Watercolor
Watercolor, also known by the international term of aquarelle, refers to a type of painting medium made from a mixture of powder pigments, water and a binder. In the past, the most common binder used was gum arabic. The feature of using the watercolor technique is the transparency of the resulting color layers.

Oil
Oil paintings on paper are rarer than in oil paintings on other support surfaces, since paper is a more vulnerable support. In this case the pigment is mixed with a drying oil."

Tempera
Tempera, like water color, is a water soluble painting medium. The basic difference is that tempera gives a more compact, higher density result.

Pastels
Pastel is a drawing technique which uses crayon (sticks) consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder (oil and non-oil based). These crayons, also known as pastels, are therefore a dry painting medium, and are applied without using a brush.

Woodcut
The negative of the desired final image is engraved on a wooden plate. The wood surface is then covered with ink and printed on paper.

Etching
The image is etched on a metal plate by means of a strong acid. Unlike other etching techniques, the imprint of the ink on the paper is made by the engraved areas and lines of the plate surface, not the intact regions.

Copper engraving
The negative of the desired final image is engraved on copper plate. This technique is one of the most popular and is widely used in producing printed images.

Lithography
The process of lithography used lithographic limestone as the support layer used for the creation of the original image. Lithography originally used an image drawn with oil, fat, or wax onto the surface of a smooth, level lithographic limestone plate. The stone was treated with a mixture of acid and gum arabic, etching the portions of the stone which were not protected by the grease-based image. When the stone was subsequently moistened, these etched areas retained water; an oil-based ink could then be applied and would be repelled by the water, sticking only to the original drawing. This technique was invented in 1789 in Munich by Alois Senefelder.

Color etching
As in the case of monochrome or black etching, the image to be printed is etched on a metal plate using the help of a strong acid, and the imprint left by the ink on the paper is that of the engraved lines and areas. Color etching uses either one plate with different color inks or different plates used for each different color ink.

Silkscreen
While believed to have originated in the Far East at the same time paper appeared, screen printing was the printing technique that characterized the 20th century. It was widely used in the 1930s by American artists, and quickly conquered the international market because of its low cost and ease of use. The initial layout of the image is done on pieces of silk or other fabric, which is stretched on frames (screens). The printing technique is grounded in the use of hydrophobic fatty inks, which are not retained in saturated areas.

Pencil

In the early 17th century, the term pencil was used in describing a piece of graphite, colored chalk or charcoal, which was used as a design tool. Starting in the middle of the same century the use of a thin graphite rod fitted within a soft piece of wood started. However, the term is a misconception, since early styluses were made of lead, which is what we still call pencil cores, even though today they are actually made of non-toxic graphite, and the term did not refer to the use of lead for the creation of works.

Quill, Stylus, Pen
Works using writing instruments, made from plants, feather, metal, etc. were specific to the historical period, the place and the type of inks used, i.e. liquid drawing media made of ingredients derived from plant or animal origin, such as iron gall inks, carbon black inks, sepia, etc. The inks did not typically have drying oil as a binder, as printing inks did.

White chalk

Originally used as a means to create highlights on works which included other painting mediums, particularly during the Renaissance. It was also used as the main design medium on dark paper supports, particularly in creating studies for oil painted works on canvas. It was a highly acclaimed medium by French painters during the 18th century.

Charcoal Charcoal has been used since ancient times, primarily as a draft medium used to execute outlines of paintings finished using other dry or liquid media. It was preferred as a main medium of expression by the German painters of the 16th century. Starting in the mid-17th century, new a related medium, called 'oiled charcoal', made its appearance, and it was the result of impregnating bars of charcoal with drying oils, e.g. linseed oil.