Plaster in the context of "Gypsum"

Painting is a visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush. Other implements, such as palette knives, sponges, airbrushes, the artist's fingers, or even a dripping technique that uses gravity may be used. One who produces paintings is called a painter.

In art, the term "painting" describes both the act and the result of the action (the final work is called "a painting"). The support for paintings includes such surfaces as walls, paper, canvas, wood, glass, lacquer, pottery, leaf, copper and concrete, and the painting may incorporate other materials, in single or multiple form, including sand, clay, paper, cardboard, newspaper, plaster, gold leaf, and even entire objects.

In visual arts, the support is the solid surface on which the work is painted, typically a canvas or a panel. Support is technically distinct from the overlaying ground. Sometimes "ground" is used in a broad sense of "support" to designate any surface used for painting, for example, paper for watercolor or plaster for fresco.

The support for an oil painting can be either rigid or flexible, both providing certain opportunities and challenges for the artist. In order to get both the stability and the desired texture, painters for finished paintings usually use canvas that are pre-stretched on a solid frame or panel (so-called stretchers usually made of stretcher bars). These stretched canvas became popular in Venice in the 17th century. Since these supports are expensive, studies are frequently executed on pieces of canvas or paper. Canvas board, a piece of canvas mounted onto a paper board, provides another low-cost alternative for sketches.

Casting is a manufacturing process in which a liquid material is usually poured into a mold, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then allowed to solidify. The solidified part is also known as a casting, which is ejected or broken out of the mold to complete the process. Casting materials are usually metals or various time setting materials that cure after mixing two or more components together; examples are epoxy, concrete, plaster and clay. Casting is most often used for making complex shapes that would be otherwise difficult or uneconomical to make by other methods. Heavy equipment like machine tool beds, ships' propellers, etc. can be cast easily in the required size, rather than fabricating by joining several small pieces. Casting is a 7,000-year-old process. The oldest surviving casting is a copper frog from 3200 BC.

A mosaic (/moʊˈzeɪɪk/) is a pattern or image made of small regular or irregular pieces of colored stone, glass or ceramic, held in place by plaster/mortar, and covering a surface. Mosaics are often used as floor and wall decoration, and were particularly popular in the Ancient Roman world.

Mosaic today includes not just murals and pavements, but also artwork, hobby crafts, and industrial and construction forms.

Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture. Stucco can be applied on construction materials such as metal, expanded metal lath, concrete, cinder block, or clay brick and adobe for decorative and structural purposes.

In English, "stucco" sometimes refers to a coating for the outside of a building and "plaster" to a coating for interiors. As described below, however, the materials themselves often have little or no difference. Other European languages, notably Italian, do not have the same distinction: In Italian, stucco means plaster, and serves for both.

In visual arts, the ground (sometimes called a primer) is a prepared surface that covers the support of the picture (e.g., a canvas or a panel) and underlies the actual painting (the colors are overlaid onto the ground). Occasionally the term is also used in a broad sense to designate any surface used for painting, for example, paper for watercolor or plaster for fresco.

The main purposes of the ground are to block chemical interactions between the paint and the support and to provide desired texture for painting or drawing.

Molding (spelled moulding and alternatively called coving in British and Australian English), is a strip of material with various profiles used to cover transitions between surfaces or for decoration. It is traditionally made from solid milled wood or plaster, but may be of plastic or reformed wood. In classical architecture and sculpture, the molding is often carved in marble or other stones. In historic architecture, and some expensive modern buildings, it may be formed in place with plaster.

A "plain" molding has right-angled upper and lower edges. A "sprung" molding has upper and lower edges that bevel towards its rear, allowing mounting between two non-parallel planes (such as a wall and a ceiling), with an open space behind. Moldings may be decorated with paterae as long, uninterrupted elements may be boring for eyes.