4 Different Art Mediums To Decorate Your Home or Office

Interested in adding more art to your home, home office, or work office?

If you’re an art novice, you might need some ideas about finding the right medium that works best in a particular space.

Different art mediums that use various materials and techniques, such as pencils and sketchpads, clay, sculptural stone, paint and canvas, and cameras to create photographs, offer you a broad range of aesthetic options to adorn your walls, tables, or any spot you want to set your new art piece.

You might need more help understanding various art mediums and their history and purpose.

Here’s a look at four different art mediums that will provide a helpful launching point.

1. Drawing

It’s essentially shorthand to say that drawings are comprised of pencils and sketchpads. Artists through the ages have used different implements and surfaces for their creations. A few of the many additional drawing utensils and drawing sub-mediums  include:

• Chalk
• Charcoal
• Crayon
• Graphite
• Ink
• Oil paint
• Pastels
• Tempera
• Watercolor

You might think many of these belong to other artistic mediums, and while that’s true to a degree, an artist can apply them to drawing through specific techniques and their own style. Additionally, artists sometimes use drawing to get ideas onto paper as something akin to a writer’s rough draft. That same drawing might give birth to a future oil painting on canvas or a sculpture. According to NPR, famous cubist painter Picasso once said, “I draw like other people bite their nails,” and he drew in all media, including chalk art, charcoal, crayon, and watercolor.

2. Mixed Media

Mixed media is essentially what you might imagine: the combination of different creative mediums to create one vision or work. Many artists use this approach to art as their primary and defining medium. In fact:

• Martha Haversham uses found objects to create stories.
• Clare Celeste Borsch creates installations and collages by using recycled magazines, junk mail, picture books, and more to create themed pieces covering full gallery spaces.
• 20th-century Mexican painter Frida Kahlo experimented with mixed medium art with her 1939 piece entitled, “The Frame.”

Artists focusing on this medium keep an open eye and mind about how different media — photographs, drawings, paintings, sculptures, films, and music — can work together to break boundaries between distinct art forms to create something new, beautiful, or thought-provoking.

3. Photographs

Part artful endeavor and part memory-catcher, photography has become an embedded part of modern life. Just look at the continuing efforts to enhance photographic capabilities on each new smartphone. People see artful scenes in random moments of their lives, which is one reason why photography as an art medium is so beloved. Most people can’t stop and capture a perfect scene and sketch it on the spot, but artful photographers can pull out their camera and capture that special moment in an instant. Now that digital DSLR cameras have become widely available and easy to use, amateur photographers quickly turn to budding artists with the right subject matter.

4. Paintings

Painters use oil, acrylic, or watercolors to express their vision on various substrates, such as canvas, paper, cardboard, wood, composite panels, silk, metal, glass, and more. Painting styles vary, often but not always, corresponding with the materials used. For example, oil paints made from linseed, walnut, safflower, and poppy seeds allow for bolder colors and greater shine on canvas.

At the same time, watercolor on paper reads as gentler and more personal. What many art buyers seek when buying art is the chance to feel a connection to the work. Paintings and art prints found here, such as Katy Abraham’s “Lulu’s Landing” and Caryn Owens’ “Sand Dunes,” are wonderful pieces that fit beautifully in your home, office, or public spaces, putting observers at ease and serving as a conversation starter.

Understanding Different Art Mediums Makes the Art Purchasing Process Easier

As artists have their purpose in creating, you have your purpose in buying art. When you know what the point is for various mediums, you can figure out whether it’s a good fit for your space, life, or point of view. You have a wide and wonderful art world from which to choose, including the rich world of painting, drawing, photograph, and mixed media. Hopefully, these quick descriptions offer you the tools to find the right art piece for your space.