Painting media are divided into two categories:  water-thinned, or water-base, media, a group that includes both traditional materials and some plastics; and turpentine-thinned media, comprising oil colors as well as some of the synthetic bases.

Natural Water-base Media

Watercolor

Watercolor painting is the application of a thin solution of colored liquid on a light sheet.  This medium permits only minor changes.  Inspiration, vision, and skill work together to produce an immediacy different from that of any other painting medium.  Unfortunately, the art education tradition presents watercolor as a medium for beginners, so that what passes for instruction in too many classes is technique alone, without regard for concept.  But learning to produce tricky effects or to lay down a flawless wash usually leads to a misplaced emphasis on method and paintings devoid of pictorial invention.  Paul Cezanne, whose late works in oil were based on his watercolor experience, would not receive a passing grade if technique were the sole criterion, for his watercolors evolve out of personal perceptions and conceptions.  Cezanne's watercolor technique is thus a by-product of his imagination.

The problem, especially in water color, is to let the medium function to meet the needs of sensations or ideas--to make the medium do what your vision demands.  The more visual culture you bring to this medium, the more you can transform it.  Watercolor, in short, is not a medium for beginners.

Watercolor painting produces a transparency, a glazed effect.  The light source is the paper, for its whiteness illuminates the combination of water and pigment.  In one sense, this description could also refer to the wash drawing shown in View of a Bridge 1895-1900 Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.  Keep in mind the differences between watercolor and wash drawing.  To begin with, wash refers to a monochrome effect, while watercolor suggests color.  The second distinction is the base, the material that holds the pigment.  Today's wash drawings are produced with a waterproof ink (India ink) from a shellac base.  Watercolor has a gum arabic base that is not waterproof and, hence, enables you to make some changes.  You can soak unwanted areas with water and then blot with sponges and/or tissues; some artists even remove mistakes with a weak solution of bleach and water.  This last process is a little dangerous, because as the bleach seeps in, it weakens the glue action of the gum.  Moreover, the ghost of the original always remains.  Obviously, watercolor is a spontaneous performance where only minor changes are possible.

The directness of watercolor nevertheless does not narrow its possibilities, for it is also a medium capable of producing many visual sensations.  Each master bends the medium to his or her vision; or, as the following examples demonstrate, each one finds a natural use for it.

Cezanne used watercolor with pencil undermarkings in his painting (View of a Bridge 1895-1900 Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut) to locate the positions of objects in space.  In his complicated structure, perspective views from the left and from the right seem to cross over or become intertwined.  In Green Pears, 1929, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, Charles Demuth used the medium to present a symmetrical arrangement of forms in a method that combines crisp, clear edges and highlights with fluid modeling.  In the center, notice that the white contour lines are actually incised gently with a razor blade.

Van Gogh found in watercolor a medium that enabled him to echo the sharp calligraphic manner of his drawings and paintings (The Garden of St. Paul's Hospital with the Stone Steps, 1889, black chalk, pencil, brush with ink and watercolor, Van Gogh Foundation, Amsterdam) by working with a limited palette of cool greens and blues.

Whistler, in still another manner, prewet the top section of Blue and Silver: Chopping Channel, (Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., by James Abbott McNeill Whistler) to create a flowing, undulating mass.  He then contrasted this viscous effect with direct brushwork on a paper with such a strong glue size that it seems to resist the brushstrokes.  Maurice Prendergast conceived a different set of contrasts by working the watercolor medium in such a way that some sections seem dry and some very wet (Sunlight on the Piazzetta, Venice. 1899, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston).  As a result, the hard edges in the building dissolve by incalculable degrees to softer edges.  It is this interaction of effects that gives the work its energy.  Finally, in Emil Nolde's Friesland Farm Under Red Clouds, (1930, Victoria & Albert Museum, London), the stretching cloud forms dominate a low horizon anchoring small houses.  To achieve this masterful arrangement, Nolde chose absorbent Japanese paper capable of retaining layer upon layer of iridescent watercolor.

Watercolor Materials

Watercolor paint -

Dyes and Inks -

Paper -

Brushes and Palettes -
 

Gouache

Gouache Materials
 

Distemper

Distemper Materials and Recipes
 

Egg Tempera

Egg Tempera Materials

Egg Yolk Tempera

Pigments

Brushes

Support and Ground

Palette
 

Casein
 

Synthetic Water-base Media

Acrylic Emulsion