Vocabulary:
Abstract:Art that looks as if it contains little or no recognizable or realistic forms from the physical world. Focus is on formal elements such as colors, lines, or shapes. Artists often "abstract" objects by changing, simplifying, or exaggerating what they see.
Art deco:A style of design and decoration popular in the 1920's and 1930's characterized by designs that are geometric and use highly intense colors, to reflect the rise of commerce, industry and mass production.
Balance: Both sides of the art piece contain similar elements that allow the eye to see each side in harmony with the other.
Complementary colors:Two colors directly opposite one another on the color wheel. When placed next to one another, complementary colors are intensified and often appear to vibrate. When mixed, brown or gray is created. Red and green, blue and orange, and yellow and violet have the greatest degree of contrast. Red-violet and yellow-green, red-orange and blue-green, and yellow-orange and blue-violet are also complementary colors.
Composition:The arrangement of the design elements within the design area; the ordering of visual and emotional experience to give unity and consistency to a work of art and to allow the observer to comprehend its meaning.
Egg tempera:A medium created by mixing pure, ground pigments with egg yolk. This was a very common medium before the invention of oil paints.
Fine art:Art created for purely aesthetic expression, communication, or contemplation. Painting and sculpture are the best known of the fine arts.
Gesso:A mixture of plaster, chalk, or gypsum bound together with a glue which is applied as a ground or coating to surfaces in order to give them the correct properties to receive paint. Gesso can also be built up or molded into relief designs, or carved.
Gouache:A type of watercolor paint, made heavier and more opaque by the addition of a white pigment (chalk, Chinese white, etc.) in a gum arabic mixture. This results in a stronger color than ordinary watercolor.
Horizon line:In a painting, a level line where land or water ends and the sky begins. Vanishing points, where two parallel lines appear to converge, are typically located on this line. A horizon line is used to attain the perspective of depth.
Horizontal balance:The components that are balanced left and right of a central axis.
Impressionism:A loose spontaneous style of painting that originated in France about 1870. The impressionist style of painting is characterized chiefly by concentration on the general impression produced by a scene or object and the use of unmixed primary colors and small strokes to simulate actual reflected light.
Juxtaposition:The act of placing or positioning items in the image area side by side or next to one another to illustrate some comparison.
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Landscape:A painting, drawing or photograph which depicts outdoor scenery. They typically include trees, streams, buildings, crops, mountains, wildlife, rivers and forests.
Limited edition:A limit placed on the number of prints produced in a particular edition, in order to create a scarcity of the print. Limited editions are signed and numbered by the artist. Once the prints in the edition have been sold out, the digital file is then destroyed by the Giclée Printmaker in order to maintain the integrity of the limited edition. The image will not be published again in the same form.
Linseed oil:The most popular drying oil used as paint medium. The medium hardens over several weeks as components of the oil polymerize to form an insoluble matrix. Driers can be added to accelerate this process.
Lithography:Uses the principle that oil and water don't mix as the basis of the printing process; a method of printing using plates whose image areas attract ink and whose non image areas repel ink. Non image areas may be coated with water to repel the oily ink or may have a surface, such as silicon, that repels ink.
Mixed Media: A piece of art which employs more than one medium (like oil paint). Popular media for mixing: paint and fabric and sequins, clay and wire and jewels.
Magenta:One of the four process colors, or CMYK, the M is for magenta. A color also known as fuchsia and hot pink; a moderate to vivid purplish red or pink.
Medium, Media (pl.):Material or technique an artist works in; also, the component of paint in which the pigment is dispersed.
Oil paint:A type of paint made from color particles (pigment) and linseed oil. Oil paint dries slowly, can be used thick or thin, and with glazes. Because it dries slowly, oil paint is easier to blend from dark to light creating the illusion of three-dimensions. Used by most artists since the Renaissance.
Original stone lithography:An age old technique in which an image is drawn on a stone by the artist (in reverse) and then pressed by hand, one color at a time, onto paper or canvas. Each lithograph is considered an original because the image is created during the process, thus no two are exactly the same.
Palette:A thin piece of glass, wood or other material, or pad of paper, which is used to hold the paint to be used in painting; also, the range of colors used by a particular painter.
Paper mâché:A technique for creating forms by mixing wet paper pulp with glue or paste. The form hardens as it dries, and becomes suitable for painting. Although paper mâché is a French word which literally means "chewed paper", it was originated by the Chinese - the inventors of paper.
Parchment:An early paper material highly valued during the middle ages. Originally made from goat or sheep skin, parchment today is made from organic fibers and affords artists such as calligraphers a crisp, smooth, high quality surface on which to write.
Pastel:A colored crayon that consists of pigment mixed with just enough of an aqueous binder to hold it together; a work of art produced by pastel crayons; the technique itself. Pastels vary according to the volume of chalk contained...the deepest in tone are pure pigment. Pastel is the simplest and purest method of painting, since pure color is used without a fluid medium and the crayons are applied directly to the pastel paper. Pastels are called paintings rather than drawings, for although no paint is used, the colors are applied in masses rather than in lines. Pastel colors are generally described as “soft” colors.
Perspective:The art of picturing objects on a flat surface so as to give the appearance of distance or depth.
Pigment:Any coloring agent, made from natural or synthetic substances, used in paints or drawing materials; the substance in paint or anything that absorbs light, producing (reflecting) the same color as the pigment.
Plein air:French for "in open air," used to describe paintings that have been executed outdoors, rather than in the studio.
Point of view:The position from which something is seen or considered; for instance, head-on, from overhead, from ground level, etc.
Pointillism:A branch of French Impressionism in which the principle of optical mixture or broken color was carried to the extreme of applying color in tiny dots or small, isolated strokes. Forms are visible in a pointillist painting only from a distance, when the viewer's eye blends the colors to create visual masses and outlines. The inventor and chief exponent of pointillism was George Seurat (1859-1891); the other leading figure was Paul Signac (1863-1935).
Pop art:A style of art which seeks its inspiration from commercial art and items of mass culture (such as comic strips, popular foods and brand name packaging). Certain works of art created by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein are examples of pop art.
Realism:A style of painting which depicts subject matter (form, color, space) as it appears in actuality or ordinary visual experience without distortion or stylization.
Seascape:A painting or work of pictorial art that depicts the sea or a scene that includes the sea; a painting representing an expansive view of the ocean or sea; picture or painting depicting life around the sea.
Secondary colors:Green, purple, and orange. These three colors are derived from mixing equal amounts of two of the three primary colors.
Sepia:A golden brown tint sometimes applied to black-and-white pictures. Can give the finished print an antique appearance.
Serigraph:(also referred to as 'silkscreen' or 'screenprint') is a color stencil printing process in which a special paint is forced through a fine screen onto the paper beneath. Areas which do not print are blocked with photo sensitive emulsion that has been exposed with high intensity arc lights. A squeegee is pulled from back to front, producing a direct transfer of the image from screen to paper. A separate stencil is required for each color and one hundred colors or more may be necessary to achieve the desired effect. A serigraph differs from other graphics in that its color is made up of paint films rather than printing ink stains. This technique is extremely versatile, and can create effects similar to oil color, transparent washes as well as gouache and pastel.
Shade:A color produced by adding black to a pigment.
Sienna:A form of limonite clay most famous in the production of oil paint pigments. Its yellow-brown color comes from ferric oxides contained within. As a natural pigment, it (along with its chemical cousins ochre and umber) was one of the first pigments to be used by humans, and is found in many cave paintings.
Still life:A painting or other two-dimensional work of art representing inanimate objects such as bottles, fruit, and flowers. Also, the arrangement of these objects from which a drawing, painting, or other art work is made.
Surrealism:An art style developed in Europe in the 1920's, characterized by using the subconscious as a source of creativity to liberate pictorial subjects and ideas. Surrealist paintings often depict unexpected or irrational objects in an atmosphere of fantasy, creating a dreamlike scenario; An art movement in which one's dreams, nightmares, sub consciousness and fantasy inspired the final works.
Texture:The tactile surface characteristics of a work of art that are either felt or perceived visually.
Transparent: can be seen through, like a piece of clear glass, or a fine mist.
Translucent: can be partially seen through, like water color washes, or semi-sheer curtains
Trompe l'oeil:French for "fool the eye." A two-dimensional representation that is so naturalistic that it looks actual or real (three-dimensional.) This form of painting was first used by the Romans thousands of year
Turpentine:A high quality oil paint thinner and solvents.
Ultramarine:A vivid blue to purple-blue pigment originally made from ground lapis lazuli. French ultramarine is an artificial substitute.
Value:The lightness or darkness of a color; contrasts between light and dark.
Vanishing point:In perspective, the point on the horizon in the distance where two lines seem to converge and visibility ends.
Vermilion:Scarlet red, a variable color that is vivid red but sometimes with an orange tinge.
Vignette:An image or painting where the borders are undefined and seem to fade away gradually until it blends into the background.
Viridian:A blue-green pigment composed more of green than blue. Viridian takes its name from the Latin viridis meaning "green".
Wash:Used in watercolor painting, brush drawing, and occasionally in oil painting to describe a broad thin layer of diluted pigment or ink. Also refers to a drawing made in this technique.
Watercolor:A water-based paint that is a translucent wash of pigment; a painting produced with watercolors.
Zinc white:A common white pigment, zinc white is a brilliant white synthetically derived from the metal zinc.