Art Making: Media, Techniques, and Processes
Praxis questions test whether you know how each medium behaves and which process category a technique belongs to.
Drawing: graphite is graded by hardness - H pencils are hard and light, B pencils soft and dark, HB in the middle, with numbers extending each direction. Charcoal gives deep blacks and smudges easily; fixative slows that. Conté crayon is harder and denser than charcoal. Ink and wash build value through dilution and layering.
Painting: watercolor is transparent, stains the paper, and works light-to-dark because white is reserved paper; gouache is opaque watercolor; acrylic dries fast and can be layered or glazed; oil dries slowly, allowing blending, and is built “fat over lean”; tempera (egg) dries matte and quickly; buon fresco is pigment in wet lime plaster and is permanent, while fresco secco is applied to dry plaster and tends to flake.
Printmaking: relief (woodcut, linocut) inks the raised surface; intaglio (engraving, etching, drypoint, aquatint) inks the incised grooves and wipes the plate surface clean; lithography relies on grease and water repelling each other; screenprinting forces ink through a stencil. Drypoint is identified by its soft, velvety burr; etching uses acid bitten through a ground.
Sculpture: subtractive (carving) removes material; additive (modeling, assemblage) builds it up; casting (lost wax) reproduces a form in metal; relief stays attached to a background.
Ceramics: hand-building by slab, coil, and pinch, or throwing on the wheel; join with slip at the leather-hard stage, bisque fire, then glaze.
Rule of thumb: name the physical action. If material is removed, it is subtractive; if ink is pressed into a groove, it is intaglio; if the white of the paper forms the highlight, it is transparent watercolor.