Lesson 4: The Artist and the Artisan

Before the industrial revolution virtually everything was made by artisans, from smiths
(goldsmiths, blacksmiths, locksmiths, gunsmiths) to weavers, dyers, carpenters, potters, etc.

In other places, this distinction is often very blurred since many farmers paint, many
sculptors farm or have other jobs. Most walls are carved, most houses have decorative motifs.
Art is everywhere. To them the act of creation of beautiful things is second nature. All the ladies
of a village will make the amazing decorations for temples, and the elaborate offerings, thinking
nothing of spending three days making things which will be only used for a few hours.

The Artist and the Artisan

In much of the world today, an artist is considered to be a person with the talent and the
skills to conceptualize and make creative works. Such persons are singled out and prized for their
artistic and original ideas. Their art works can take many forms and fit into numerous categories,
such as architecture, ceramics, digital art, drawings, mixed media, paintings, photographs, prints,
sculpture, and textiles. Of greater importance, artists are the individuals who have the desire and
ability to envision, design, and fabricate the images, objects, and structures we all encounter,
use, occupy, and enjoy every day of our lives.

An artist is dedicated only to the creative side, making visually pleasing work only for the
enjoyment and appreciation of the viewer, but with no functional value.

An artisan is essentially a manual worker who makes items with his or her hands, and who
through skill, experience and talent can create things of great beauty as well as being functional.

Throughout history and across cultures, there are different titles for those who make and
build. An artisan or craftsperson, for example, may produce decorative or utilitarian arts, such as
quilts or baskets. Often, an artisan or craftsperson is a skilled worker, but not the inventor of the
original idea or form. An artisan or craftsperson can also be someone who creates his own
designs, but does not work in art forms or with materials traditionally associated with the so-
called fine arts, such as painting and sculpture. A craftsperson might instead fashion jewelry,
forge iron, or blow glass into patterns and objects of his own devising.

Artists make art and once that art is made, they make more. When they have enough art,
many of them call or email or post or otherwise present it to art world professionals like dealers,
gallery owners, curators, consultants, representatives, so-called agents and others who sell art
for a living. Some of these professionals like the art so much they tell the artists they want to
represent, show or sell it. The artists give them the art to sell... and it sells.

Nobody escapes this truth. Your goal as an artist is to survive in a style that allows you to
continue making art, preferably on a full-time basis, and that means finding people to buy it. If
you can't survive as an artist solely by selling your art, you have to get another type of job in order
to make a livable income, and then either make art in your spare time or stop making it
altogether.

Medium and Techniques of Artist

A medium is the material used by an artist to express his/her feelings or thoughts.

The artist thinks, feels, and gives shape to his vision in terms of his medium When an artist
chooses a particular medium, he believes that his choice can best express the idea he wants to
convey. At times, an artist employs more than one medium to give meaning to his creative
production.
 The medium of arts is classified into the visual arts and the auditory arts, or both.

Visual Arts are those whose mediums can be seen and which occupy space. Visual Arts
are grouped into two classes:

1) The dimensional art or two-dimensional arts (2D) which include painting, drawing,
printmaking, and photography,
2) The three-dimensional arts (3D) which include sculpture, architecture, landscape, industrial
designs and crafts like furniture.

Auditory Arts are those whose mediums can be heard and which are expressed in time.
Example of auditory art is music, the art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a
continuous, unified and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and
timbre. It maybe vocal or instrumental, possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.

3) Both visual and auditory are those whose mediums can be both seen and heard and which
exist in both space and time.

Technique is the manner in which the artist controls his medium to achieve the desired
effect and the ability which he fulfills the technical requirements of his particular work of art.
Artists differ from one another in technique even if they use the same medium. A musician's
technique is his ability to make music sound the way he wants it. For instance, a pianist may
sound different from another pianist even as they handle the same instrument and play the same
musical composition.
Techniques Related to Paintings

Some of the techniques used by the artist in painting are as follows:

1) Encaustic - The medium for the powdered color is hot wax which is painted onto a wood
surface with a brush. It is then smoothed with a metal instrument resembling a spoon, and
then blended and set over a flame to soften and set the colors into the wood. This method
produces durable colors and permits sculptural modeling of the paint surface. Because of the
wax medium, the colors are semi-translucent and look fresh and lively. This technique is rarely
used today.

2) Fresco Secco - In the dry plaster or "fresco secco” technique, pigments are usually mixed with
water, although other substances might also be used. The paint is then applied to a dry plaster
wall which has been wetted down with water. Since the plaster is relatively dry, it is non-
absorbent, and the pigment adheres to the surface of the plaster. The colors tend to flake off
the surface of the plaster. The colors have a harder and more brilliant appearance and tend
to be lighter in value than those in true fresco. Advantages of the technique are that the
painting can be done more slowly and carefully, and changes can be made simply by over-
painting, since colors are opaque. Example is the Egyptian Mural.
3) Fresco - This is also known as "Buon Fresco" or True Fresco, which entails painting on freshly
spread, moist plaster. First, layers of plaster are applied to the surface. While the final layer
is still wet, the artist applies the colors, which are earth pigments mixed with water. The
colors penetrate the wet plaster and combine chemically with it, producing a painted surface
which does not peel when exposed to moisture. As the paint must be painted on wet plaster,
the amount of plaster which may be put down at one time is limited to what can be painted
at one sitting. Often lines can be seen in frescos around an area which was one day's work.
The painting must be done rapidly and without mistakes. It produces a mat surface with fairly
desaturated colors. This technique was perfected in Renaissance Italy. Example is
Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, 16th Century.
4) Egg Tempera - In this method, the pigment is mixed with egg yolk or both the yolk and white
of an egg. It is thinned with water and applied to a gesso ground (plaster mixed with a binding)
on a panel. It was also used on parchment or paper to illustrate or embellish books in the era
before the 15th century development of the printing press. This type of painting dries very
quickly and produces an opaque, matte surface. The colors tend to dry to a lighter value than
they appear when wet. The colors produced are bright and saturated. Modeling is achieved
by hatching. Egg tempera was used for panel painting until the 15th century. Examples of
artists who worked in egg tempera include Cimabue (14th Century); Duccio (14th Century);
Andrew Wyeth (20th Century). Islamic and Medieval miniature paintings in books and
manuscripts are another important class of egg tempera painting; the Celtic Book of Kells is a
well-known early example, as is the Book of Hours commissioned by the Duc du Berry in the
14th century.
5) Mosaic - The design is created by small pieces of colored glass, stone, or ceramic (called
Tesserae), embedded in wet mortar which has been spread over the surface to be decorated.
Their slightly irregular placement on a surface creates a very lively, reflective surface when
viewed at a distance. This was often used to decorate walls, floors, and ceilings.

6) Oil Paint - Prior to the 15th century oil paints were thick and hard to control, so they were
initially used only for utilitarian purposes. In the 15th century turpentine was discovered to
be an effective thinning agent: The Van Eyck brothers were credited with perfecting the
technique of painting, which they initially attempted to keep secret.
 Powdered colors are mixed with a fine oil, usually linseed oil. A solvent, traditionally
turpentine, is also used to thin the colors as desired, so that the paint can be applied thickly
and opaquely, or thinly and transparently. The oil paint is applied to a prepared ground,
usually a stretched canvas with a coating of neutral pigment. The earliest technique of oil
painting involved building up layers of colors, moving from darker to lighter values. Fine
brushes were used, and a glossy, smooth finish was achieved. When applied in this way, the
colors are somewhat translucent, so that the darker layers of color below added depth and
luminosity to the surface, and permitted a remarkable degree of realism. Other artists came
to discover that because of its slow drying, oil paints could actually be re-worked on the
surface to blend colors, and when applied thickly, with a larger brush or palette knife, could
also add real surface texture to the image. This technique of applying oils lent itself to more
expressive, dramatic effects in which fine detail was less important than total effect. Artists
who worked in this way includes Monet (19th century)
7) Water Color - Powdered pigments are mixed with gum-arabic or a similar substance that will
help them adhere to a surface. The artist then mixes them with water and applies them to a
ground, usually paper, with a soft brush. The final effect is that of translucent washes of color.
This method was the most important method of painting in China and Japan from an early
date, but did not become popular with European artists until after the 16th century. Chinese
and Japanese painting techniques have had a great deal of influence on modern
watercolorists. Below is an example of watercolor painting.
8) Acrylic - Acrylics are artificial compounds developed in the twentieth century. The binder used
includes water, and the paints can be thing with water, but once the paints dry, they have a
glossy, permanent surface that resembles the surface created by oils. These paints can create
most of the effects accomplished in oils, and have the advantage of not requiring the use of
turpentine, which is toxic. The major disadvantage of acrylics is that unless a retarding agent
is mixed into the paint, it will dry much more quickly. Since many artists prefer to be able to
re-work the colors, many prefer oils to acrylics. However, many modern artists do choose
acrylics.

9) Collage - The word "collage" comes from the French verb "coller," meaning "to paste." In this
technique photographs, news clippings or other objects are pasted on the painting surface
and may be combined with painted areas. The cuttings and objects may be selected for their
associative or representational values, or for the formal and textural qualities of the result.
This technique was first accepted as a legitimate medium that could augment or be
substituted for painting in fine arts in this century. One of the first examples was executed by
Pablo Picasso.
10) Drawing - The materials and methods of drawing are the most basic tools of the artist and
the designer. Work that is intended to be executed in almost any material--paint, stone, steel,
or fabric - may first be envisioned in a drawing. However, this basic character of drawing skills
may tend to trivialize what can be a highly developed art in its own right.
However, there are some characteristics of drawing that make it particularly attractive to
the artist in many situations. First, drawing materials are very portable. Therefore, it is
possible to bring these materials out of the studio, to the subject, or to the workplace or the
client, wherever the artist wishes to use his ability to make images.
Also, since the materials are so portable at a minimum, a sketch pad and a pencil or pen-
drawings tend to have a kind of immediacy, and an intimate quality that cannot often be seen
in painting or printmaking. It is possible to capture the candid moment, the action, or the
mood, without the obtrusive paraphernalia required for other methods. When used in this
way, the drawing may also be a more economical way to capture an idea that may simply
remain a drawing, or may later be developed in the studio in another medium.
11) Printmaking - A print is anything printed on a surface that is a direct result from the
duplication process. Ordinarily, a painting or graphic image done in black ink on white appears
and becomes the artist's plate. Advantage of printmaking is the process of making copies of
the original drawing.
The Five Major Types of Prints are:
a) Relief - Relief prints are made by removing material from the matrix, the surface the
image has been carved into, which is often wood, linoleum, or metal. The remaining
surface is covered with ink or pigment, and then paper is pressed onto the surface, picking
up the ink. Letterpress is a relief printing process that transfers ink to paper but also
indents an impression into the surface of the paper, creating a texture to the print that is
often considered a sign of high quality.

b) Intaglio prints - They are made when a design is scratched into a matrix, usually a metal
plate. Ink is wiped across the surface, and collects in the scratches. Excess ink is wiped off
and paper is pressed onto the plate, picking up the ink from the scratches. Intaglio prints
may also include texture.
c) Stencil prints - They are made by passing inks through a porous fine mesh matrix.

d) Woodcut - This kind of technique of printing designs from planks of wood incised parallel
to the vertical axis of the wood's grain. It is one of the oldest methods of making prints
from a relief surface, having been used in China to decorate textiles since the 5th century.
e) Engraving - In engraving, the design is cut into metal with a graver or burin. The burin is a
steel rod with a square or lozenge-shaped section and a slightly bent shank. The cutting
is accomplished by pushing the burin into the metal plate. The deeper it penetrates into
the metal, the wider the line; variations in depth create the swelling tapering character
of the engraved line. After the engraving is finished, the slight burr raised by the graver is
cleaned off with a scraper.