Welcome to

by Linda Carson

big black pig studio
98 King St. N., Waterloo Ontario Canada
www.bigblackpig.com

Paint Media

Particular Types of Paint, or Media

"Paint is just coloured glue." What varies is the glue. Almost all of my examples are painted in acrylics, where the "glue" is a fancy-pants product of modern chemistry, a synthetic polymer resin. I've got a few examples, though, of other less common paints. From a photograph, you can't really experience the special qualities of texture and finish that are unique to each of these specialty paints. The best I can hope for is that these examples remind my students of seeing the originals, and motivate everybody to seek out paintings in these media.

• watercolours;
• casein;
• encaustic; and
• egg tempera.

Are these the only media beyond oils and acrylics? Heck, no. There are alkyds (look like oils, dry faster), water-mixable oils (look like oils, clean up with water), oil sticks (look like oil pastels made of oil paint), gouache (looks like a satin-finish casein, or opaque watercolour), and fresco (looks like coloured plaster), and that's just the paints that are conventionally used by artists. Every paint offers a distinctive look and feel to the painter, and the viewer.

Trying out a new paint, my first questions would be:

• "What are the appropriate support and ground for this medium?"
• "What's the solvent?" (That means, "What do I thin the paint with, and what do I clean up with?")
• "How long does it take to dry?"
• "Should the finished painting be varnished?"
• "How should this medium be framed? Under glass?"

Back to the main lesson?

Loosely translated, that means:
"Please don't copy this material or redistribute it in some other form, for any reason. This is my livelihood."