Artists use fibers, both in raw form and in refined forms,. Woven grasses and raw wool make their way into three dimensional pieces; threads and fabrics spun and woven from cotton and silk end up in art quilts and mixed media pieces. Artists can braid and weave twine, yarn and thread into both functional and decorative works of art.
Many different kinds of paint exist: acrylic, oil, watercolor, gouache and latex are the most common type. Acrylic and oil paints are a made through age-old but sophisticated techniques that combine ground natural pigments with a base or stabilizer, such as acrylic polymer or oils. Artists thin acrylics with water before use and dilute oil paints with linseed oil before applying. They use water to thin watercolor and gouache paints before applying them to watercolor paper. Watercolors are more translucent than gouache paints.
Most of us are familiar with the "No. 2" pencil we used in school. Artists use a wide variety of pencils, each with different properties and features. Some are softer and make darker marks, while others are harder and produce a finer, more exact line. Colored pencils are available in every color of the rainbow, including metallics, and you can blend them just like charcoal, graphite and lead drawing pencils.
Artists repurpose found objects and give them new life as a work of art. Instead of using a store-bought canvas, an artist might paint on an old cabinet door, piece of scrap wood or discarded sheet metal. Wire, hardware fixtures, jars, cans, broken jewelry, shards of glass, bottle caps and plastic bags all find their way into three-dimensional sculptures that are aesthetically pleasing while drawing attention to environmental issues.
Paper is a material that many of us take for granted. We draw and write on it, we print documents on it, we pick it up off the driveway in the morning and read it and we buy it in the form of magazines, notepads, packages and envelopes. Paper is not only a place where artists can express their ideas with another medium. It can be a medium itself. Kirigami, the art of cut paper, and origami, an ancient paper folding art form, are two examples of paper as medium. Papier mache is another way that artists cut paper and form it into three-dimensional objects.