Wikipedia: Paint/Talk

Is 'solvent' the right word for the liquid suspending the pigment? The word typically used in art and art history contexts is medium -- of course, artists and art historians are notoriously obtuse about science, so if 'solvent' is the technical term in that context, all well and good, and we just need a sentence to explain "medium/media" --MichaelTinkler.

I question the definition given in the first paragraph, since stains for wood also color the surface of an object. I'm not sure if stains qualify as "paints"; the entries I'm seeing for the two online and in the OAD seem to avoid each other nicely.

Good questions; I am by no means an artist or chemist :-) I'll work in "medium". I honestly did not even think of stains. Please feel free to edit as necessary! --Alan Millar

Various ideas for this article. I'm putting them here in the waystation first because I'm not sure of their merits.

mention of relative ease of use of different paints--subjective, yes, but almost everyone agrees that oil is more difficult than acrylic, and it doesn't take a genius to see that watercolor is extremely difficult--one stray brushstroke and it's ruined; you can't stop the flow of water. Compare this to acrylic and oil, which can at least be scraped off and / or painted over. Adding more paint in those two media does not affect the paint already on the object
mention of Bob Ross, the only acrylic artist I can think of at the moment. of course caveats about his general critical drubbings, but he *has* been immensely popular, and I think being able to turn a blank canvas into a finished painting in <60 minutes is remarkable. Also he was a do-it-yourselfer and a proletariat. :-)
mention of wood paint, as compared to wood stain--one of the few paints or maybe the only one which can generally be removed completely and the original object restored to its original state, or very near it. Try that with a canvas. :-)
mention of varnishes, lacquers, other means of preservations of paintings
mention of restorations of paintings -- way out of my league here
more info on milk paint. I've never heard of it

WELL: it doesn't take a genius to see that watercolor is extremely difficult--one stray brushstroke and it's ruined is certainly historically true (like a friend of mine says, "It's as true as it ever was" :-) but really is no longer, thanks (in the main) to quality paper. Turns out that most watercolors remain water soluable (DO place watercolors behind glass!) forever, and so you can lift off bits with sponges or stiff-bristle brushes, or scrape down to the paper with a knife. There are "staining" colors, which as the name suggests, stain the paper so it's harder to remove them completely.

"Milk" paint is usually referred to as casein.

Finally, anyone whose seen Bob Ross' products for sale might dispute characterizing him as a "pure" proletariat :-)