Richmond Arts » Glossary of art related terms

Below is a list of words or terms used in the art and craft world. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list, though we would welcome any additional information you feel may be of interest.

• ABSORBENT GROUND
  A chalk ground which absorbs oil and is used in oil painting to achieve a matt effect and to speed up drying.
• ABSTRACT ART
  Art that departs significantly from natural appearances. Forms are modified or changed to varying degrees in order to emphasize certain qualities or content. Recognizable references to original appearances may be slight. The term is also used to describe art that is nonrepresentational.
• ACRYLIC PAINT
  Acrylic paint is fast-drying paint containing pigment suspended in an acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry. Depending on how much the paint is diluted (with water), the finished acrylic painting can resemble a watercolor or an oil painting.
• ADDITIVE COLOUR
  An additive colour system involves light emitted directly from a source or illuminant of some sort. The additive reproduction process usually uses red, green and blue light to produce the other colours.
• ALKYD
  Synthetic resin used in paints and mediums.
  
• BAROQUE
  The seventeenth-century period in Europe characterized in the visual arts by dramatic light and shade, turbulent composition, and exaggerated emotional expression.
• BINDER
  In art, binders have use in painting, where they hold together paints, pastels, and other materilas. They may be based on wax (see oil pastel), gum arabic, gum tragacanth or methyl cellulose (see pastel), gums, or protein, often egg white or casein.
• BIOMORPHIC
  In painting and sculpture biomorphic forms or images are ones that, while abstract, nevertheless refer to, or evoke, living forms such as plants and the human body. The term comes from combining the Greek words bios, meaning life, and morphe, meaning form.
• BISQUE
  Bisque is a fired piece (bisquette) of unglazed clay used to make pottery, figurines, dolls, knickknacks, ornaments etc. This porous, vitreous ceramic can be created using heat, which causes a chemical reaction (dehydroxylation) in clay (e.g. kaolinite) to irreversibly change
• BLEEDING
  In artwork, the effect of a dark color seeping through a lighter color to the surface.
• BLENDING
  Smoothing the edges of two colors together so that they have a smooth gradation where they meet.
• BLOOM
  A dull, progressively opaque, white effect caused on varnished surfaces by damp conditions.
• BODY COLOUR
  Opaque paint, such as gouache, which has the covering power to obliterate underlying colour.
• BRUSHWORK
  The characteristic way each artist brushes paint onto a support.
• CALLIGRAPHY
  The art of beautiful writing. Broadly, a flowing use of line, often varying from thick to thin.
• CAMERA OBSCURA
  A dark room (or box) with a small hole in one side, through which an inverted image of the view outside is projected onto the opposite wall, screen, or mirror. The image is then traced. This forerunner of the modern camera was a tool for recording an optically accurate image.
• CANVAS
  Closely woven cloth used as a support for paintings.
• CHIAROSCURO
  Term is used to describe the effect of light and shade in a painting or drawing, especially where strong tonal contrasts are used.
• CROSSHATCHING
  More than one set of close parallel lines that crisscross each other at angles, to model and indicate tone.
• CHROMA
  The relative intensity or purity of a hue when compared to grayness or lack of hue.
• COLLAGE
  From the French coller, to glue. A technique of picture making in which the artist uses materials other than the traditional paint, such as cut paper, wood, sand, and so on.
• COMPOSITION
  The arrangement of elements by an artist in a painting or drawing.
• COPAL
  A hard resin used in making varnishes and painting mediums.
• CUBISM
  A nonobjective school of painting and sculpture developed in Paris in the early 20th century, characterized by the reduction and fragmentation of natural forms into abstract, often geometric structures usually rendered as a set of discrete planes.
• DEAD COLOUR
  A term for colours used in underpainting.
• DECKLE EDGE
  The ragged edge found on handmade papers.
• DECOUPAGE
  The act of cutting out paper designs and applying them to a surface to make an all over collage.
• DEPTH OF FIELD
  The distance in front of and behind the subject which appears to be in focus. Depth of field becomes greater as the f-stop number is increased.
• DILUENTS
  Liquids, such as turpentine, used to dilute oil paint, the diluent for waterbased media is water.
• DISPERSION
  Applied to paint, a smooth, homogeneous mixture of ingredients; the process of dispersal, in which pigment particles are evenly distributed throughout the vehicle. Return to top
• DISTEMPER
  1. A process of painting in which pigments are mixed with water and a glue-size or casein binder, used for flat wall decoration or scenic and poster painting.
  2. The paint used in this process.
• DRIER
  A material that accelerates or initiates the drying of an oil paint or oil by promoting oxidation.
• DRYING OIL
  An oil that, when spread into a thin layer and exposed to air, absorbs oxygen and converts into a tough film.
• EMULSION
  1. A suspension of small globules of one liquid in a second liquid with which the first will not mix: an emulsion of oil in vinegar.
  2. A photosensitive coating, usually of silver halide grains in a thin gelatin layer, on photographic film, paper, or glass.
• ENCAUSTIC
  To burn in. A paint consisting of pigment mixed with beeswax and fixed with heat after its application.
• ETCHING
  the art of engraving with acid on metal; also the print taken from the metal plate so engraved.
• EXPRESSIONISM
  The broad term that describes emotional art, most often boldly executed and making free use of distortion and symbolic or invented color. More specifically, Expressionism refers to individual and group styles originating in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
• FAT
  A term used to describe paints which have a high oil content.
• FILLER
  Inert pigment added to paint to increase its bulk, also called extender.
• FILM
  A thin coating or layer of paint, ink, etc.
• FINE ART
  Art created for purely aesthetic expression, communication, or contemplation. Painting and sculpture are the best known of the fine arts.
• FIXATIVE
  A solution, usually of shellac and alcohol, sprayed onto drawings, to prevent their smudging or crumbling off the support.
• FRESCO
  In its pure form the art of painting upon damp, fresh, lime plaster. In Renaissance Italy it was called buon fresco to distinguish it from fresco secco, which was executed upon dry plaster with pigments having a glue or casein base. In true fresco the binder is provided by the lime of the plaster; in drying this forms a calcium carbonate that incorporates the pure pigments, mixed only with water, with the material of the wall.
• FUGITIVE COLOURS
  Pigments and dyes that fade, especially those that lose colour relatively quickly when exposed to natural light.
• GESSO
  "Gesso" is the Italian word for "chalk", and is a powdered form of the mineral calcium carbonate used in art. Gesso was traditionally mixed with animal glue, usually rabbit-skin glue, to use as an absorbent primer coat for panel painting with tempera paints. Modern acrylic "gesso" is actually a combination of calcium carbonate with an acrylic polymer medium and a pigment. It is sold premixed for both sizing and priming a canvas for painting. While it does contain calcium carbonate to increase the absorbency of the primer coat, Titanium dioxide or titanium white is often added as the whitening agent. This allows the "gesso" to remain flexible enough to use on canvas.
• GLAZE
  1. A very thin, transparent coloured paint applied over a previously painted surface to alter the appearance and color of the surface.
  2. In ceramics, a vitreous or glassy coating applied to seal and decorate surfaces. Glaze may be coloured, transparent, or opaque.
• GOUACHE
  Opaque watercolors used for illustrations.
• GROUND
  coating material, usually white, applied to a support to make it ready for painting.
• GUM
  A plant substance that is soluble in water.
• GUM ARABIC
  A gum, extracted fro Acacia trees, used in solution as a medium for watercolor paints.
• HATCHING
  A technique of modeling, indicating tone and suggesting light and shade in drawing or tempera panting, using closely set parallel line.
• HUE
  The property of colours by which they can be perceived as ranging from red through yellow, green, and blue, as determined by the dominant wavelength of the light.
• HYGROSCOPIC
  A hygroscopic substance is a substance that absorbs water readily from the atmosphere.
  (The similar sounding but unrelated word hydroscopic is sometimes used in error for hygroscopic.)
• IMPASTO
  Impasto is a technique used in painting where paint is laid on an area of the surface (or the entire canvas) very thickly, usually thickly enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Paint can also be mixed right on the canvas. When dry, impasto provides texture, the paint coming out of the canvas.
• IMPRESSIONISM
  A theory or style of painting originating and developed in France during the 1870s, characterized by concentration on the immediate visual impression produced by a scene and by the use of unmixed primary colours and small strokes to simulate actual reflected light.
• INTENSITY
  The purity and brightness of a colour. Also called saturation.
• KEY
  Used to describe the prevailing tone of a painting. A predominantly light painting is said to have a high key. In contemporary mural painting, the key is the result of scratching a walls surface to prepare for final layer of plaster - similar to "tooth"
• KILN
  Furnace for firing pottery and enamels, for making brick, charcoal, lime, and cement, for roasting ores, and for drying various substances. The temperature of firing and the length of time required depend on the design of the kiln and the type of material being fired.
• LAKE
  Lake, in dyeing, an insoluble pigment formed by the reaction between an organic dye and a mordant. The color of a lake depends upon the mordant as well as the dye used. Generally, lakes are not as colourfast as many inorganic dyes, but their colours are more brilliant.
• LEAN
  Used as an adjective to describe paint thinned with a spirit, which therefore has a low oil content.
• LIGHTFAST
  Resistant to fading or other changes due to light.
• LOCAL COLOUR
  The actual colour of an object or surface, unaffected by shadow colouring, light quality or other factors.
• LOOM STATE
  Canvas that has not been primed, sized or otherwise prepared beforehand for painting.
• MAT
  A decorative border placed around a picture to serve as a frame or provide contrast between the picture and the frame.
• MATTE / MATT
  Flat, nonglossy; having a dull surface appearance.
• MEDIUM
  The liquid in which pigments are suspended. Also a material chosen by the artist for working.
• MIXED MEDIA
  In drawing and painting this refers to the use of different media in the same picture.
• MORDANT
  1. A reagent, such as tannic acid, that fixes dyes to cells, tissues, or textiles or other materials.
  2. A corrosive substance, such as an acid, used in etching.
• MOSAIC
  Mosaic is the art of decoration with small pieces of colored glass, stone or other material. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration or of cultural significance as in a cathedral. Small tiles or fragments of pottery (known as tesserae, diminutive tessellae) or of coloured glass or clear glass backed with metal foils, are used to create a pattern or picture.
• MURAL
  A painting, usually large, made directly on a wall.
• PAINT
  A liquid mixture, usually of a solid pigment in a liquid vehicle, used as a decorative or protective coating.
• PAINTING
  A direct application of pigment to a surface to produce by tones of colour or of light and dark some representation or decorative arrangement of natural or imagined forms.
• PALETTE
  1. A board, typically with a hole for the thumb, which an artist can hold while painting and on which colours are mixed.
  2. The range of colors used in a particular painting or by a particular artist: a limited palette.
• PATINA
  Coating of carbonate of copper on articles of copper or bronze, formed after long exposure to a moist atmosphere or burial in the earth. Although commonly green, patina varies in color and consistency; it may be red, brown, black, blue, or gray, or it may be smooth, glossy, or crusty. It may be imitated by a number of oxidation processes. The term has been extended to include the film formed on metals, pottery, marble, and other materials by exposure and to the mellow surface acquired by furniture with time and waxing.
• PIGMENTS
  Substance that imparts colour to other materials. In paint, the pigment is a powdered substance which, when mixed in the liquid vehicle, imparts colour to a painted surface.
• PLASTICIZER
  Ingredients added to paint to either make it flow or be easily redissolved.
• POINTILLISM
  A style of painting using tiny dots or "points" of colour, developed by French artist Georges Seurat in the 1880s. Seurat systematized the divided brushwork and optical color mixture of the Impressionists and called this technique divisionism.
• POP ART
  A style of painting and sculpture that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in Britain and the United States; based on the visual clichés, subject matter, and impersonal style of popular mass-media imagery.
• PRESERVATIVE
  A material that prevents or inhibits the growth of microorganisms in organic mixtures.
• PRIMARY COLOUR
  Those hues that cannot be produced by mixing other hues. Pigment primaries are red, yellow, and blue; light primaries are red, green, and blue. Theoretically, pigment primaries can be mixed together to form all the other hues in the spectrum.
• PRIMER
  Coating material, usually white, applied to a support to prepare it for painting.
• PVA
  Polyvinyl acetate, a manmade resin used as a paint medium and in varnish.
• REFRACTION
  The bending of light from one course in one medium to a different course through another medium of different refractive index.
• REFRACTIVE INDEX
  A property of a material that changes the speed of light, computed as the ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to the speed of light through the material.
• RESINS
  A general term for a wide variety of more or less transparent, fusible materials. The term is used to designate any polymer that is a basic material for paints and plastics.
• SECCO
  A technique of wall-painting onto dry plaster, or lime plaster that is dampened shortly before paint is applied.
• SFUMATO
  Sfumato is a term used by Leonardo da Vinci to refer to a painting technique which overlays translucent layers of color to create perceptions of depth, volume and form. In particular, it refers to the blending of colors or tones, so subtly that there is no perceptible transition.
• SGRAFFITO
  Sgraffito ("scratched") is a technique either of wall decor, produced by applying layers of plaster tinted in contrasting colors to a moistened surface, or in ceramics, by applying a ceramic body with two successive layers of contrasting slip, and then in either case scratching so as to produce an outline drawing.
• SHELLAC
  A purified lac (secretion from a Lacciferinae insect) in the form of thin yellow or orange flakes, often bleached white and widely used in varnishes, paints, inks, sealants, and formerly in phonograph records.
• SILICATE
  Material, such as sand, that is composed of a metal, oxygen, and silicon.
• SILVERPOINT
  Method of drawing whereby a silver-tipped instrument is dragged across paper prepared with ground bone dust and gum water and then tinted with a pigment. The procedure results in drawings of extraordinary delicacy. It was used extensively in Europe from the late Middle Ages to the early 16th cent. Among the foremost practitioners of the medium were Leonardo da Vinci and Albrecht Dürer.
• SINOPIA
  A red-brown chalk used for marking-out frescoes; also the preliminary drawing itself.
• SIZE
  Any of several gelatinous or glutinous substances usually made from glue, wax, or clay and used as a glaze or filler for porous materials such as paper, cloth, or wall surfaces.
• SKETCH
  A preliminary drawing of a composition.
• STRETCHER
  A wooden framework on which canvas is stretched and fixed for oil painting
• SUBTRACTIVE COLOUR
  Subtractive color explains the theory of mixing paints, dyes, inks, and natural colorants to create colours which absorb some wavelengths of light and reflect others. The colour that an object appears to have is based on what parts of the electromagnetic spectrum are reflected by it, or conversely by what parts of the spectrum are not absorbed. Anything that is not additive colour is subtractive color.
• SURREALISM
  A 20th-century literary and artistic movement that attempts to express the workings of the subconscious and is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter.
• STUDY
  A detailed drawing or painting made of one or more parts of a final composition, but not the whole work.
• SUPPORT
  The basic substrata of the painting; paper, cotton, linen, wall, etc..
• TEMPERA
  Painting method in which finely ground pigment is mixed with a solidifying base such as albumen, fig sap, or thin glue. When used in mural painting it is also known as fresco secco (dry fresco) to distinguish it from the buon fresco (true fresco) applied to damp walls. The name distemper is given to the method when a glue base is involved.
• TESSERA
  A tessera (plural: tesserae) is an individual tile in a mosaic, usually formed in the shape of a cube.
• THIXOTROPIC
  Referring to materials that are thick and viscous while at rest but will flow if brushed, stirred, or shaken. Resumes its viscous state when the agitation stops.
• TINT
  Term for a colour lightened with white. Also, in a mixture of colours, the tint is the dominant color.
• TONER
  An unlaked dye that can bleed or migrate through dried paint films.
• TOOTH
  Small grained but even texture. Tooth provides for the attachment of succeeding layers of paint.
• TRACTION
  In oils, the movement of one paint layer over another.
• TUSCHE
  A black liquid used for drawing in lithography and as a resist in etching and silk-screen work.
• TWO DIMENSIONAL
  Having the dimensions of height and width only.
• UNDERPAINTING
  The traditional stage in oil painting of using a monochrome or dead color as a base for composition. Also known as laying in.
• VALUE
  The lightness or darkness of tones or colors. White is the lightest value; black is the darkest. The value halfway between these extremes is called middle gray.
• VANISHING POINT
  In linear perspective, the point on the horizon line at which lines or edges that are parallel appear to converge.
• VARNISH
  Generally, a more or less transparent film-forming liquid that dries into a solid film.
• VELLUM
  A fine parchment made from calfskin, lambskin, or kidskin and used for the pages and binding of books.
• VENICE TURPENTINE
  An oleo resin - the semisolid mixture of a resin and an essential oil - derived from the larch and used primarily in making mediums and diluents for oil painting.
• VERDACCIO
  Verdaccio is a style of underpainting, which uses green-grey colours to establish values for later layers of paint. The technique is renowned for being particularly effective when painting flesh tones. As such, it was popular amongst Renaissance artists, and Leonardo da Vinci used verdaccio underpainting in his masterpiece, the Mona Lisa.
• VOLATILE
  Evaporating readily at normal temperatures and pressures. That can be readily vaporized.
• VOLUME
  The space that a object or figure fills in a drawing or painting.
• WASH
  A thin, usually broadly applied, layer of transparent or heavily diluted paint or ink.
• WATERCOLOR
  Paint that uses water-soluble gum as the binder and water as the vehicle. Characterized by transparency
• WAX RESIST
  The use of a waxy medium to make a design over which a coloured wash is spread.
• WET ON WET
  The application of fresh paint over an area on which the paint is still wet.
• WHITE SPIRITS
  A thinner used with oil paints replacing Turpentine.
• WHITING
  Chalk which is purified, ground with water and dried to form an inert pigment.
• WOODCUT
  A method of relief printing from a block of wood cut along the grain. The block is carved so that an image stands out in relief. The relief image is then inked and paper placed against its surface and run through a press. It is possible to make a woodcut without a press by placing the inked block against a sheet of paper and applying pressure by hand.
• YELLOWING
  This effect on oil paintings is usually caused by one of three reasons: excessive use of linseed oil medium; applying any of the varnishes that are prone to yellow with age; or most often - an accumulation of dirt embedded into the varnish.
• ZOOMORPHISM
  Zoomorphism refers to the representation of animal forms in ornaments, or to the representation of gods in the form, or with attributes, of non-human animals, and also to the transformation of humans into beasts.