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Abstract Expressionism: A term used generally to describe contemporary painting. It was originally applied to Kandinsky’s abstract painting of the 1920’s, but many painters are still painting in this style today. Paintings of this style are abstractions, with no recognizable relationship to anything in nature. The style reflects the innermost feeling of the artist and usually results as an emotional release of the artist’s anger, fear, or frustration. Abstract Expressionism was the first artistic movement to have its roots both in Europe and in America. Artists who painted in this style include Willem De Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Jackson Pollack.

Acrylic: A family of synthetic resins made by polymerizing esters of acrylic acids.

Aerial Perspective: Creating a sense of depth in painting by imitating the way the atmosphere makes distant objects appear less distinct and more bluish than they would be if nearby. Also known as atmospheric perspective.

Alkyd: A synthetic resin which is the condensation product of a polybasic acid such as phthalic, a polyhydric alcohol such as glycerin and anoily, fatty acid.

Alla prima: An Italian phrase meaning,"painted solely wet in wet," and usually, but not necessarily, at a single sitting.  It is used most commonly with reference to oil painting.

Apparent Size: The size that something appears to be. A tree in the distance may have an apparent height equal to the length of your thumb at arms length.

Aquatint: A print produced by the same technique as an etching, except that the areas between the etched lines are covered with a powdered resin that protects the surface from the biting process of the acid bath. The granular appearance that results in the print aims at approximating the effects and gray tonalities of a watercolor drawing.

Art Nouveau: A major ornamental style characterized by the usage of sinuous, graceful, cursive lines, interlaced patterns, flowers, plants, insects, and other motifs inspired by nature. First developed in England in the 1880’s, Art Nouveau was both a protest against a sterile Realism, and also against the whole drift toward industrialization, mechanization, and the unnatural artifacts they produce.

Baroque: In art and architecture, the Baroque style developed in Europe, England, and Latin America during the 17th and 18th centuries. Its essential characteristic is an emphasis on unity, a balance among diverse parts. Architecture took on the plastic aspects of sculpture and, along with sculpture, was enhanced by the chiaroscuro (high-contrast) effects of painting. Works in all media were produced on a grand scale. Illusionism increased an unequaled sense of drama, energy, and mobility of form. Some Baroque greats include Rembrandt, Ingres, Fragonard, and Cot.

Binder: The nonvolatile portion of a coating vehicle which is the film-forming ingredient used to bind the pigment particles together.

Blanching: A term applied to lacquer when it becomes partially opaque, cloudy or transparent upon application or drying.  Fast-evaporating solvents may cool the film enough to cause water condensation, precipitating solid materials.

Blending: Blending is most commonly used with reference to academic painting to mean the blending together of separate touches of color for half tones until the graduations of tone and the marks of the brush are imperceptible.

Blocking-in: Usually refers to the broad application of masses of light, shade, and color, in the early stages of a painting.  It helped to rapidly obliterate the bright glaring of the ground.

Body: Common term for the degree of viscosity of a paint or varnish, as "a lot of body" or "not much body."  A practical term used to give a qualitative picture of consistency.

Cartoon: A full sized design for a painting, ready to be transferred to a wall or canvas.

Cast: To make an object by pouring molten metal into a specially shaped mold and letting it harden.

Ceramics: The art of making objects of clay and firing them in a kiln. Wares of earthenware and porcelain, as well as sculpture are made by ceramists. Enamel is also a ceramic technique. Ceramic materials may be decorated with slip, engobe, or glaze, applied by a number of techniques, including resist, mishima, and sanggam. Pots made can be made by the coil, slab, some other manual technique, or on a potter's wheel.

Chalking: The presence of a loose powder on the surface of a paint after exposure to the elements.

Chiaroscuro (kee-ahr-uh-skew-roh): A technique of painting in which the figures portrayed have no clear outlines. Instead they are shown emerging into the light from shadows. In Italian the word means "light-dark." Leonardo proved his expertise with this technique in The Mona Lisa and The Virgin of the Rocks.

Color: A generic term referring exclusively to all colors of the spectrum, including white and black.  Color is described by three properties: hue, lightness, and saturation.  (1) Hue (color, character, dominant wavelength): blue, green, red, etc.  (2) Lightness (brightness, reflectance, value): position on the gray scale between pure black and pure white  (3) Saturation (purity, grayness, cleanliness, muddiness, chroma): purity or intensity of color.

Color Wheel: All the colors in the "wheel" are made from red, yellow, and blue paint. These are called the primary pigment hues. Mixing yellow and blue together produces green. Blue mixed with red makes violet.  Orange is made from a mixture of yellow and red. These three, green, violet, and orange, are called secondary colors. If we mix adjacent primaries and secondaries, we produce six other colors, which are called intermediates: yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, red-violet, red-orange, and yellow-orange.

Craquelure: A pattern of cracks that develops on the surface of a painting as a result of the natural drying and aging of the paint film.

Crawling: The tendency of a liquid to draw up and bead on the surface.

Crazing: Fine lines or minute surface cracks occurring on painted surfaces due to unequal contraction in drying or cooling.

Crocking: Removal of color on an abrasion or rubbing.

Cubism: An art style developed by Picasso and Braque in 1908, Cubism is characterized by the artist breaking down natural forms of subjects into geometric shapes, thus creating a new kind of pictorial space. Cubist work can portray the subject from multiple perspectives. This is in contrast to traditional painting styles where the perspective of subjects is fixed and complete.

Dada: A term used to describe a certain artistic attitude. The attitude has its roots in post-World War I Zurich and New York, where artists were reacting to the destruction and baseness of human society. The name "Dada" is a nonsensical word, reflecting the meaninglessness these artists saw in modern life. Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, and Jean Arp were pioneers of this attitude.

Drier: Any catalytic material which when added to a drying oil accelerates drying or hardening of the film.

Drying oils: Oils which have the property of forming a solid, elastic surface when exposed to air in thin layers.  The drying oils most commonly used in oil painting were linseed oil, walnut oil and poppy oil.  Examples of non-drying oil unsuitable for painting are olive oil and almond oil.

Easel: A folding frame or tripod used to support an artist's canvas.

Efflorescence: A phenomena whereby a whitish crust of fine crystals forms on a painted surface.  These are usually sodium salts which diffuse through the paint film from the substrate.

Egg tempera painting: Egg (either whole, yolk or white) can be used as a pigment binder.  Tempera painting was very popular until the late fifteenth century.

Emulsion: A suspension of fine particles or globules of a liquid within a liquid.

Enamel paints: Historically, enamel has described decorative and protective glassy coatings on metal as well as glassy, decorative coatings on glass.  Enamel has also implied certain organic coating such as paints or lacquers.

Etching: The technique of reproducing a design by coating a metal plate with wax and drawing with a sharp instrument called a stylus through the wax down down to the metal. The plate is put in an acid bath, which eats away the incised lines; it is then heated to dissolve the wax and finally inked and printed on paper. The resulting print is called the etching.

Expressionism: A style in which the artist’s emotions are the impetus of the work. The term can describe any painting that is primarily based on the release of the artist’s feelings and impulses.

Expressionism does not stem from one particular period, but has found its home particularly in the work of Vincent Van Gogh, and later with the Fauves, such as Henri Matisse. Most often, the term is used in the name of a specific artistic movement, such as Abstract Expressionism or German Expressionism.

Extender: A pigment which contributes very little hiding to the system, but does reinforce the film and alter the gloss.

Foreshortening: The diminishing of certain dimensions of an object or figure in order to depict it in a correct spatial relationship. In realistic depiction, foreshortening is necessary because: although lines and planes that are perpendicular to the observer's line of vision (central visual ray), and the extremities of which are equidistant from the eye, will be seen at their full size when they are revolved away from the observer they will seem increasingly shorter. Thus for example, a figure's arm outstretched toward the observer must be foreshortened--the dimension of lines, contours and angles adjusted--in order that it not appear hugely out of proportion. The term foreshortening is applied to the depiction of a single object, figure or part of an object or figure, whereas the term perspective refers to the depiction of an entire scene.

Fugitive pigment: A phrase used to describe a pigment's impermanence and tendency to fade or change color under the influence of natural effects such as sunlight.

Gesso: Traditionally a lean layer of size and chalk to form a ground on which to paint.

Glair: Egg white.  It is used in egg tempera painting and as a coating material.

Glaze: 1) To cover paler under painting with a layer consisting of transparent pigments and excess medium.  Traditionally used to add color to forms modeled in monochrome opaque paint.  2) To impart a glass-like surface.  Aged glaze is very sensitive to solvents.

Gloss: The shine, sheen or luster of the surface of a coating.  Specular gloss: the ratio of reflected to incident light at specified angles of incidence.  Most common are angles of 20, 60 and 85 degrees.   See also Sheen.

Gouache: A medium of opaque watercolor applied to paper; also a work of art so produced. The usual gouache painting displays a light-reflecting brilliance quite different from the luminosity of transparent watercolors.

Grime: Surface dirt: a combination of air-borne soot, nicotine, and cooking grease.  Dirt can be in the varnish, on top of the paint layer, or on top of the varnish.

Ground: A layer of opaque paint applied to a support to provide a suitable color and texture on which to draw or paint.

Haze: The dullness of a surface removable by polishing.  It usually results from faulty solvent balance or incompatibility of ingredients.

Horizon Line: In perspective this line is drawn across the canvas at the viewer's eye level. It represents the line in nature where the sky appears to meet the ground.

Hue: A particular tint or shade of color.  See also Color.

Impasto: The texture created in a paint surface by the movement of the brush.  Impasto usually implies thick, heavy brushwork, but the term also refers to the crisp, delicate textures found in smoother paint surfaces.

Inpainting: Paint applied over losses only.  This is a technique commonly used by conservators to unify a painting that has suffered paint loss.

Impressionism: A major movement, first in painting and later in music, that developed chiefly in France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Impressionist painting comprises the work produced between about 1867 and 1886 by a group of artists who shared a set of related approaches and techniques. The most conspicuous characteristic of Impressionism was an attempt to accurately and objectively record visual reality in terms of transient effects of light and color. The principal Impressionist painters were Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Berthe Morisot, Armand Guillaumin, and Frederic Bazille, who worked together, influenced each other, and exhibited together independently. Edgar Degas and Paul Cezanne also painted in an Impressionist style for a time in the early 1870s. The established painter Edouard Manet, whose work in the 1860s greatly influenced Monet and others of the group, himself adopted the Impressionist approach about 1873.

Lacquer: A term which usually indicates that the material dries by evaporation and forms a film from the nonvolatile constituents.

Lake: A colored natural or synthetic dye absorbed onto a semi-transparent base and used as a pigment.

Latex: A generic term describing stable dispersions of resin particles in a water system.

Leaching: When solvents are applied to a paint film, solvent soluble compounds are removed and the film becomes more brittle.

Lean paint: Lean oil color is paint in which the oil or fat content has been reduced, usually by indirect means such as diluting the paint with turpentine.

Light fastness: (1) ability to withstand color changes on exposure to light (2) the relative degree of change or lack of change in color of materials exposed to the same amount and character of light.

Lightness: (Brightness, reflectance, value) Position on the grey scale between pure black and pure white.

Linear Perspective: A mathematical system for creating the illusion of space and distance on a flat surface such as a canvas or wall.

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.

Loaded: A painting is said to be loaded when it is painted thickly, often with a heavy impasto.  A loaded brush is one charged to its full capacity with paint.

Luster: The gloss of a finish.

Maquette: In sculpture, a small model in wax or clay, made as a preliminary sketch, presented to a client for his approval of the proposed work, or entered in a competition for a prize or scholarship. The Italian equivalent of the term is bozzetto, meaning small sketch.

Medium: The component of paint in which the pigment is dispersed.

Mineral spirits: A petroleum fraction with boiling range between 300 to 400ºF.

Montage: A picture made up of various proportions of existing pictures, such as photographs or prints, arranged so they join, overlap, or blend with one another.

Natural varnish: Tree resins (mastic and dammar), fossil resins (copal and amber), and insect resin secretions (shellac).

Oil: A general term from a water-insoluble viscous liquid.

Oleoresinous: Indicating a material which has been made by the combination of an oil and a resin.

Opacity: Hiding power or the degree of obliteration.

Opaque: Impervious to light or not translucent.

Orange peel: A pebbled film surface similar to the skin of an orange in appearance.  It is caused by paint drying too rapidly before leveling takes place.

Orthogonal Lines: Straight diagonal lines drawn to connect points around the edges of a picture to the vanishing point. They represent parallel lines receding into the distance and help draw the viewer's eye into the depth of the picture.

Over paint: This paint was not applied by the artist but applied at a later date.  It not only covers the original paint, but its presence often indicates an excessive alteration of the image.  Over painting is not an acceptable conservation technique.

Paint layer: The paint layer is the actual layer or layers of color more-or-less opaque applied by the artist in the execution of the painting.

Pastel: (1) A colored crayon that consists of pigment mixed with just enough of an aqueous binder to hold it together; (2) a work of art produced by pastel crayons; (3) 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.

Pentimento: Derived from the Italian meaning "repentance."  Pentimenti are the changes in composition which a painter makes while producing a painting.  These alterations are often visible in the infra-red, in x-rays, and sometimes to the naked eye.

Perspective: The representation of three-dimensional objects on a flat surface so as to produce the same impression of distance and relative size as that received by the human eye. In one-point linear prespective, developed during the fifteenth century, all parallel lines in a given visual field converge at a single vanishing point on the horizon. In aerial or atmospheric perspective, the relative distance of objects is indicated by gradations of tone and color and by variations in the clarity of oulines.

Pigment: A finely divided, insoluble substance which imparts color to the material to which it is added.

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).

Polar solvents: Solvents such as alcohols, ketones, etc., which contain oxygen, etc.  These have high dielectric constants.

Polymer: A large molecule formed when many molecules are linked together by polymerization.

Post-Impressionism: A term that refers to the work of some late 19th century painters who, although they developed their varied styles quite independently, were united in their rejection of Impressionism. They include Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gaugin, Matisse, Picasso, and Braque. The term embraces a far wider school of thought than the neo-impressionism of Seurat and Signac, whose more systematic approach (called divisionism or pointillism) used dabs of pure color that were supposed to be mixed by the viewer's eye to produce intense color effects.

Pre-Raphaelite: The Pre-Raphaelities formed in 1848 to protest low standards in British art. The principal founders were D. G. Rosetti, W. Holman Hunt, and John Millais. They turned from the materialism of industralized England and sought refuge through literary symbolism and imagery in the beauty and simplicity of the medieval world. Influenced by the Nazarenes, they imitated the innocence of style of Italian painters prior to Raphael. They attracted numerous followers, e.g., Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, before the movement disbanded after 1853. Their works are nostalgic in tone, and brightly colored, with meticulous detail and mannered style.

Pop: A major movement first developed in New York City in the late 1950s that soon became the dominant avant-garde art form in the United States. Pop art seeks its inspiration from commercial art and items of mass culture (such as comic strips, popular foods and brand name packaging).

Priming: The application of sizes and/or grounds to a support to prepare the painting's surface, modify its absorbency, texture and color.

Realism: A very general style in which the artwork accurately depicts nature. The term originated in 19^th century France, specifically with the painter Gustave Courbet. The style was popular through the 1950’s, when it was almost eliminated from critical consideration. It resurfaced in the 1960’s with Pop Art and the "new realism."

Remarque: A current practice of some artists is the addition of a small personalized drawing or symbol near his pencil signature in the lower margin. The practice is borrowed from Whister's famous "butterfly" which was added to personalize many of his graphics.

Renaissance: A term used to describe the rich development of Western civilization that marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modern times. In Italy the Renaissance emerged by the 14th century and reached its height in the 15th and 16th centuries; elsewhere in Europe it may be dated from the 15th to the mid-17th centuries. The Renaissance brought new importance to individual expression, self-consciousness, and wordly experience; culturally it was a time of brilliant accomplishments in scholarship, literature, science, and the arts.

A radical break with medieval artistic methods of representing the visible world occured in a growing esteem and enthusiasm for physical nature, the individual, and classical antiquity. Architects Brunelleschi and Alberti, along with the sculptor Donatello, were the first to visit Rome to study the ancient ruins and incorporate classical principles into their work; they were also intensely preoccupied with representing the dimensions of nature on a flat surface. With Massacchio and Uccello, they pioneered the system of Perspective. With Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi, they developed a unifying color scheme. The study of human anatomy was mastered by the Renaissance great, Leonardo Da Vinci.

Repoussoir: From the French verb meaning to push back. A means of achieving perspective or spacial contrasts by the use of illusionistic devices such as the placement of a large figure or object in the immediate foreground of a painting to increase the illusion of depth in the rest of the picture.

Resin: An organic polymer in the form of a crystalline or amorphous solid, or viscous liquid, whether of natural or synthetic origins.

Retouching: The work done by a restorer to replace areas of loss or damage in a painting.

Romanticism: An art style which emphasizes the personal, emotional and dramatic through the use of exotic, literary, or historical subject matter.

Sagging: The tendency of a wet paint film to flow downward and become thicker on vertical surfaces.

Saturation: Purity or intensity of color.  Degree of freedom from grayness.

Scumble: Very thin layer of opaque or semi-opaque paint that partially hides the underlayer.

Sfumato (sfoo-mah-toe): Italian for "smoky." An oil painting technique in which the artist coats the objects in a picture with layers of very thin paint to soften edges and blur shadows. This creates a dreamlike effect of atmospheric mist or haze. Leonardo was the most skilled practitioner of sfumato in the Renaissance. This technique can be seen in his paintings The Virgin of the Rocks and The Mona Lisa.

Shade: The difference in appearance between colors of similar hue.

Sheen: A specular reflectance taken at a low angle, usually 85 degrees.

Sinking: The absorption of paint medium by a lean underlayer to produce a matte or dead surface.

Size: An adhesive diluted in water.  Size usually means and animal glue consisting of collagen and gelatin, rabbit skin glue, parchment glue, and edible jelly.  All are forms of gelatin.

Sketch: A rough or rapid drawing or outline.

Stipple: In painting, to apply small dots of color with the point of the brush; also to apply paint in a uniform layer by tapping a vertically held brush on the surface in repeated staccato touches.

Stretcher: A rigid wooden frame over which a canvas is usually stretched.  The stretcher can be expanded by tapping keys (wedges) inserted at the corners.

Strainer: A stretcher with fixed corners.  It cannot be expanded.

Surrealism: A term that was coined in 1917, following the rise of Dadaism. Surrealism is a psychological approach to Dada art. It was specifically defined by Andre Breton in 1924 as "…thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations." The style went in two directions during the 1920’s: the first was the dream world of Salvador Dali, who painted in a precise, realist style; the second was the loosely drawn figures in shallow spaces, best represented by the work of Joan Miró and André Masson. Other surrealist painters of note include Max Ernst, Man Ray, Pablo Picasso, and René Magritte.

Symbolism: Developed in the late 19th century, symbolism is an art movement characterized by the representation of the inner life of people through spiritual or mystical symbols and ideas. It began as a rejection of the purely visual realism of the Impressionists, and the rationality of the Industrial Age, in order to depict the symbols of ideas. Traditionally modeled pictorial depictions are replaced or contrasted by flat mosaic-like surfaces decoratively embellished with figures and design elements.

Synthetic resin: Complex, substantially amorphous organic semi-solid or solid materials built up by chemical reaction of simple molecules.

Synthetic varnishes: Polyvinyl acrylate.

Tacking edges: The outside edges of a stretched canvas through which tacks are inserted attaching it onto the stretcher.

Tempra: Usually refers to egg (either whole, yolk, or white) used as the medium but can also refer to glue size.

Texture: The structure, composition, or appearance of something, as to the surface of a painting.

Thermoplastic: The term applied to resins which soften and flow when heated.

Thermosetting: The term applied to resins which become hard after heating and cannot be resoftened.

Toughness: The ability of a material to take bending, impact, etc., without cracking.

Three Dimensional: Having height, width, and depth. A box is three dimensional.

Tromp L’oeil: (Trick of the Eye) - A style of painting in which architectural details are rendered in extremely fine detail in order to create the illusion of tactile and spatial qualities. This form of painting was first used by the Romans thousands of years ago in frescoes and murals. Trompe l'oeil can be thought of as a form of architectural realism.

Turpentine (spirits): The traditional solvent or thinner for a drying oil (such as linseed oil) distilled from the resin that is exuded by certain trees, e.g., the European larch, white fir, and American longleaf pine.

Two Dimensional: Having height and width only. A painting of a box is two dimensional.

Ultraviolet: The light rays which are outside of the visible spectrum at its violet end.

Unity: The arrangement of parts into a whole exhibiting oneness of purpose, spirit, and style.

Vanishing Point: The single point in a picture where all parallel lines that run from the viewer to the horizon line appear to come together. The vanishing point is generally placed at the viewer's eye level.

Value: The relation of the elements of a picture, as light and shade, to one another.

Varnish: An applied surface film, usually of a transparent, cloudless resin.  It imparts an even gloss to the surface, wetting the paint, and providing protection for it.

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.

Water sensitive binder: Glue, gum arabic, starch, and cellulose esters.  These materials were used by artists in the past and present in the construction of oil paintings.

White spirit: Turpentine substitute consisting of naphtha thinners (solvent distilled from petroleum).  They are colorless hydrocarbons with a boiling range 100 to 160ºC, used as a paint thinner.

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Sources:  SCMRE, Artinside.com, SLN.org, MartinLawrence.com, FunkandWagnalls.com, Famous Artists Painting Course

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