medium

(noun)

a material used by an artist or designer to create a work

Related Terms

Examples of medium in the following topics:

  • Gouache

    • Gouache is a water-soluble painting medium that is very similar to watercolor, differing only in the fact that it is opaque.
    • Gouache is a water-soluble painting medium that is very similar to watercolor .
    • Sometimes referred to as "opaque watercolor," the primary difference between the two mediums is the fact that gouache is opaque and watercolor is semi-translucent.
    • As a painting medium, gouache is prized for its durability and drying speed.
    • Like many painting mediums, gouache can be used on multiple supports, including board, paper and canvas.

  • Time and Motion

    • One of the principles of art, motion is a tool artists use to organize the artistic elements in a work and is employed in both static and time-based mediums.
    • Motion is employed in both static and in time-based mediums and can show a direct action or the intended path for the viewer's eye to follow through a piece.
    • While static art forms have the ability to imply or suggest time and motion, the time-based mediums of film, video, kinetic sculpture, and performance art demonstrate time and motion by their very definitions.
    • All of these mediums use time and motion as a key aspect of their forms of expression.
    • Name some techniques and mediums used by artists to convey motion in both static and time-based art forms

  • Watercolor

    • Watercolor is a water-soluble painting medium known for its subtle, delicate colors and careful, layered brush work.
    • Watercolor is a painting medium that consists of pigment with a binder made from gum arabic, a water-soluble compound that is derived from the sap of the acacia tree.
    • In Chinese, Korean and Japanese painting, it has been the dominant medium, often in monochrome black or browns.
    • Although watercolor painting is extremely old, its continuous use as an art medium in Western art historically begins in the Renaissance.
    • Unlike most other painting mediums, watercolor paint relies on the whiteness of the paper to reflect light back through the color.

  • Categorizing Art

    • The creative arts are often divided into more specific categories, each related to its technique, or medium.
    • The creative arts are often divided into more specific categories, each related to its technique, or medium.
    • In addition to referring to the technique used, the term medium can also refer to the substance or material the artistic work is made from; for example, paint is a medium used in painting, and paper is a medium used in drawing.
    • The constraints and limitations of a particular medium are thus called its formal qualities.
    • A genre is a set of conventions and styles within a particular medium.

  • Video Art

    • Video art refers to the medium of video being used to create the work, which can then be broadcast, viewed in galleries, distributed as video tapes or DVD discs, presented as sculptural installations incorporating one or more television sets or video monitors.
    • Many artists found video more appealing than film, particularly when the medium's greater accessibility was coupled with technologies able to edit or modify the video image.
    • The relative affordability of video also led to its popularity as a medium.
    • Much video art in the medium's heyday experimented formally with the limitations of the video format.
    • A still from Vertical Roll by Joan Jonas, a video that experiments with the formal limitations of video as a medium.

  • Time

    • The use of time in art can be implied or actual, and can be employed in a variety of mediums from painting to film.
    • While static art forms have the ability to imply or suggest time and motion, the time-based mediums of film, video, kinetic sculpture, dance and performance make use of actual motion by their very definitions as mediums.
    • In all of these mediums we watch as a narrative unfolds before our very eyes.

  • Oil

    • Oil painting is the most commonly used of all the painting mediums and involves painting with pigments that have been mixed with an oil binder.
    • Oil painting is the most commonly used painting medium and involves painting with pigments that have been mixed with an oil binder.
    • Oil paint is prized for providing the qualities of richness, intensity and luminosity of color, and it is believed by many to be the most versatile of all the painting mediums.
    • During the 15th century oil paint became the principal medium used to create works of art, spreading outwards from Early Netherlandish painting schools in northern Europe until the high Renaissance, when oil paint had replaced tempera paint completely throughout the majority of the continent .

  • The Role of the Artist

    • The role of the artist is to use his or her medium and style in order to convey a chosen purpose.
    • Artists hold many different roles in society, but share the common role of using their medium and style in order to convey a chosen purpose – to make art.

  • Tempera

    • The medium is traditionally applied in successive thin, semi-transparent layers called glazes.
    • Tempera paintings should be made on stiff boards as opposed to canvas because once it dries, the medium is inflexible and painting on a canvas will cause chipping and cracking.

  • Photography: Recording an Image

    • Basic photography involves using light to record an image onto a medium, such as paper or a computer display.
    • Basic photography involves using light to record an image onto a medium, such as paper or a computer display.
    • The camera is the image-forming device, and photographic film or a silicon electronic image sensor is the sensing medium.
    • The respective recording medium can be the film itself, or a digital electronic or magnetic memory.