part II
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part III
Historical Notes on Art - Part I
Historical Notes on Art - Part II
Historical Notes on Art - Part III
Historical Notes on Art - Part IV
Historical Notes on Art - Part V
Tempera Painting
Oil Painting - Part I
Oil Painting - Part II
Oil Painting - Part III
Oil Painting - Part IV
Oil Painting - Part V
Oil Painting - Part VI
Pigments
Classification of Pigments - Part I
Classification of Pigments - Part II
Classification of Pigments - Part III
Pigments for Oil Painting
Pigments for Water Color
Pigments for Tempera Painting
Pigments for Pastel
Japanese Pigments
Pigments for Fresco Painting - Part I
Pigments for Fresco Painting - Part II
Selected Fresco Palette for Permanent Frescoes
Properties of Pigments in Common Use
Blue Pigments - Part I
Blue Pigments - Part II
There have been one hundred and thirteen posts in a previous Art Resource series that focused on the following topics:
(i) Units used in dyeing and printing of fabrics.
(ii) Occupational, health & safety issues in an art studio.
(iii) Color theories and color schemes.
(iv) Optical properties of fiber materials.
(v) General properties of fiber polymers and fibers - Part I to Part V.
(vi) Protein fibers.
(vii) Natural and man-made cellulosic fibers.
(viii) Fiber blends and melt spun fibers.
(ix) Fabric construction.
(x) Techniques and woven fibers.
(xi) Basic and figured weaves.
(xii) Pile, woven and knot pile fabrics.
(xiii) Napped fabrics, double cloth and multicomponent fabrics.
(xiv) Fabric finishes.
(xv) Schrinkage, durable press and wash-wear finishes.
(xvi) Classification of dyes and dye blends.
(xvii) The general theory of printing.
To access any of the above resources click on the following link - Units Used in Dyeing and Printing of Fabrics. This link highlights the one hundred and thirteen posts in the previous Art Resource series.
There are eight data bases on this blogspot, namely: (1) the Glossary of Cultural and Architectural Terms; (2) Timelines of Fabrics, Dyes and Other Stuff; (3) A Fashion Data Base; (4) the Glossary of Colors, Dyes, Inks, Pigments and Resins; (5) the Glossary of Fabrics, Fibers, Finishes, Garments and Yarns; (6) Glossary of Art, Artists, Art Motifs and Art Movements; (7) Glossary of Paper, Photography, Printing, Prints and Publication Terms; (8) Glossary of Scientific Terms.
Note: From time-to-time all the above data bases will be updated.
If you find any post on this blog site useful, you can save it or copy and paste it into your own "Word" document for your future reference. For example, Safari allows you to save a post (e.g., click on "File", click on "Print" and release, click on "PDF" and then click on "Save As" and release - and a PDF should appear where you have stored it). Safari also allows you to mail a post to a friend (e.g., click on "File", and then point cursor to "Mail Contents On This Page" and release). Either way, this or any of the other posts on this site may be a useful Art Resource for you.
The new Art Resource series will be the first post in each calendar month. Remember, these Art Resource posts span information that will be useful for a home hobbyist to that required by a final year University Fine-Art student. Undoubtedly, some parts of any Art Resource post may appear far too technical for your needs (skip those mind boggling parts) and whilst other parts may be too simplistic with respect to your level of knowledge (ditto the skip). Hopefully, the trade-off between these two extremes will mean that the Art Resource posts will be useful in parts to most, but unfortunately, may not be satisfying to all!
Introduction
The study of artist materials and their application to various techniques covers a number of separate subjects, but they are all interrelated. The following general notes aim to be introductory in the sense that it treats the underlying principles and basic points and includes general remarks which is important to note before going into further details on the various single topics.
The media used to host your artwork whether it is paper, canvas, cloth, stone or bronze (the latter two being used in sculpting) have some bearing on what techniques are available to you. For example, cloth can be dyed, prints on paper can be marbled, canvas usually hosts oil paints, stone and bronze artworks are usually three-dimensionally shaped, ceramics are usually either vitrified or semi-vitrified. On the other hand, artistic film and video usually contain movement, even though that is not always guaranteed. Visual mixed media artworks can host a myriad of objects, shapes and countless variations of materials too numerous to detail, since the imagination of human beings is without limits.
Portrait of Margo Lewers (1967).
Artist: Judy Cassab (Australian, Austrian, and a Hungarian citizen (15 August 1920 - 03 November 2015).
Click on the link - Margo Lewis - to view a blog of her artwork.
Drawing
In most cases before a concept comes into fruitition sketching or drawing with pencil on paper is the easiest of beginnings. In the analogue world artists would often doodle and in this play, art ideas for further exploration would take shape.
Matt Lyon is the London-based graphic artist and illustrator behind this colourful and chaotic doodle. He comments on his website: "My work stems from incessant doodling, often laced with wild colours, shapes and patterns."
The simplest method of doodling is drawing with a lead pencil or a stick of chacoal or crayon. The surface of the uncoated paper is, miscroscopically, a weblike mass of long fibers; depending on the degree of coarseness of the finish and upon the crayon and pencil used, the fibers act like a file: they wear away the pigment particles and hold them within their interstices.
The paper texture is reflected in the line texture.
Ordinary lead pencils are made of a graphite mixed with variable amounts of clay according to the degree of hardness desired. The softest varieties contain very little or in fact no clay.
The degree of hardness of a pencil is printed on the pencil.
'H' stands for 'Hard'. 'HB' stands for 'Hard Black', which means 'medium hard'. 'F' stands for 'Firm'.
Graphite is a form of carbon that occurs in flat plates or flakes and so have a slippery or greasy feel. The pressure on the drawing stroke not only forces these particles into the interstices of the paper, but also creates a slight gloss or sheen by causing them to assume a flat, level position with their flat sides parallel to the surface, somewhat in the same way that wax is polished by causing it to assume a level, and continuous surface.
The 'Mona Lisa' drawn using a pencil.
Metallic lead has the same properties as graphite; when it is drawn across paper its particles are filed away and held in the mesh of the fibers. Subsequent exposure to the impurities in the atmosphere will make these lead drawings blacker.
Thin rods of metallic lead were used as pencils by the ancients, and although graphite was known and applied to various uses much earlier and crude graphite pencils began to be employed as early as the 17th Century, the modern graphite or lead pencil in the present wood-encased form dates from about the beginning of the 19th Century.
Around 1560, an Italian couple named Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti made what are likely the first blueprints for the modern, wood-encased carpentry pencil. Their version was a flat, oval, more compact type of pencil. Their concept involved the hollowing out of a stick of juniper wood. Shortly thereafter, a superior technique was discovered: two wooden halves were combined encasing the lead, a process which is still used to this day.
When metallic silver is drawn across paper that has been coated with a layer of white pigment, small dark particles of metal are held in the porous or grandular surface of the coating in the same way that the other materials are held by the fibers of uncoated paper.
Note how the fibers hold lead fragments.
Silver-point drawings, which were popularly esteemed in the past unlike the present, are characterized by a certain delicacy of line. Unless immediately protected by fixative, the lines tarnish as forms, on all silver surfaces; this color change, however, is usually desired, and the drawings are therefore left unfixed until it occurs.
Silver point drawing technique.
A number of commonly produced industrial coated papers will react with silver (as can be tested by a stroke on any silvered paper), but these are imvariably made with little or no rag content and are of doubtful permanence. If special silver-point paper is not available in the artists' supply shop, it can be made by coating pure, smooth water-color or drawing paper with a thin layer of Chinese white, using a broad sable or camel-hair brush. The silver point itself might be sharpened with a bit of silver wire held in an etching needle holder, or a thicker rod of silver ground to a point at one end and to a chisel edge at the other; both are procurable from a jeweler at a small cost. Gold and platinium will make similar drawings of somewhat different color. They do not change by tarnishing.
Artist: Marie-Therese Wisniowski.
Drawing created for the Hunter Rehabilitation Service Presentation Folder Cover and Corporate Identity Program (1995).
Technique and Material: India ink drawing on cartridge paper.
Size: 27 cm (height) x 27 cm (width).
Reference:
[1] The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques, R. Mayer, ed. E. Smith, 4th Edition, Faber and Faber, London (1981).
This is the first post in a new Art Resource series that specifically focuses on techniques used in creating artworks. For your convenience I have listed all the posts in this new series below:
Drawing Art
Painting Art - Part I
Painting Art - Part II
Painting Art - Part III
Painting Art - Part IV
Painting Art - Part V
Painting Art - Part VI
Home-Made Painting Art Materials
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part I
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part II
Quality in Ready-Made Artists' Supplies - Part III
Historical Notes on Art - Part I
Historical Notes on Art - Part II
Historical Notes on Art - Part III
Historical Notes on Art - Part IV
Historical Notes on Art - Part V
Tempera Painting
Oil Painting - Part I
Oil Painting - Part II
Oil Painting - Part III
Oil Painting - Part IV
Oil Painting - Part V
Oil Painting - Part VI
Pigments
Classification of Pigments - Part I
Classification of Pigments - Part II
Classification of Pigments - Part III
Pigments for Oil Painting
Pigments for Water Color
Pigments for Tempera Painting
Pigments for Pastel
Japanese Pigments
Pigments for Fresco Painting - Part I
Pigments for Fresco Painting - Part II
Selected Fresco Palette for Permanent Frescoes
Properties of Pigments in Common Use
Blue Pigments - Part I
Blue Pigments - Part II
There have been one hundred and thirteen posts in a previous Art Resource series that focused on the following topics:
(i) Units used in dyeing and printing of fabrics.
(ii) Occupational, health & safety issues in an art studio.
(iii) Color theories and color schemes.
(iv) Optical properties of fiber materials.
(v) General properties of fiber polymers and fibers - Part I to Part V.
(vi) Protein fibers.
(vii) Natural and man-made cellulosic fibers.
(viii) Fiber blends and melt spun fibers.
(ix) Fabric construction.
(x) Techniques and woven fibers.
(xi) Basic and figured weaves.
(xii) Pile, woven and knot pile fabrics.
(xiii) Napped fabrics, double cloth and multicomponent fabrics.
(xiv) Fabric finishes.
(xv) Schrinkage, durable press and wash-wear finishes.
(xvi) Classification of dyes and dye blends.
(xvii) The general theory of printing.
To access any of the above resources click on the following link - Units Used in Dyeing and Printing of Fabrics. This link highlights the one hundred and thirteen posts in the previous Art Resource series.
There are eight data bases on this blogspot, namely: (1) the Glossary of Cultural and Architectural Terms; (2) Timelines of Fabrics, Dyes and Other Stuff; (3) A Fashion Data Base; (4) the Glossary of Colors, Dyes, Inks, Pigments and Resins; (5) the Glossary of Fabrics, Fibers, Finishes, Garments and Yarns; (6) Glossary of Art, Artists, Art Motifs and Art Movements; (7) Glossary of Paper, Photography, Printing, Prints and Publication Terms; (8) Glossary of Scientific Terms.
Note: From time-to-time all the above data bases will be updated.
If you find any post on this blog site useful, you can save it or copy and paste it into your own "Word" document for your future reference. For example, Safari allows you to save a post (e.g., click on "File", click on "Print" and release, click on "PDF" and then click on "Save As" and release - and a PDF should appear where you have stored it). Safari also allows you to mail a post to a friend (e.g., click on "File", and then point cursor to "Mail Contents On This Page" and release). Either way, this or any of the other posts on this site may be a useful Art Resource for you.
The new Art Resource series will be the first post in each calendar month. Remember, these Art Resource posts span information that will be useful for a home hobbyist to that required by a final year University Fine-Art student. Undoubtedly, some parts of any Art Resource post may appear far too technical for your needs (skip those mind boggling parts) and whilst other parts may be too simplistic with respect to your level of knowledge (ditto the skip). Hopefully, the trade-off between these two extremes will mean that the Art Resource posts will be useful in parts to most, but unfortunately, may not be satisfying to all!
Introduction
The study of artist materials and their application to various techniques covers a number of separate subjects, but they are all interrelated. The following general notes aim to be introductory in the sense that it treats the underlying principles and basic points and includes general remarks which is important to note before going into further details on the various single topics.
The media used to host your artwork whether it is paper, canvas, cloth, stone or bronze (the latter two being used in sculpting) have some bearing on what techniques are available to you. For example, cloth can be dyed, prints on paper can be marbled, canvas usually hosts oil paints, stone and bronze artworks are usually three-dimensionally shaped, ceramics are usually either vitrified or semi-vitrified. On the other hand, artistic film and video usually contain movement, even though that is not always guaranteed. Visual mixed media artworks can host a myriad of objects, shapes and countless variations of materials too numerous to detail, since the imagination of human beings is without limits.
Artist: Judy Cassab (Australian, Austrian, and a Hungarian citizen (15 August 1920 - 03 November 2015).
Click on the link - Margo Lewis - to view a blog of her artwork.
Drawing
In most cases before a concept comes into fruitition sketching or drawing with pencil on paper is the easiest of beginnings. In the analogue world artists would often doodle and in this play, art ideas for further exploration would take shape.
The simplest method of doodling is drawing with a lead pencil or a stick of chacoal or crayon. The surface of the uncoated paper is, miscroscopically, a weblike mass of long fibers; depending on the degree of coarseness of the finish and upon the crayon and pencil used, the fibers act like a file: they wear away the pigment particles and hold them within their interstices.
Ordinary lead pencils are made of a graphite mixed with variable amounts of clay according to the degree of hardness desired. The softest varieties contain very little or in fact no clay.
'H' stands for 'Hard'. 'HB' stands for 'Hard Black', which means 'medium hard'. 'F' stands for 'Firm'.
Graphite is a form of carbon that occurs in flat plates or flakes and so have a slippery or greasy feel. The pressure on the drawing stroke not only forces these particles into the interstices of the paper, but also creates a slight gloss or sheen by causing them to assume a flat, level position with their flat sides parallel to the surface, somewhat in the same way that wax is polished by causing it to assume a level, and continuous surface.
Metallic lead has the same properties as graphite; when it is drawn across paper its particles are filed away and held in the mesh of the fibers. Subsequent exposure to the impurities in the atmosphere will make these lead drawings blacker.
Thin rods of metallic lead were used as pencils by the ancients, and although graphite was known and applied to various uses much earlier and crude graphite pencils began to be employed as early as the 17th Century, the modern graphite or lead pencil in the present wood-encased form dates from about the beginning of the 19th Century.
When metallic silver is drawn across paper that has been coated with a layer of white pigment, small dark particles of metal are held in the porous or grandular surface of the coating in the same way that the other materials are held by the fibers of uncoated paper.
Silver-point drawings, which were popularly esteemed in the past unlike the present, are characterized by a certain delicacy of line. Unless immediately protected by fixative, the lines tarnish as forms, on all silver surfaces; this color change, however, is usually desired, and the drawings are therefore left unfixed until it occurs.
A number of commonly produced industrial coated papers will react with silver (as can be tested by a stroke on any silvered paper), but these are imvariably made with little or no rag content and are of doubtful permanence. If special silver-point paper is not available in the artists' supply shop, it can be made by coating pure, smooth water-color or drawing paper with a thin layer of Chinese white, using a broad sable or camel-hair brush. The silver point itself might be sharpened with a bit of silver wire held in an etching needle holder, or a thicker rod of silver ground to a point at one end and to a chisel edge at the other; both are procurable from a jeweler at a small cost. Gold and platinium will make similar drawings of somewhat different color. They do not change by tarnishing.
Drawing created for the Hunter Rehabilitation Service Presentation Folder Cover and Corporate Identity Program (1995).
Technique and Material: India ink drawing on cartridge paper.
Size: 27 cm (height) x 27 cm (width).
Reference:
[1] The Artist's Handbook of Materials and Techniques, R. Mayer, ed. E. Smith, 4th Edition, Faber and Faber, London (1981).
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