What Are The Different Mediums Used in Art & Examples of Artists Who Use Them

Have you ever wondered, what are the different mediums used in art, what are they made of, when were they invented, and who used them successfully? Us too!

So, we’re taking you on a journey into the world of art mediums that are used in traditional drawing and painting, and some of the old classical examples of the artwork done using them.

Of course, we won’t include the random things that can create visual art, but don’t exist specifically for art purposes like coffee, mud, moss, or brick shards. Brace yourself and prepare for some new knowledge (or for a quick refreshment).

The big question is…

What’s the difference between drawing and painting?

It’s subtler than just a textbook definition. Some may think that drawings are made with dry mediums, and paintings – with wet ones, however, you can also draw with ink…

The most inclusive definition would be the one that states the following:

Drawings are made with the use of lines and concentrate around lines, while paintings are made using stains and smudges and concentrate on the filled areas.

Drawings can be colorful and detailed, paintings can be monochrome and simplistic, so it’s way more important to understand how they’re made to define them.

So, what are the most common and popular mediums meant for traditional drawing?

Graphite, Conté, and Pencils

Graphite, conté, and pencils are very much related, and conté was actually the substitute for pure graphite and the ancestor of a modern pencil. Pure graphite isn’t commonly used in art anymore and is replaced with more convenient and low-maintenance graphite-based mediums.

Conté crayons (sometimes encased in wood like pencils) are easier to control than softer black drawing mediums that clog the surface. Another one of its advantages over the softer mediums is the possibility to control its darkness with applied pressure.

Among the famous artists who worked with graphite-based mediums, was Georges Seurat with his remarkable conté works like this one:

Regular graphite pencils are made of – you guess it – graphite (powdered and mixed with clay), and they vary in their hardness. The pencil hardness grades vary from 10H to 9B, where 10H is the hardest and 9B is the softest. The most versatile and commonly used for writing is HB – right in the middle of the scale.

Colored pencils, unlike their black colleagues, have wax- or oil-based cores with colored pigments mixed into them (water-soluble binders for watercolor pencils), but their working principle is similar. The mass production of colored pencils began only in the early 20th century, and this medium is often overlooked despite how versatile and easy to use it is.

Graphite-based mediums usually don’t require any special type of paper or any additives. However, if you want to store your graphite works without smudging them, you might need a special fixative spray. Some artists also use strong hairspray, which is cheaper, just make sure to spray it from a distance and not wet the paper.

Related:

• Watercolor Pencils VS Colored Pencils
• Best Graphite Pencils

Chalk Medium

Chalk, crayon, and pastel mediums are from the same “family” as well. Crayons are basically a definition of shape, and the term “crayons” includes both pastel and wax crayons. Crayons themselves are powdered pigments mixed with a binding agent and shaped as short sticks, round or square ones.

Chalk, however, is a “readymade” art medium, a white form of limestone. It’s widely used in schools and as children’s art medium, so it’s easy to imagine what chalk is like. Soft, blendable, and lightly-colored, even if it’s not white, it requires a contrasting toothy surface and a fixative on top, if you want your works to last.

Pastels Medium

Chalk is used as an ingredient for pastels. Regular soft dry pastels contain powdered pigment and a dry binder of neutral hue, and the pigment is the same that’s used in all other colored media. But the word “crayon” itself is mostly associated with wax crayons (aka wax pastels), which are pigments mixed with wax.

Dry pastels require a toothy surface and a fixative, just as you would do it with chalk, but the surface can be any color you need. Oil pastels, however, don’t need a fixative, and they can be used on a smooth surface since they’re oily and stick rather well.

Among the famous artists who used chalk and pastels, you’ll find Camille Pissaro:

and Edgar Degas:

Due to the softness and affordability, these materials were often used for sketching and studying, but lots of artists used, and still, use them to create complete works.

• Soft Pastel Drawings for Beginners (Intro article).

Charcoal Medium

Charcoal is a truly ancient art material, and the recordings of its usage go way back to the cave paintings. It’s created from powdered organic materials held together with either a binder or by removing the oxygen from the material during the production. You can control its intensity by applying different amounts of pressure, it’s easily blendable, and is less permanent than other dry mediums.

In the case of previous materials, you could actually skip the fixative step. But when working with charcoal, having a fixative is a good thing to have, since it’s so light, smudgeable, and erasable (and will also make you very dirty in the process). Charcoal mostly requires a toothy surface, however, you can try smoother ones, just prepare to use your fixative (rougher surface means not only juicier strokes, but also easier pigment clinging).

Charcoal is often used for quick sketches, figure drawings and preliminary studies. Like this beautiful drawing by John Singer Sargent:

Of course, using a few different mediums at once can lead to absolutely incredible results. An example of which is using charcoal with white chalk:

Ink Medium

Ink is a wet medium in the form of a highly pigmented liquid or paste, and it’s also the medium that is used in pens and markers. Its components can allow it to have different colors and opacity levels, and liquid inks are usually applied on smooth surfaces with brushes, fountain pens, quills, and brush pens. Thicker inks are used for printing and letterpress, applied with a brayer most of the time.

I bet all of you have seen the famous ink drawing below:

Markers

Markers were invented at the beginning of the 20th century, so classical artists did not use them. However, they are amazing and versatile drawing and sketching materials, and it would be unfair not to mention them. They can have vivid or muted colors, high-quality markers can be blended and layered, they have various tip shapes, and you can create stunning and unique works with them.

The types of markers that are most commonly used in art are thin drawing pens (also known as liners), alcohol-based markers, paint-based markers, and brush-tip markers. All of them, except the paint markers, are based on ink (sometimes mixed with alcohol) and require a thin smooth drawing surface. Yes, the colors may bleed through if the surface doesn’t have the special coating, but it prevents absorbing too much ink and drying out the markers very fast.

• Best Pen and Ink Art Supplies
• 12 Sketchbooks for Markers

Traditional Painting Mediums Used in Art

Now on to the art mediums that are used for traditional painting:

Ink and markers, covered above, are also widely used as painting mediums. What is created with them – a drawing or a painting – depends on the technique and the initial purpose of using them.

Oil paint, gouache, acrylic paint, and tempera are from the same family of thick, opaque paints, that can be applied with either brushes or palette knives. However, they have different properties and can be used for different things.

Oil Paint

Oil paint is made of powdered pigment mixed together with oil. The drying time and lightfastness of the paint depend on which oil is used as a binder, but the most common is linseed oil. In general, oil paints dry very slowly, are perfect for layering, and also are quite toxic, so a well-ventilated room is required.

• Read This Before Buying Oil Paint
• Free Oil Painting Tutorials
• Essential Oil Painting Supplies List

Gouache

Gouache is a thick water-based paint, an opaque watercolor, originally used for fine details in pastel paintings in the 18th century, but becoming a popular “poster paint” later. It can be applied without water or easily diluted with large amounts of it, almost turning the paint into watercolor. Gouache can be re-wetted after it dries, and is great for layering.

Tempera

Tempera, or egg tempera, is an extremely fast-drying permanent paint made of pigments and a water-soluble binder like egg yolk (hence the name). It was a primary painting medium until the 1500s. Since it’s extremely long-lasting and its colors, although duller than oils, don’t fade, many examples of tempera icons and paintings survived to these days.

Thick paints are usually used on primed surfaces like heavy paper, cardboard, wood, or canvas – not on thin paper. Oil and tempera paints were also used for icons and wall painting in the classical and medieval periods. In modern times there’s also a wide range of paint additives for them to change their viscosity and drying time, add glitter or a pearlescent finish, make them matte or glossy.

The true rise of oil painting began during the Renaissance period. There are way too many incredible artists using oil paint to share all of them here. But if you are ever curious, look for Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Rembrandt, John Everett Millais, Johannes Vermeer, Gustav Klimt, Titian, Raphael, Claude Monet, Jan Van Eyck, and many many others.

Acrylic Paint

Acrylic paint is a synthetic painting material, a fast-drying paint that consists of pigment mixed with acrylic polymer emulsion. It can be diluted with water and resemble other paint types, but can’t be re-wetted, and is hard to mix on the painting surface. It was invented in the 1930s, so old master painters weren’t using it, but it’s a versatile and useful medium that is irreplaceable in modern art history.

Here is an example of one of the paintings I did using acrylics:

Watercolor and Gum Arabic

Watercolor and gum arabic (which are not the same thing) are paints made of pigments that are held together by a water-soluble binder. Watercolors come in pans (dry) or tubes (semi-dry), they are usually applied with natural soft brushes onto thick watercolor paper, they are easily blendable, and can’t be layered at all. Their significant feature is transparency and their ability to re-wet at any time, which allows creating paintings in very distinctive techniques.

Gum arabic is the watercolor binder that slows its drying time, makes the colors more vibrant, and adds the glossy finish. It’s also the name for the watercolor that is made with gum arabic as a binder, not only for the binder itself.

Watercolor has always been a beautiful material for landscape paintings, like the ones by Winslow Homer:

And although watercolor is popular for landscape work, portraits turn out truly amazing too! Just take a look at the Madame Gautreau, and how masterfully Sargent plays with the colors in this piece. You have probably seen its more popular oil painted version, but this one is worth taking a look at as well!

• 12 Necessary Acrylic Painting Colors
• Best Brushes for Acrylic Painting
• 8 Watercolor Sketchbooks
• 10 Affordable Watercolor Brushes

Encaustic paint

Encaustic paint, also known as hot wax paint, is a paint made of heated beeswax with pigments. Since it’s basically wax, it’s applied and manipulated with by hot metal tools, and the perfect surface for encaustic painting is prepared wood or canvas. Modern encaustic painters can use heat guns or heat lamps.

Due to how ancient this technique is, it’s impossible to credit most of the artists who used encaustic paint as their main working medium. Numerous icons and Egyptian mummy portraits were created with encaustic. However, a famous German portrait artist Benjamin Calau, author of the works like the one below, used encaustic paint on wood as his chosen technique in the 1700s.

That’s the list of art materials for drawing and painting. As you can see, there’s a big variety to choose from, and many of them were created a really long time ago and were the tools for making worldwide famous masterpieces.

But despite the seemingly full range of existing products, new art mediums are still being invented, and they’ll definitely make history as well.

What’s your favorite art medium to work in? And which one would you like to try?

Let us know in the comments below! 🙂