It is the art of representing figurative or abstract motifs on a flat support using materials composed of a pigment mixed with a binder, which gives it consistency and allows it to be fixed on a support. The different painting techniques can be divided according to the medium in which they dissolve and can be grouped into two main categories: dry and wet.
Original artworks
The drawing
It is a procedure that can appear alone or as a basis to apply other techniques. We must distinguish between artistic drawing (done by freehand) and technical drawing (done with drawing instruments). Artistic drawing seeks to capture personal sensations, influenced by the imagination and individual experiences, making it eminently subjective, while technical drawing aims to be objective and represent objects as close to reality as possible, using scales, in order to provide the technical information necessary for your technical analysis. The most used techniques are pencils, charcoal or ink, pastels and wax pencils.
Painting
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Dry category
They are those in which the paint is solid and no solvent is necessary for its application. The most common types of dry techniques are:
THE GRAPHITE PENCIL: It is the most common way to draw. Created in the 18th century, it can have different degrees of hardness.
COLOR PENCILS: They allow drawing with a large number of color tones and offer the possibility of making gradations or textures based on cross-line patterns. As with graphite pencils, there are different degrees of hardness.
MARKERS: It is a technique in continuous evolution since models with different graphic possibilities often appear. The marker has as its main graphic element the line, which provides directions, rhythms, points, textures, color masses, erasures, rubbing, color mixing between the colors on the paper itself, etc.
CARBON: Charcoal, or carbon, is used to make preparatory drawings, detailed chiaroscuro studies and to sketch the composition of an oil or acrylic paint. Its use is very flexible because it stains with great ease, providing broad lines and the possibility of covering large shaded surfaces.
WAXES: Waxes are a mixture of pigments with wax and animal fat as a binder. Due to their composition, waxes give the drawings a very characteristic plasticity. Wax is one of the plastic media with the most pictorial possibilities. Both its linear application and the use of its technique in drawing based on planes, allow the production of dense and opaque surfaces or transparent and light.
THE COLLAGE: Technique that is based on gluing drawings, photographs or different objects (wood, leather, newspapers, magazines, everyday objects, etc.) on different supports such as cardboard, canvas or wood. The term comes from French and means glued, glued. Cubists such as George Braque or the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso were the first to make collages. There are other techniques related to collage such as: photomontage, decoupage and assembly.
Wet category
They are those in which the pigments are diluted in an aqueous or oily medium and the colors are applied with the help of brushes or other instruments.
TEMPERA: This type of paint is characterized by being opaque and covering, which allows working flat inks and correcting errors. It also provides the possibility of working with translucent layers if more water is added.
OIL: Its name comes from the oily binder it contains, since it is made up of pigments and oils. It is a widely used technique because it allows to achieve various chiaroscuro effects, colors and textures. The most widely used support is canvas, linen or cotton fabric, to which a primer is added to apply the brush stroke. The canvas is stretched on a wooden frame. Other supports can also be used for oil painting such as wooden boards glued to a frame.
ACRYLIC: In acrylic paint, pigments mix with a plastic substance called acrylic polymer. Although acrylic paints dissolve with water, once they are dry they are resistant to it. This type of painting, which emerged in the first half of the 20th century, dries very quickly, slightly changing its hue when it is permanently fixed.
WATERCOLOR: It is distinguished from other aqueous media for being a transparent paint in which the color is worked in layers. The colors are very bright and the whites will be the white of the paper. It is necessary to use papers with a rough texture and high grammage to absorb some of the water. Furthermore, the technique can be used as the basis for different procedures such as stenciling and to play with different shapes and textures.
GOUACHE: It is a painting technique similar to watercolor, also diluted in water, only it is less transparent than this because the pigment fragments are larger. Another difference is that they include white pigment, which makes the colors more opaque and solid.
AIRBRUSHING: Use acrylic spray paint or enamels. When no diffusers are used, but the paint is simply dropped, we talk about dripping.
PASTEL: In this type of paint, the powder pigments are mixed with resins, forming a dry paste that is shaped into a crayon or wax. It can be used by painting directly with a pastel stick or using the powder released by the stick (similar to chalk) to apply color.
EGG TEMPERA: Oddly enough, egg yolk is still used today as a pigment binder. Together with water and oil, this food manages to fix pigments, having survived this ancient painting technique to this day. An example of a work of art painted with the egg tempering technique is The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli.
CHINESE INK: Chinese ink is, in most cases, liquid, although sometimes it is marketed in the form of a powder that must be mixed with water. It is usually worked with black and sepia colors, and applied with a feather. Chinese ink is used for drawing or calligraphy.
