From fresco to varnish: a succinct summary of all the different media which have been used in painting, with links to more detailed articles.
history of painting
Until 1880, varnishing oil paintings was standard practice, but three completely different types of varnish were used. A journey through names like sandarac and colophony.
Never shown to the public in traditional paintings, a vital layer which goes between paint and the support. White, colour, chalk or oil.
Popular with painters during the early 1600s, copper sheets were used by Jan Brueghel the Elder, Adam Elsheimer, David Teniers the younger, William Blake, and Joseph Stella, among others.
Good for watercolour and pastels alone? Paper and cardboard have also been used extensively for oil sketches, and more.
First popularised for use with glue tempera, ‘canvas’ quickly developed into the first choice for oils. In Venice, canvases as large as tennis courts were used by Veronese and Tintoretto.
From the funerary portraits of Fayum, through the work of Jan van Eyck, to Leonardo, Rubens and Botticelli, many of the greatest paintings are on wood panels.
Oils were king until the 1960s, when acrylic paints became readily available. How do they differ from oils, though?
How Samuel Palmer used ink in paintings, and some fine work using the milk protein casein, by Gustav Klimt and others.
From Conté crayons to oil pastels, stick media have many advantages and are rightly popular today. Here are examples by Millet, Seurat, Redon, Schiele, Bonnard, and others.
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