Art Media, Techniques, and Processes
Know the medium by its behaviour
Questions in this domain usually ask you to match a material with its properties, its tools, or the effects it produces. Learn media through how they act rather than through brand names.
- Drawing: graphite gives a range of values and erases cleanly; charcoal is soft, dusty and high in contrast; conte and pastel sit between drawing and painting; ink gives crisp, permanent marks, with wash producing tone.
- Painting: watercolour is transparent, light comes from the paper, and mistakes are hard to lift; gouache is opaque water-based paint; acrylic dries fast and can be layered or used thickly; oil dries slowly, allowing blending and reworking.
- Printmaking: relief (linocut, woodcut) prints from raised surfaces; intaglio (etching, drypoint) prints from incised lines, requiring pressure and damp paper; screenprinting pushes ink through a stencil; monoprinting yields a single unique pull.
- Sculpture and ceramics: additive modelling (clay), subtractive carving (stone, wood), construction and casting. Clay stages run from slip to plastic to leather-hard to bone-dry to bisque, and glaze is applied before the final firing.
- Textiles, collage, digital and mixed media each bring their own constraints on layering, reversibility and reproduction.
Traps
Assuming all paint is opaque; confusing intaglio with relief; thinking a monoprint is a repeatable edition; forgetting that collage is additive and usually irreversible.
Rule of thumb
Ask two questions: does the process add, remove, or transfer material? And is the result unique or repeatable? Those two answers usually separate the options.
Worked example
A candidate is asked which process involves cutting into a metal plate so ink sits below the surface. Answer: intaglio, because ink is held in the incised lines and transferred under press pressure.