Master Art Techniques & Media: 50 Flashcards From Fresco and Etching to Sfumato
Learn 50 art techniques and media, from tempera, etching and lithography to casting, land art and sfumato, grouped into five families with contrast drills.
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Art history exams rarely ask who painted it without also asking how. This 50-card deck (code KP3972, Art Techniques & Media) gives you the how. It covers the vocabulary of media, processes and surface effects that turns a museum label into something you can read.
Study this deck: Art Techniques & Media
1 / 10Oil painting
Tap the card for the answer · swipe right if you knew it, left if not
Sample cards
| Front | Back (shortened) |
|---|---|
| Fresco painting | Painting on wet plaster; pigments bond as it dries; Sistine Chapel |
| Tempera painting | Pigments in egg yolk binder; fast-drying, matte; common before oil |
| Encaustic painting | Pigments in hot wax; Fayum mummy portraits |
| Etching | Intaglio: acid bites lines through a wax ground; Rembrandt |
| Lithography | Planographic: greasy drawing on stone, water/oil repulsion; Toulouse-Lautrec |
| Casting (sculpture) | Liquid bronze or plaster poured into a mold; lost-wax (cire perdue) |
| Land art (earthworks) | Large-scale interventions in landscape; Smithson's Spiral Jetty |
| Sfumato | Soft transitions without lines; Leonardo's Mona Lisa |
Full list: oil, watercolor, acrylic, fresco, tempera, gouache, encaustic; charcoal, pastel, pen and ink, hatching and cross-hatching; woodcut, engraving, etching, lithography, screen printing (serigraphy), monotype; collage, carving, modeling, casting, assemblage, relief (bas-relief and high relief); installation, photography, photomontage, video art, digital art, mixed media; mosaic and tesserae, stained glass, tapestry, ceramics, glassblowing, metalwork, woodworking, fiber art; performance, conceptual art, land art, graffiti, airbrushing; sgraffito, grisaille, impasto, glazing, chiaroscuro, sfumato.
Learn it in five families, not 50 entries
The deck runs roughly painting → drawing → printmaking → sculpture → crafts → contemporary. Then it goes back to painting with seven surface effects at the end (cards 44-50). Study in this order instead:
- Paint media (1-7), sorted by binder: oil, egg (tempera), wax (encaustic), plaster (fresco), water (watercolor, gouache), polymer (acrylic). The binder explains nearly every back: drying speed, finish, how easy it is to correct.
- Painting effects (44-50) right after, because impasto, glazing, grisaille, chiaroscuro and sfumato only make sense once you know oil.
- Printmaking (12-18) in the four families named on card 12: relief (woodcut), intaglio (engraving, etching), planographic (lithography), stencil (screen printing). Monotype is the odd one out because it makes a single impression.
- Sculpture (20-24, 31): subtractive (carving) vs additive (modeling), then casting and assemblage.
- Crafts and contemporary practices (25-43) last, linked by artist names.
Two contrast drills
- Engraving vs etching. Both are intaglio. Engraving means the hand cuts the line with a burin, so the line is crisp. Etching means acid bites the line, so it's freer and more fluid. If the back mentions acid or wax ground, it's etching.
- Glazing vs impasto, sfumato vs chiaroscuro. Make a 2×2 card: thin vs thick paint, soft blending vs hard light contrast. Pin one painting to each (Van Gogh, Old Master glazes, Mona Lisa, Caravaggio).
Card 24 (assemblage) and card 19 (collage) are the same idea in 3D and 2D, so review them together.
Keep going
Put the techniques into a timeline with our 50 art movements in order guide. Then attach names through 140 famous artists from Giotto to Ai Weiwei.
Search KP3972 in the library on Flip It to study the full deck.
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