A (not so) Useful guide to Art Terms
As art terms can often be so confusing, I thought a guide to them might be in order, the only trouble is that I didn't take the task that seriously....
This glossary is suitable for everyone from total novices through to serious art professionals, being of equally no use to either. It is best read, then entirely disregarded, but might just raise a smile or two along the way.
I am indebted to Messrs. Sellar and Yeatman for the wonderful inspiration provided by their irreverent approach to history provided by the book ‘1066 and all that’.
Enjoy…
This glossary is suitable for everyone from total novices through to serious art professionals, being of equally no use to either. It is best read, then entirely disregarded, but might just raise a smile or two along the way.
I am indebted to Messrs. Sellar and Yeatman for the wonderful inspiration provided by their irreverent approach to history provided by the book ‘1066 and all that’.
Enjoy…
The art terms here are in loose alphabetical order, with other like sounding terms that may cause confusion to artists inserted alongside the art term they may be confused with. I think this is generally called disambiguation, though I think it hardly achieves anything like that here.
Alla Prima – Paint style in which you just keep adding more paint without letting any of it dry. The term Alla Prima was invented to make this sound like it was entirely intentional and not merely impatience on behalf of the artist. The resulting effects may go one of two ways- genius, or muddy brown.
Chiaroscuro – A painting style which has lots of light and lots of dark in it. Invented in the olden times when there was generally less light available and painters had to make do with a lantern to illuminate their subjects, but could see nothing much beyond that at night.
Colour Theory – Generally explained by painting all the colours in a circle. A branch of art study specifically created to demonstrate that art is a complex mixture of observation, science, language and philosophy. To summarise it in its entirety: It addresses the fact that colours only look like themselves sometimes, but are deeply prone to pretending to be something else most of the time, which may or may not even be a colour at all, depending on whether someone is looking at them in the first place. To remove any uncertainties in this, one needs only to consider how the colour would appear to Schrödinger’s cat when placed in a box with it.
En Plein Air – An extreme sport specifically created for artists. The normal form of the activity is to create a painting outdoors in some extreme weather condition, eg. raging wind, excessive heat, hailstorm etc. Beginners to the sport may attempt outdoor paintings in mild to moderate weather and only slight discomfort, but at the top end of the sport, paintings produced without having to cling on to the art work for dear life, suffer loss of art materials or without incurring hypothermia/ heatstroke or the like, are usually frowned upon.
Gesso (1) – A highly traditional mix of rabbit skin glue and chalk, gypsum and pigments carefully developed over many years for artists to seal and pre coat surfaces prior to painting.
Gesso (2) – Primer. (What Ronseal would have called Gesso (1) if they’d been around when it was invented.)
“Guess so” – The highest term of confirmation that an artist can give in return to any question about whether a piece of art is actually finally completed.
Guess Who – Early stage training game for aspiring portrait artists.
Glaze – A layer of thin transparent paint laid over thicker layers to modify the colours across a painting or an area of it… invariably slightly different in effect than you intended it to be.
Glaze over – A layer of thin transparent mist that seems to descend across the brain, particularly occurring when an artist is dealing with such matters as accounts, form filling or even studying colour theory (again). Likely symptom of saturation (2) (see below).
Fat – How much cholesterol your paint mix has consumed. The ‘Fat over Lean’ rule tells us that it is generally considered a bad thing for a painting to consume too much fat early in life, but in its later stages, progressively greater consumption of fat is acceptable. This is very similar to why dads should really get to eat the kids’ Easter eggs.
Hue (1) – One of three or four or five (or maybe it’s six or seven…) deeply mysterious properties of colour in a painting (see also Saturation (1) and Value (1) and maybe a few other words somewhere in amongst this guide). Hue is what a colour is when it isn’t being anything else but what it is unto itself. More clearly understood when read in conjunction with the summary of colour theory (see above).
Hue (2) – When used in connection with a specific colour on a Paint tube (1) (see below), eg ‘Cadmium Yellow Hue’, it means that the paint inside is made of everything else but what it’s meant to be, but it kind of looks the same.
Key – How light or dark a painting is - High key paintings are light, low key ones are thus (you’ll never guess!) – dark. Honestly where on earth were the Ronseal guys when they made these terms up? Warning - do not attempt to use this with Chiaroscuro (see above) paintings.
Oils – There are a whole variety of these available for use as ‘mixers’ with oil paints straight from the tube. Linseed is the most traditionally used because it lasts very well and in the olden times, when they were painting with lanterns, it was well established that you had to be long dead to become famous as an artist, so they wanted their paintings to last for a long time after they died so that they could become famous artists. Safflower oil yellows less and has a nice buttery feel, so is generally considered the ‘I can’t believe it’s not linseed oil’ of the art world, whilst walnut oil is great for making salads.
Paint tube (1) – Container designed to deliver a small amount of paint straight to the palette (1 or 2), whilst at the same time ensuring that a just sufficient amount of the same paint ends up on the artist’s hands, and clothes, ready to be inadvertently transferred onwards unknowingly to nearby items of furniture, carpets, upholstery etc. This is to ensure that all artists at all times show their correct badge of office- some kind of paint smothered clothing (once traditionally a smock, but now any item of clothing, as long as properly smeared all over with paint is considered adequate for purpose)
.
Paint Tube (2) – Alternative name for art installations created through ‘Art on the Underground’ by London Transport.
Paint Tube (3) – Alternative name for creating graffiti on the Underground, not by London Transport, (see also ‘graffiti’ (2) (with sgraffito, below))
Palette (1) – An exquisitely crafted wooden board with a curved shape, carefully tapered edges for perfect weight distribution and a carefully designed hole designed to allow perfect grip; considered such an essential tool for artists by others that it has generally become a universal symbol to denote anything related to painted art.
Palette (2) – Biscuit tin lid, plank off cut, bit of newspaper, or any other object that can be found lying around nearby to mix paint on, in almost universal use by actual painters who are usually too hard up to be able to afford a palette (1).
Palette (3) – The choice of colours used by an artist in a painting. If complimented on this, the artist may take full credit for this choice, even though it was probably entirely luck. If criticised for it, this is where the artist should invoke colour theory (see above) to raise a complex defence of his/ her choices; this will usually be sufficient to deter all but the most ardent of critics as most people won’t have a clue what you’re talking about anyway.
Pallet – What your art materials arrive on, in a lorry, when you accidentally put an extra zero in the quantity box when ordering them online.
Pallette – How I generally end up spelling palette (1, 2 or 3), as I can never remember whether I’m meant to be using that word or pallet, and even when I can remember I still can’t recall which one has the ‘l’ or ‘t’ doubled.
Palette knife – (related object to Palette (1) and Palette (2)) Extraordinarily useful general purpose tool, originally intended for mixing painting on a palette (see above), but generally found to not be to hand whilst painting as you probably last used it for cake decorating, putting Polyfilla in the wall while decorating or levering a battery cover off a particularly fiddly remote control.
Palate – A word whose existence seems mainly there to sow further confusion into the whole question of how many ‘l’s and ‘t’s to use in words that sound like this (see Pallette (1, 2 or 3) and Pallet above). This word can generally be ignored by artists unless they are thinking about dinner.
Saturation (1) – A property of a colour that describes how much more or less like itself that it’s feeling.
Saturation (2) – A property of the artist that describes just how much less like his or herself the artist is feeling after reading about colour theory for the umpteenth time.
Saturation (3) – A property of any paper based art or reference materials when the artist has spilt their tea over them.
Sgraffito – Technique whereby you are allowed to scratch fine details into the paint using something pointy when it gets too fiddly to use a brush. Largely invented to make those long hours in dull school lessons where you scratched designs into your tin pencil case seem worthwhile, as training for use in this technique.
Graffiti (1) – Where the training for Sgraffito (see above) goes a little awry and designs are scratched into school desks instead.
Graffiti (2) – Art painted on a wall, sometimes legally, sometimes not. If it is of interest to archaeologists then it’s fine and called ‘graffito’ instead, but then you may only do it once. Also fine if you happen to be called Banksy, otherwise permissions are required. See also paint Tube (3) for this activity.
Solvent (1) – The thin ‘mixy’ stuff used, surprisingly, for thinning and mixing paints, also good for removing paint from hair/pets/children/carpets where necessary (always read the label).
Solvent (2) – A property of the artist deeply related to Value (2). As most artists are usually more interested in their actual art than making money, then usually - ‘not very’ applies.
Value (1) – The most important of all the three (or four or five….see ‘Hue’) colour properties in a painting. Generally understood by artists to be so important in relation to colour painting that it is best approached by not using paints at all and sticking to colouring everything in don’t think you need in using a black pencil. Value describes just how dark a colour is feeling, and whether or not it’s feeling like itself (see Saturation (1) and Hue (1) and colour theory again).
Value (2) – The most important of all properties in a finished painting if an artist wants to remain solvent (2). Defining Value (2) in art is viewed as an important area of study for artists to pursue. A simple three line synopsis of colour theory (see above) and/or summarising the works of Proust might be considered simpler preliminary exercises before attempting this though.
Varnish (1) – A clear see through protective coating designed especially to attract every last possible particle of dust present in a room when applied to a painting.
Varnish (2) – The process of applying varnish (1) to a painting. This procedure has been carefully added to the end of the painting process as the final trial of mettle for creators of art. It allows the artist one final opportunity to completely render an otherwise perfectly finished painting (or at least one which has passed the ‘guess so’ phase (see above)) completely useless for sale. The process offers a glorious range of ways in which ruination of the artwork can be achieved; these range from the artistically haphazard creation of smudged areas in the work where paint has not yet completely dried, to the addition of an interesting ‘dust and lint’ layer to the piece.
Vanish (1) – Something that the artist wishes the dust carefully entrained in the dried varnish (1) would do.
Vanish (2) – A proprietary brand of cleaner that may be resorted to, in a more or less successful manner, to remove the excesses from an encounter with a Paint Tube (1).
Wash (1) – Thin layer of transparent paint laid under thicker layers which ultimately becomes largely invisible in an oil painting, but makes the artist feel like they’re getting on with something. Not to be confused with glaze (see above) which is laid over the thicker layers with easily more disastrous effects.
Wash (2) – Inevitable end task to any painting session and thus forming a fitting conclusion to this glossary. All artists know the importance of this, particularly in relation to washing brushes meticulously using a multi stage process involving solvents, soapy rinses and a suitable conditioner rubbed carefully into the bristles whilst reshaping the brush carefully to its correct form; which is why most artists just dump the whole lot in a jar of water and hope for the best.
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Alla Prima – Paint style in which you just keep adding more paint without letting any of it dry. The term Alla Prima was invented to make this sound like it was entirely intentional and not merely impatience on behalf of the artist. The resulting effects may go one of two ways- genius, or muddy brown.
Chiaroscuro – A painting style which has lots of light and lots of dark in it. Invented in the olden times when there was generally less light available and painters had to make do with a lantern to illuminate their subjects, but could see nothing much beyond that at night.
Colour Theory – Generally explained by painting all the colours in a circle. A branch of art study specifically created to demonstrate that art is a complex mixture of observation, science, language and philosophy. To summarise it in its entirety: It addresses the fact that colours only look like themselves sometimes, but are deeply prone to pretending to be something else most of the time, which may or may not even be a colour at all, depending on whether someone is looking at them in the first place. To remove any uncertainties in this, one needs only to consider how the colour would appear to Schrödinger’s cat when placed in a box with it.
En Plein Air – An extreme sport specifically created for artists. The normal form of the activity is to create a painting outdoors in some extreme weather condition, eg. raging wind, excessive heat, hailstorm etc. Beginners to the sport may attempt outdoor paintings in mild to moderate weather and only slight discomfort, but at the top end of the sport, paintings produced without having to cling on to the art work for dear life, suffer loss of art materials or without incurring hypothermia/ heatstroke or the like, are usually frowned upon.
Gesso (1) – A highly traditional mix of rabbit skin glue and chalk, gypsum and pigments carefully developed over many years for artists to seal and pre coat surfaces prior to painting.
Gesso (2) – Primer. (What Ronseal would have called Gesso (1) if they’d been around when it was invented.)
“Guess so” – The highest term of confirmation that an artist can give in return to any question about whether a piece of art is actually finally completed.
Guess Who – Early stage training game for aspiring portrait artists.
Glaze – A layer of thin transparent paint laid over thicker layers to modify the colours across a painting or an area of it… invariably slightly different in effect than you intended it to be.
Glaze over – A layer of thin transparent mist that seems to descend across the brain, particularly occurring when an artist is dealing with such matters as accounts, form filling or even studying colour theory (again). Likely symptom of saturation (2) (see below).
Fat – How much cholesterol your paint mix has consumed. The ‘Fat over Lean’ rule tells us that it is generally considered a bad thing for a painting to consume too much fat early in life, but in its later stages, progressively greater consumption of fat is acceptable. This is very similar to why dads should really get to eat the kids’ Easter eggs.
Hue (1) – One of three or four or five (or maybe it’s six or seven…) deeply mysterious properties of colour in a painting (see also Saturation (1) and Value (1) and maybe a few other words somewhere in amongst this guide). Hue is what a colour is when it isn’t being anything else but what it is unto itself. More clearly understood when read in conjunction with the summary of colour theory (see above).
Hue (2) – When used in connection with a specific colour on a Paint tube (1) (see below), eg ‘Cadmium Yellow Hue’, it means that the paint inside is made of everything else but what it’s meant to be, but it kind of looks the same.
Key – How light or dark a painting is - High key paintings are light, low key ones are thus (you’ll never guess!) – dark. Honestly where on earth were the Ronseal guys when they made these terms up? Warning - do not attempt to use this with Chiaroscuro (see above) paintings.
Oils – There are a whole variety of these available for use as ‘mixers’ with oil paints straight from the tube. Linseed is the most traditionally used because it lasts very well and in the olden times, when they were painting with lanterns, it was well established that you had to be long dead to become famous as an artist, so they wanted their paintings to last for a long time after they died so that they could become famous artists. Safflower oil yellows less and has a nice buttery feel, so is generally considered the ‘I can’t believe it’s not linseed oil’ of the art world, whilst walnut oil is great for making salads.
Paint tube (1) – Container designed to deliver a small amount of paint straight to the palette (1 or 2), whilst at the same time ensuring that a just sufficient amount of the same paint ends up on the artist’s hands, and clothes, ready to be inadvertently transferred onwards unknowingly to nearby items of furniture, carpets, upholstery etc. This is to ensure that all artists at all times show their correct badge of office- some kind of paint smothered clothing (once traditionally a smock, but now any item of clothing, as long as properly smeared all over with paint is considered adequate for purpose)
.
Paint Tube (2) – Alternative name for art installations created through ‘Art on the Underground’ by London Transport.
Paint Tube (3) – Alternative name for creating graffiti on the Underground, not by London Transport, (see also ‘graffiti’ (2) (with sgraffito, below))
Palette (1) – An exquisitely crafted wooden board with a curved shape, carefully tapered edges for perfect weight distribution and a carefully designed hole designed to allow perfect grip; considered such an essential tool for artists by others that it has generally become a universal symbol to denote anything related to painted art.
Palette (2) – Biscuit tin lid, plank off cut, bit of newspaper, or any other object that can be found lying around nearby to mix paint on, in almost universal use by actual painters who are usually too hard up to be able to afford a palette (1).
Palette (3) – The choice of colours used by an artist in a painting. If complimented on this, the artist may take full credit for this choice, even though it was probably entirely luck. If criticised for it, this is where the artist should invoke colour theory (see above) to raise a complex defence of his/ her choices; this will usually be sufficient to deter all but the most ardent of critics as most people won’t have a clue what you’re talking about anyway.
Pallet – What your art materials arrive on, in a lorry, when you accidentally put an extra zero in the quantity box when ordering them online.
Pallette – How I generally end up spelling palette (1, 2 or 3), as I can never remember whether I’m meant to be using that word or pallet, and even when I can remember I still can’t recall which one has the ‘l’ or ‘t’ doubled.
Palette knife – (related object to Palette (1) and Palette (2)) Extraordinarily useful general purpose tool, originally intended for mixing painting on a palette (see above), but generally found to not be to hand whilst painting as you probably last used it for cake decorating, putting Polyfilla in the wall while decorating or levering a battery cover off a particularly fiddly remote control.
Palate – A word whose existence seems mainly there to sow further confusion into the whole question of how many ‘l’s and ‘t’s to use in words that sound like this (see Pallette (1, 2 or 3) and Pallet above). This word can generally be ignored by artists unless they are thinking about dinner.
Saturation (1) – A property of a colour that describes how much more or less like itself that it’s feeling.
Saturation (2) – A property of the artist that describes just how much less like his or herself the artist is feeling after reading about colour theory for the umpteenth time.
Saturation (3) – A property of any paper based art or reference materials when the artist has spilt their tea over them.
Sgraffito – Technique whereby you are allowed to scratch fine details into the paint using something pointy when it gets too fiddly to use a brush. Largely invented to make those long hours in dull school lessons where you scratched designs into your tin pencil case seem worthwhile, as training for use in this technique.
Graffiti (1) – Where the training for Sgraffito (see above) goes a little awry and designs are scratched into school desks instead.
Graffiti (2) – Art painted on a wall, sometimes legally, sometimes not. If it is of interest to archaeologists then it’s fine and called ‘graffito’ instead, but then you may only do it once. Also fine if you happen to be called Banksy, otherwise permissions are required. See also paint Tube (3) for this activity.
Solvent (1) – The thin ‘mixy’ stuff used, surprisingly, for thinning and mixing paints, also good for removing paint from hair/pets/children/carpets where necessary (always read the label).
Solvent (2) – A property of the artist deeply related to Value (2). As most artists are usually more interested in their actual art than making money, then usually - ‘not very’ applies.
Value (1) – The most important of all the three (or four or five….see ‘Hue’) colour properties in a painting. Generally understood by artists to be so important in relation to colour painting that it is best approached by not using paints at all and sticking to colouring everything in don’t think you need in using a black pencil. Value describes just how dark a colour is feeling, and whether or not it’s feeling like itself (see Saturation (1) and Hue (1) and colour theory again).
Value (2) – The most important of all properties in a finished painting if an artist wants to remain solvent (2). Defining Value (2) in art is viewed as an important area of study for artists to pursue. A simple three line synopsis of colour theory (see above) and/or summarising the works of Proust might be considered simpler preliminary exercises before attempting this though.
Varnish (1) – A clear see through protective coating designed especially to attract every last possible particle of dust present in a room when applied to a painting.
Varnish (2) – The process of applying varnish (1) to a painting. This procedure has been carefully added to the end of the painting process as the final trial of mettle for creators of art. It allows the artist one final opportunity to completely render an otherwise perfectly finished painting (or at least one which has passed the ‘guess so’ phase (see above)) completely useless for sale. The process offers a glorious range of ways in which ruination of the artwork can be achieved; these range from the artistically haphazard creation of smudged areas in the work where paint has not yet completely dried, to the addition of an interesting ‘dust and lint’ layer to the piece.
Vanish (1) – Something that the artist wishes the dust carefully entrained in the dried varnish (1) would do.
Vanish (2) – A proprietary brand of cleaner that may be resorted to, in a more or less successful manner, to remove the excesses from an encounter with a Paint Tube (1).
Wash (1) – Thin layer of transparent paint laid under thicker layers which ultimately becomes largely invisible in an oil painting, but makes the artist feel like they’re getting on with something. Not to be confused with glaze (see above) which is laid over the thicker layers with easily more disastrous effects.
Wash (2) – Inevitable end task to any painting session and thus forming a fitting conclusion to this glossary. All artists know the importance of this, particularly in relation to washing brushes meticulously using a multi stage process involving solvents, soapy rinses and a suitable conditioner rubbed carefully into the bristles whilst reshaping the brush carefully to its correct form; which is why most artists just dump the whole lot in a jar of water and hope for the best.
IF YOU'VE ENJOYED THIS WHY NOT SHOW YOUR SUPPORT FOR MY WORK BY SIGNING UP FOR MY FREE NEWSLETTER?
- FIND OUT MORE HERE!
NEWSLETTER PAGE