A lead sharpener is a tool used to sharpen the lead on a lead holder. (Some models also double as a pencil sharpener.) Generally, lead sharpeners sharpen the tip of the lead using an abrasive medium. Typical file-type sharpeners carry a plate file

An eraser shield is a thin sheet of stainless steel or plastic with slots and holes of different shapes. They are designed to allow erasers to be used through them to erase lines and text without removing lines close by which do not need to be (or sh

Emery is an abrasive made from granulated garnet used in the production of stone lithograph plates to polish the plate surface. It is a pale brown mineral compound consisting of silicate, which contains magnesium, iron, manganese, calcium, etc. Al

A file is a tool used for making a surface smooth, rounding off the corners and scraping off unwanted parts by rubbing against the material. It can be made of metal, paper or cloth. A file has a countless number of small teeth on its surface. This is

Etching is an indirect intaglio printmaking technique in which the metal plate is prepared through corrosion. A needle is used to scratch and peel off the anticorrosive coating on the plate to expose the metal surface. When this plate is immersed in

Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique and a variant of etching (indirect intaglio) in which the metal plate is prepared through corrosion. A porous plate surface is produced by sprinkling powdered pine resin or asphalt on the surface of the p

EPS, which stands for Encapsulated PostScript, is a file format for graphic data which uses a technology known as PostScript. It carries the extension, .eps. Because it can include vector data and bit map data, it is used as the file format for both

BMP is the standard file format for bit map data in Windows (There is also a slightly different BMP in the OS/2 format). It carries the extension, .bmp. BMP files can be viewed and edited with the Windows accessory program, MS Paint, and is compatibl

A triangular scale is a ruler that has a 3-lobed cross-section with 6 different types of scales on the edges (2 on each face) used for measuring and preparing scale drawings such as blueprints and maps. It is also called an architect's scale. Some ty

Ebake is a brush used in Japanese paintings (nihonga) to ground or paint large areas in lines of a uniform width with sumi ink or nihonga paint. The width of commonly used ebake is between 1 sun (approx. 3cm) and 5 sun (approx. 15cm) available in

A corer is a wire instrument for removing the core from artist charcoal. Charcoal is made by carbonizing tree branches or offcuts from tree trunks. Those made from branches have vessels running through the center that turn into a different type of

Woodcut is a type of woodblock printing in which a board, cut out vertically along the grain of the wood, is used as the printing block. In Japan, there has long been a culture of woodcut prints such as ukiyo-e, and woodblock printing using woodcut b

Copperplate printing is one of the forms of intaglio printing in which grooves are formed in a pressed copperplate by a physical process such as engraving or acid etching. Ink is then packed into this and is transferred from the plate to paper with a

A ruler is a stationery item and drafting tool used when drawing lines, as a guide for cutting, and for various other uses. It is available in different shapes and materials, depending on the type of lines the user wishes to draw. Some rulers have me

Section diagrams are auxiliary diagrams showing parts that are not visible. Invisible parts in a three dimensional object are shown by hidden outlines (broken lines) but if too many are used, the blueprint becomes complicated and difficult to read. T

Wet and dry is one type of sandpaper used for sanding with water. Although sandpaper generally has no water-resistant properties, wet and dry paper will not tear if exposed to water and the adhesive will not dissolve. Sanding with water reduces the f

Projection methods are broadly divided into perspective and parallel projection. Projection is a means of representing a three-dimensional object in two dimensions and orthographic projection is a form of parallel projection. A feature of orthographi

Registration marks (kento) are placed on the printing plates to position the paper correctly for printing. They are indispensable, particularly for works produced through multiple printing. The quality of the work will depend greatly on the accuracy

Sandpaper uses paper or cloth as the base material with an abrasive bonded to the surface. It reduces and smooths the surfaces and corners of timber and plastic, etc. by rubbing. The term “sandpaper” can refer to sandpaper, emery cloth or waterpro

Hues are tints such as red, yellow, green and blue that define color and are one of its three attributes (hue, value and intensity). Tints vary in different light wavelengths. Light is an electromagnetic wave. If it is of a wavelength in the spect

Iwa-enogu is Japanese paint made from particles of pulverized rock, mainly minerals. The particles have a similar coarseness to sand and feature a lusterless matt feeling. The paint itself has no adhesive properties, but by adding glue, it sticks to

Pencils are drawing instruments comprising a solid core of mainly graphite and clay baked in a thin tube and inserted into a wooden sleeve. Pencils have a diverse range of uses including as everyday writing implements, for drawing, Croquis and drafti

Watercolor palettes are flat, smooth boards or saucer-shaped and used as plates in watercolor, gouache and similar works to arrange paints, mix colors and adjust moisture content, etc. The shape and type of material in a palette depends on the typ

Measuring sticks and art grids are used for understanding form and checking layout when drawing a subject in front of you such as a person, static object or scene. The measuring stick mainly provides height, size and other ratios for the objects i

When the word, "dot", is used in relation to computer images and data input/output devices, "dot" can be assumed to indicate the smallest element in designating precision. The unit, dpi (dots per inch), for example, is used for the resolution of b

A gel medium is an acrylic resin with water soluble properties. It is used in a variety of works to bring out the luster and add volume to acrylic paint, adjust the transparency, etc., fix collages and produce texture. The main ingredient of gel m

Conté crayons are a drawing medium made of powdered natural pigments compressed into a stick, and are also known as carbon chalk. They lie somewhere between a pencil and charcoal in terms of hardness, with a subtle balance of hardness and softness th

■ Basic supplies Pencils Conté crayons Erasers Kneaded erasers ■ Supports Croquis books Drawing paper Canson Mi-Teintes (only for Conté crayons) ■ Other Carton Wood panels Easels Fixative Cutters Thumb tacks or bulldog clips * A

Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), or DVD-Video as it is known, is an optical recording medium capable of recording videos over an extended period. Its media composition, geometry and data recording and reading methods are basically the same as those o

The compression method in which the original data can be restored from the compressed data is called lossless compression. It would be meaningless to compress and reduce the size of text and program data if data is lost in the process. That is why lo

A lead is a short sentence or paragraph placed between the headline and the article in newspapers, magazines and other publications providing a précis of the article and intended to stimulate reader interest. To distinguish it from the article and th

A computer handles various data such as text, image, audio and video in files. The specific way in which data is stored in a file is called the file format. All data processed on a computer are binary data that can be expressed in 0s and 1s. In ot

A pixel is the smallest element in the composition of bitmap data. It is an abbreviation of the word, picture element, and the word for it in Japanese is gaso. Digitized bitmap data images read by scanner or from digital camera photographs are typ

Numbering refers to the numbering of pages and in Japanese publications is called nombre, from the French word. Books, magazines and other bound publications have the page number displayed on each page. This is also called pagination. Numbering ge

Gutter is the term for the bound sections (inner margins) of a book, magazine or other publication. It also refers to the margins between the printed text and the binding on any book or magazine surface. Setting the correct margin for the gutter w

TIFF is the abbreviation for Tagged Image File Format and is a bitmap data file format. It carries the extension, .tif. Using codes called tags to recognize data content enables information related to images to be stored in files. It is compatible

PSD is a bitmap data file format and is the native file format to the graphics editing software, Adobe Photoshop. It carries the extension, .psd. It is also known as the Photoshop format. Adobe Photoshop is a multifunctional graphics processing so

CD-Rewritable (CD-RW) is a rewritable medium which uses a metal phase transitioning material in the recording layer (specified in Orange Book Part III) and records information by converting the crystalline state of the material to a non-crystalline (

CD-Recordable (CD-R) (specified in Orange Book Part II) is a recordable medium that uses organic dyes such as azo, cyanine and phthalocyanine on the recording layer and records information by degradation and dissipation of the dye with heat from a la

When a computer processes information, it usually does so by expressing that information in 0s and 1s (binary digit expression). The smallest unit of that information (a single digit of binary data) is called a bit. This is the shortened version of t

Headers and footers carry the document title, chapter, section and/or main points and are positioned in the margin area outside the main text area on pages of books, magazines, and other book-type publications. The purpose of this information is to m

Drawing ink is produced by using pigment as a colorant mixed with a fixative such as glue in soot. It is known for its resistance to water and light and for its strong fixing properties. It is mainly used in the preparation of blueprints that are to

The fore edge of a book, magazine or other bound publication is the transverse section on the side opposite the binding (spine). The Japanese term, koguchi, essentially means transverse section. In the general book production process today, when a

The straight edge ruler, also known as a bench rule, is an implement used to draw and cut extremely accurate straight lines. This is done by running a pencil or other writing instrument, or a cutter or blade, along the edge. Generally, measures are m

Metal type is usually cast in an alloy mainly made of lead. It is a piece of metal shaped into a rectangular prism with a top surface which is the size of the letter and a height of around 24mm, and is used in a combination to produce a type page for

Imaginary body refers to the frame that will be the size standard when designing a font. A 12-point (1 point = 0.3514mm) font, for example, will be designed within a 4.217mm x 4.217mm frame. That frame is the imaginary body. The size of the letter is

A ruling pen is an instrument for drawing lines of even thickness in drafting, tracing and lettering. In Japanese, it is referred to as a crow's beak and as this name suggests, it is made of two metal blades in the shape of a beak between which the i

Masking tape is mainly used in adding color to paintings as well as in painting and airbrush work to protect areas that are not to be painted and to produce different colors side by side. Most of the masking tape frequently used in art and design wor

Pen ink is the ink used for general writing purposes. The most commonly known types today are the long used blue-black ink as well as the pigment-based carbon black ink and water-soluble dye colored ink, both of which were developed to overcome the s

Drafting tape is coated with a weak adhesive and is mainly used to fix paper to drafting boards and to hold lettering, etc. while designing and doing layouts. It is also used to hold photographs and stencil templates in place on mounts and painting a

Solvent, mainly made of organic ingredients, is used as a thinner to adjust the concentration of paper cement. It can also be used to peel off pieces of paper that have been pasted together with paper cement. Solvent is sold in cans but it is usef

DVD-R (DVD-Recordable) is a recordable medium with an organic dye in its recording layer which does not allow data to be rewritten or deleted once it is written on the disc. DVD-RW (DVD-Rewritable), on the other hand, is a rewritable medium with a me

A heading is a title placed at the beginning of a passage to provide a concise description of its content. In books, it refers to the titles given to each segment of the text according to chapter, section, paragraph, etc. In newspapers and magazines,

At the dawn of the history of the computer, paper punch tape and cards were used as recording media but today, methods such as magnetic, optical, optical magnetic and semiconductor recording are used in the materials and devices for recording informa

A floppy disk is a removable, rewritable magnetic recording medium comprising a disk-shaped polymer sheet coated with magnetic material on the front and back, encased in a jacket. It is sometimes also referred to as a flexible disk. In the 1970s,

Bitmap data and raster data is the format for displaying images as a cluster of pixels. Images are digitized when photographed by a digital camera or scanned. Sampling and quantizing are required for digitizing analog content. Sampling is the brea

Scissors are the implements we use to cut (shear) paper, cloth, soft plastic and leather, etc. by pinching the material between the upper and lower blades. Unlike cutters and other bladed instruments where the material is sliced by applying pressure

When converting analog sound into digital data, it needs to go through a sampling and quantizing analog - digital (A-D) conversion process. The digitization of sound in this way is known as PCM (Pulse Code Modulation). WAVE is one of the principal

PNG, short for Portable Network Graphics, is a bitmap data file format. The file extension for it is ".png". PNG is a lossless compression file format for use on networks supporting 8-bit and 24-bit colors with the ability to achieve image transpare

The French curve is a template used to draw different types of curve. It is called a cloud template in Japanese because of its resemblance to a cloud. The French curve enables the artist to draw curves that would be difficult to achieve with a compas

DVD-RAM (DVD-Random Access Memory) is a rewritable medium which uses a metal phase transitioning material in the recording layer, has hardware defect management and identical specifications to magnetic recording media. Consequently, data can be delet

DVD+R (DVD Recordable) is a recordable medium with an organic dye in its recording layer which does not allow data to be rewritten or deleted once it is written on the disc. DVD+RW (DVD Rewritable), on the other hand, is a rewritable medium with a me

Generally, the term CD refers to a CD-DA (Compact Disc Digital Audio), but it is also a general term for an optical disc with a diameter of either 80mm or 120mm and a capacity of up to 700MB. CD-ROM, Photo CD, CD-R, and CD-RW are some of the logos an

Hanmen or hanzura (type page) originally referred to the entire printed area. It now primarily refers to the type area or printed region that makes up the contents of pages in books and magazines. In the latter case, secondary elements such as header

Ten (head) refers to the top edge of pages in bound books and magazines. Chi (foot) refers to the bottom edge of those pages. Each of these is part of what is known as the koguchi (fore edge) in its broad sense. There are also occasions in which thes

Adhesive binding (case binding) is the binding of all of the signatures (the printed sheets folded to the size of a book) that make up a book or a magazine at the spring using an adhesive. In the past, the tendency of pages to detach used to be a

Saddle stitch binding is the method for the binding together, using a wire (for example) from the center of the cover to the gutter, both of the covers and all of the signatures (the printed sheets folded to the size of a book) that made up the conte

Folding, in the case of books or magazines, is the name for the process by which the printed sheets are folded, accordion style, into the size of a book. Normally, books are made using sheets with multiple pages printed on each side, and then fold

Photocomposition (or phototypesetting) is one technology for creating paste ups, which are used in printing characters. Early printing technology involved the assembly of movable type, metal pieces upon which characters had been carved individually,

A reference frame is a frame constructed within an imaginary body that would coincide with the outer edge of the surface of a piece of type. The font is designed within this reference frame. It is not simply the case that a character can be design

The term “logotype” was originally used in printing to refer to the casting of type that contained multiple characters on a single piece of type, such as Æ.  Today, the term has come to refer to characters that capture a company’s or organization’s n

“Lettering” refers to the writing of characters/letters. This can refer to, among other things, traditional styles of writing known as shodō and calligraphy, in which a style is refined with the efficacy of the characters’ shapes in mind; to typeface

Vector graphics data describe shapes in a multidimensional space as coordinates and functions of shape attributes. They are primarily used in applications of the “draw” variety (e.g., Illustrator from Adobe Systems and the open source software Inksca

Paper cement is an adhesive whose primary components are latex and a solvent, and is used in the creation of designs, layouts, and presentation boards in order to attach paper to paper. Because it is not only easy to bond materials, but also to peel

Among the different types of semiconductor memory recordable media, flash memory is the general name for a group of products including CompactFlash, SD memory cards (including mini and micro), USB data storage drives, which are made up of EEPROM (Ele

“Font” used to refer to a single set of metal movable type of the same style in the same size. A “single set” referred not just to the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, in the case of European languages, but each of those letters in both upper- and

Typography originally referred to the technique of letterpress movable type printing, but today refers more broadly to the technique of arranging characters for the production of printed materials. Since the invention of printing technology by Gut

The word “typeface” originally referred to the face of a piece of metal type; from that it came to designate a uniform style of design shared by a set of type. It is now used for the digital fonts that are used on computers in place of physical movab

An inch (in.) is a unit of measurement used to express length or distance in the imperial system. Other units in this system include feet (ft.) and yards (yd.), which also express length or distance, and pounds (lb.), which express weight. 1 yard =

A Magneto-Optical Disc (MO) is a removable, rewritable storage medium, which comes in both 5.25-inch and 3.5-inch sizes. The 3.5-inch size is the more commonly used size with personal computers. The discs come in six different sizes of storage capaci

When making a sketch or croquis, an artist places a carton—a piece of thick cardboard—under the support medium (paper) to hold it in place. In French, “carton” means cardboard. There are two basic types of cartons used for sketches: a “single” typ

A printmaker uses an ink slab, basically the equivalent of a painting palette for printmaking, to mix and roll ink. Most ink slabs are made out of marble (natural or artificial) or thick chamfered glass (approximately 1 cm thick). Hard, heavy, and

When making a sketch or pictorial composition, an artist uses an easel to hold the support medium, carton, or other similar object in place at a comfortable height. Although there are many types of easels designed for different sizes of support me

PDF (Portable Document Format) is a file format for electronic documents. PDF files use the “.pdf” filename extension.

Originally released in 1993 by Adobe Systems, Inc., the PDF format is now standardized under t

An oil dipper is a small container that holds painting oil medium for oil painting. Oil painting often uses drying oil, volatile oil, and other painting oil mediums to alter the stretch and luster of the actual paint. Just as they have quick acces

Oil paint brushes have fine tips that mix well with oil and let artists take advantage of the viscosity, transparency, and other unique qualities of oil paint. With fine tips made of various types of animal hair and a diverse range of shapes and size

Oil paint, mostly made by kneading together pigment and drying oil that sets the pigment in place, features a distinctive luster and transparency that only oil can create, a degree of plasticity that enables expressive touch and piling, and a gradual

A wood panel is a veneer plywood-based support medium reinforced with squared timber and used in all types of painting, including oil. In pencil sketches, watercolors, nihonga, and other formats that use paper for their support media, stretching damp

Planography is a format of print work that uses plates with flat, even surfaces. One example of planography is lithography, in which an artist paints directly on a stone or metal plate with a smooth surface and then take advantage of the mutual repul

Made from paper mulberry, kōzoshi is a strong yet light and supple type of handmade Japanese paper. The paper has many different uses—from applications in painting as a support and lining paper of Japanese-style paintings (nihonga) and paper for wood

Charcoal paper is used with drawing materials that do not fix to surfaces well, particularly charcoal. Made with regular striped indentations on its surface, charcoal paper fixes color (such as charcoal) effectively, enabling a rich range of drawing

Inksticks are created from the soot of burned oil or burned pinewood, which is then bound with glue, hardened by kneading, and dried. The block is then rubbed together with water in an ink stone to produce liquid ink. As the saying has it, sumi ni go

An oil paint brush-cleaning container is filled with brush-cleaning solution and used to remove oil paint from brushes. Generally, the brush-cleaning container is a small bucket of a moderate depth, allowing it to be filled with cleaning solution

A brush cleaner is a container used to wash paint and dirt from brushes for Japanese painting, watercolors, acrylic, and other water-based paints. There are several types of brush cleaner available. They vary in capacity and portability, depending

A printing block is a wooden board that artists use as a plate material when creating woodblock prints. There are two basic types of printing blocks: a cross-grain type, cut vertically to go with the fiber of the wood, and an end-grain type, cut i

In block printing, letterpress (toppan) is a plate format that uses a plate with a convex surface on its type page. It places ink on the convex section produced on the plate and then produces the print on the paper via pressure from above. The format

Copperplate ink is an oil-based ink used in intaglio printing (ōhan), which can be made by mixing the paint with extender pigments such as aluminum hydroxide and burnt linseed or plate oil (as mediums), then knead them together. Copperplate ink co

Torinoko paper—literally “hen’s egg” paper—is a hand-made washi of a lustrous, smooth, and intricate texture whose chief ingredient is gampi (diplomorpha sikokiana). It is used as a support medium in Japanese art, block-print paper in woodcut printin

The chisel (chōkokutō), a carving knife used in woodcut printing, is a wood-handled, steel-bladed tool for carving into printing blocks. Chisels take their names from their tip shapes. In general, there are four widely used kinds of chisel: the cu

Takuzuri rubbing is one of the techniques of letterpress printing (toppan). It is a rubbing-printing method that involves transferring the patterns (monyō) and designs (zugara) on the protruding sections onto paper by applying the paper to the engrav

The line-drawing brush (senbyō fude) does precisely what its name suggests: it draws thin lines. Artists can select brushes made from the furs of different animal species or fashioned with different tip shapes depending on the type of lines they want

The mizubake (Japanese water brush) is a Japanese brush made for painting water onto large surfaces, different from brushes that use paint. The mizubake is chiefly used in stretching, in water-based paintings (watercolors and Japanese paintings), and

Watercolor paper is a general term for any exclusive paper used in drawings that employ water-based paints such as transparent or non-transparent watercolors. Because the expressions of watercolor paintings are created by the manner in which the w

A triangle is a drafting tool used to draw accurate parallel lines, vertical lines, and other angled lines. Generally, two right-angled triangular pieces of differing angles form one set. On one piece, the angles are 90°, 60°, and 30°; on the other,

Coloring brushes in Japanese art are round painting brushes capable of full-textured pigmenting. Artists can use them freely for purposes ranging from applying delicate colors to making bold strokes on wide surfaces. They are thus widely used in a va

Stencil is a printing format that involves a process of creating a stencil-plate with holes to make an image, covering the template with ink, and applying pressure to push the ink through the holes in the plate, thereby transferring the image to the

Artists use kumadori brushes, also known as bokashi brushes, to create bleed effects in ink or paint. Unlike other brushes, artists do not directly apply paint with a kumadori brush. Rather, they load the brush with water and apply it to still-wet pa

Ezara dissolve paints much like a palette does. Artists across all fields of water-based painting from Japanese painting and woodblock printing to watercolor and poster color use ezara, which are usually made of white ceramic or plastic to help disti

Drawing paper is very versatile and one of the most common surfaces used for pencil and pen drawings, watercolor, and crafts. Drawing paper has a fine to medium surface texture with moderate stiffness that gives it a unique quality of feel. Paperm

Intaglio is a printing format in which recesses in a printing plate hold the image to be printed. A printmaker fills the recesses made on the plate with ink and applies pressure using a press to make prints. Printmakers use etching or direct engravin

Damp rags (or uesu) called yawara are used in woodcut printing. Yawara are laid beneath a woodblock to prevent shifting when a printmaker burnishes paper against the woodblock. In woodcut printing, the printmaker applies a considerable amount of f

Also called makijaku in Japanese, a tape measure is used to measure lengths of straight and curved lines several meters long. Tape measures, which are made of steel, plastic, or cloth, have lines on the tape to mark off measurements. Often, they are

A printmaker uses a machine called a press to apply pressure to plates and paper, thereby transferring ink from the plates to the paper. The press is said to have been invented in the 15th century when a grape press was adapted for letterpress pri

Kent paper is paper that derives its name from the Kent region in England. In most cases it is made entirely from chemical pulp. It is very smooth, has a moderate amount of elasticity and thickness, and is well-suited for many drawing materials and w

Canvas stretching tools (canvas pliers) are pinching tools used when preparing a stretched canvas as a medium, particularly for oil painting. When stretching the canvas (painting surface) onto the wooden frame, attach the canvas using tacks (canva

The construction of a stretched canvas, which is used primarily in oil painting, is (as the name implies) a canvas that has been stretched and affixed to a wooden frame. Artists can easily stretch canvases themselves in various forms and sizes depend

A canvas is a medium for oil painting made of cloth woven from the fibers such as flax, the top surface of which has been treated. The word can also refer to such a cloth after it has been attached to a wooden rectangle (a stretched canvas). Compa

Tweezers are called "pinsetto" in Japan, which adopted the term from the Dutch word "pincet." With tweezers, users can manipulate small parts that are difficult to handle with their fingers or parts that they want to keep clean and free of fingerprin

The baren is a burnishing tool that printmakers use to transfer an image on a printing block to paper. The printmaker applies pressure with the baren to burnish paper placed on a printing block so that the paper picks up ink from the block. The ba

The hakobi, made from finely split bamboo skin that is gathered on a stick like a broom, is used in water-color woodcut printing applications to dissolve paint and transfer the dissolved paint to the woodblock. In use since the days of ukiyoe, printm

Hahnemuhle, made by the German paper manufacturer Hahnemuhle FineArt, Inc. (founded in 1584), is a form of print paper suitable for copperplate and other intaglio applications. A neutralized paper derived from cotton pulp (100%), Hahnemuhle is adequa

Tracing paper is a translucent type of paper made by refining and processing pulp, the main raw material in paper, to a high degree. It is also called tōshashi or torepe in Japanese. The translucent quality of the paper lends the medium well to tr

Starch paste is a water-soluble adhesive primarily used to bond sheets of paper. It is made from the starch of grains, potatoes, or other plants, and was used as early as the Heian Period (794-c.1185). Before hardening, starch paste is a highly visco

Spray adhesive is an admixture of an adhesive synthetic rubber (such as acrylic resin-based rubber) and a volatile organic solvent (like isohexane or acetone) packaged together in liquefied or compressed gas form so that the adhesive can be sprayed.

A stapler, commonly called a "Hotchkiss" in Japan, binds together sheets of paper by punching a three-sided, rectangular-shaped staple into the stack. Before the advent of the stapler, there were issues with binding together several sheets of pape

Shaped into a semi-solid stick shape, a glue stick lets you apply glue without getting any on your hands. It also makes it easy to control the amount of glue used, which is difficult to do with liquid glue. To use the glue, contained in a plastic tub

Made of fine polystyrene foam bubbles, styrene board is used to model architecture and interior spaces and other presentations or displays. It is lightweight and can be cut and processed easily with a cutter. Styrene boards come either with or withou

A sketchbook contains drawing or watercolor paper bound like the pages of a notebook between front and back covers made of cardboard. The sketchbook is portable and has paper that resists tears, making it ideal for sketching outdoors. The bound paper

The compass is a drawing instrument used for drawing circles and arcs. One of the two legs of the compass ends in a needle, which the user places gently on paper to keep the compass in place. The other leg has a writing instrument on its end. Using t

PM pads are a type of paper often used in design layout work. Its thickness is comparable to that of copy paper. The name "PM pad" comes from "pastel marker," but the paper is used with a wide variety of writing instruments and drawing materials. Bec

A T-square (T-shaped ruler) is a tool used in hand-drawing such things as architectural drawings. As the name suggests, a T-square is shaped like the letter T. The shorter piece at the top (the head) and the longer piece that makes up the body (the b

Essential oils, including turpentine and mineral spirits, are used as solvents when making one's own varnish, because of their efficacy in adjusting the viscosity and thickness of oil-based paints, accelerating drying, diluting drying oils, and disso

Drying oils, including linseed oil and poppy oil, are used in painting in order to adjust the thickness of the paints, improve their stretchability, increase the fixativity of the paints to the surface, and give oil paints their characteristic luster

Art solutions (extracted oils) are supplementary paint solutions used when painting with oil-based paints. They are able to enhance the expressiveness of paints and to produce various effects. There are a variety of solutions used for various purp

Printmaking rollers are used to apply oil-based ink to printmaking surfaces when using wooden blocks, or when using copperplates or lithographs for chromolithography. There are two types of rollers: leather rollers and synthetic rubber rollers. Le

Linseed oil is used in painting to increase the fixing strength of oil paints, adjust their thickness and viscosity, and to enhance luster. It is also blended into paints as the fixing ingredient (medium) to affix the pigment to the surface of the pa

Lithography is a method of press printmaking that utilizes printing surfaces (planographs) made of such materials as lithographic stone (limestone) or metals (aluminum or zinc plates). The process makes use of water and oil's natural propensity to re

Painting knives are small, spatula-shaped painting tools used primarily in oil painting. They allow for bold applications of paint that differ from those of a brush, such as paint clumping, paint flattening, paint smoothing, and paint scraping. Pa

The printing ink used for lithographs is made by combining linseed oil with pigments. There is another type of printing ink, a fast-drying type made from resin that is used in offset printing, but it is best not to use this ink by itself when prin

Fixatives are liquids produced by dissolving synthetic resins in ethyl alcohol (for example) that produce a thin film on the surface of a finished work produced in charcoal, pencil, conté or the like after being applied in mist form using a mister; t

Palette knives are spatula-shaped tools used primarily in the composition of oil paintings, to mix, remove, and spread paints and mediums on palettes. Palette knives are long, thin spatulas, or “blades,” of roughly 6-15 centimeters in length, whic

Palettes used in oil painting are surfaces upon which the variously colored oil paints are assembled, and upon which those paints can be blended and their consistency can be adjusted. Depending on the properties of the materials being used for the

A tanpo (Chinese: da bao) is a ball of cloth around which another cloth has been wrapped and then tied off at the top with a string, resembling a small pouch. Primarily tanpo are used to apply ink in the process of taking rubbings (takuhon) of cal

Cutters are tools (blades) that are primarily used to hand-cut thin materials such as paper, cloth, and flexible vinyl. They are also used to sharpen instruments such as pencils. Unlike other cutting tools such as knives and blades, cutters have the

Ink spatulas (French: spatule) are a type of spatula used in the printing of woodblocks and other print art when blending colors and adjusting the thickness of the ink, spreading ink on the inking surface, and in cleaning. Spatulas come in a varie

Illustration boards are surfaces made by giving paper for different purposes with specific usage such as watercolor paper or color paper a backing made of thick paper (cardboard or posterboard). In addition to being a medium for illustrations and ren

Aluminum Litho plates are metallic (aluminum) plates that are used for lithograph prints; when one roughens one face in order to turn it into a surface for printing. Although stones were originally used for lithographic prints, a number of problem

Acrylic paints are a type of water-soluble paint that uses the acrylic polymers invented in the twentieth century. They were originally developed for the painting of murals. The paint is composed of the same pigments and binders used by oil paints, c

T-shaped kento is one form of registration mark that is made when producing block prints so that the position of the paper vis-à-vis the blocks is always uniform. They are used primarily with lithographs. Such targets are essential when producing

JPEG is one compression method for bitmap image data files. (Originally it was an acronym of the Joint Photographic Experts Group, which developed the compression format.) The human eye is more sensitive to changes in brightness than in hue, and t

GIF, an abbreviation of Graphics Interchange Format, is one format for bitmap image data files. Its extension is “.gif.” This file format, which utilizes the LZW data compression technique, supports 8-bit (256 color) indexed color. Because it only