Vehicle

Description

The liquid portion of a paint or printing ink. The vehicle is usually a mixture of materials such as a drying oil or resin and solvent along with any additives such as plasticizers or driers. The vehicle serves as a medium to carry the pigments to a substrate and as a binder to seal the pigments into a solid film.

Synonyms and Related Terms

medium; media; binder; aglutinante (Esp.); aglutinante (Port.); ligante (Port.)

Resources and Citations

• Ralph Mayer, A Dictionary of Art Terms and Techniques, Harper and Row Publishers, New York, 1969 (also 1945 printing)

• Richard S. Lewis, Hawley's Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 10th ed., 1993

• ASTM, "Standard Terminology Relating to Paint, Varnish, Lacquer and Related Products", Annual Book of ASTM Standards, Section 6, Paints, Related Coatings and Aromatics, ASTM, D16, 7-Jan, Jul-96

• Matt Roberts, Don Etherington, Bookbinding and the Conservation of Books: a Dictionary of Descriptive Terminology, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington DC, 1982

• The American Heritage Dictionary or Encarta, via Microsoft Bookshelf 98, Microsoft Corp., 1998

• Art and Architecture Thesaurus Online, http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/aat/, J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles, 2000