Children - Lesson 4: Digging INto media

Child

Hi. What kind of tools do you use to make art? Pencils, crayons, markers, paints? Artists use these tools (known as media) and more. It will help you understand the art works better if you can tell one medium from another. We asked an artist to help us by making a video quiz. Can you guess which is which?

Adult/Teacher

Hello. This lesson about studying art looks at the materials an artist uses to making something. Assist the child to learn about different media. To help, we have a video quiz.

Media

Children learn to make art using pencils, markers, crayons, pens, finger paints, and many other media. They will have their favorites, but most children are at home with multiple ways of expression. Each of these has different properties. For example, a pencil—thick or thin, depending on the width of the lead—makes a soft mark that is erasable. It’s different from a pen or a thick marker, right? Beside the ease or difficulty of making marks, their permanence, or variety of colors, different media have properties that tell different stories. The smear-ability of a piece of chalk or a watercolor allow for effects that can be dreamlike, effects that are harder to achieve with other media. In a similar way, a medium that is hard and pointed—like a pen—can make sharper and more precise details.

One of the first jobs of an art historian is to look at the work and determine what it is—not what it means, how it was made, or when—but what the medium is and what material it is on. Very young children have the tools to make some of these investigations because they are themselves are used to working in a range of media. But it is a question that they might never have been asked. Can they tell the difference between a crayon and a colored pencil, between black ink, black charcoal, and black pencil? With a little helpful questioning, they can become quite adept at identifying different kinds of art works, which will lead to a level of expertise that can develop further.

Media Challenge

Below is a video of an artist who demonstrates seven different kinds of media and describes some of the effects that each can make. But he doesn’t tell you what media they are. Can you figure it out?

Look at the video and then match the media shown in the photographs below with its name.

Can you name the media in the video and photographs above? Here are clues. The media are, alphabetically: acrylic paint, charcoal, crayon, eraser, ink, pastel, and watercolor.