The mediums

Today, oil, acrylic, watercolour and pastel are among the most used mediums by the artists. Incidentally art lovers and art collectors turn also more often to these mediums at the time of purchase. By order of preference, the mediums most appreciated by customers are oil, then acrylic, followed by watercolour and finally pastel. In general, French-speaking Canadians do not believe that a work framed under glass can be of quality. The English-speaking however think differently. In fact, a watercolour or a pastel is not worth less than an oil or an acrylic. Only the artist and the work determine the value of art. Then the first rule to apply when choosing an art work is to be fond of it, the medium does not really matter.   

Did you know that oil paint was invented by the Dutchmen in the Middle Age? At that time each artist had to travel, sometimes very far, in order to get the necessary ingredients to make his painting. Each artist had his own colour recipe which was kept secret. Today it is not anymore necessary to do all this work since many companies manufacture colours that they sell in tubes to artists. 

Acrylic paint is a much more recent medium that uses the traditional pigments mixed with synthetic resins. It was invented in Mexico in the middle of the XX th century by chemists of the National Engineering Institute of Mexico City and it was first sold in 1950.

Pastel is a medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as those used to produce all coloured mediums, including oil paints.Some artists use a technique similar to the charcoal based on the use of lines and shading, others use a technique closer to painting with the superposition of thick masses of colours. The pastel was probably invented in France and Italy at the end of XVI th century and was used by Léonard de Vinci.

One early form of colour painting, is not normally included in the category, is buon fresco painting (watercolour) - wall painting using pigments in water medium on wet plaster, which goes back to Egyptian and Roman antiquity. One well-known example of buon fresco is the Sixtine Chapel by Michael Angelo begun in 1508 and completed in 1514.