Art Facts
EXPLORE, REACH, BOLDLY GO BEYOND...
And I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean and the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought and rolls through all things.
William Wordsworth
What can be said about art and the artist? Here are some takes from the minds of some great artists and a brief glimpse into that which is the soul of the creative id.
With the most primitive means the artist creates something which the most ingenious and efficient technology will never be able to create. A painter paints the appearance of things, not their objective correctness, in fact, the artist creates new appearances of things. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness. A painting is an idea not an ideal. Basically Trying to paint a structured painting full of controlled, and therefore potent, emotion. A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of them, but who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing. The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it. To become truly immortal, a work of art must escape all human limits. Logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken, it will enter the realms of childhood visions and dreams. There's no retirement for an artist. it's your way of living so there's no end to it. Reason is powerless in the expression of art.
If one listens to the soul of a true artist they will appreciate what is sought in discovery of the personal and collective conscious. To truly give wings to mortal strokes of genius, one must first humbly come to the realization of what it means to create. Where dreams are born and how they can possibly be committed to physical reality in a work of art. Here are some quotes from the minds of some of them:
A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. Albert Camus
A man paints with his brains and not with his hands. Michelangelo
Art is a poem without words. Horace
A picture is worth a thousand words. Napoleon Bonaparte
A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light. Henri Matisse
Art is for a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds. Henry Moore
A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Oscar Wilde
A writer should write with his eyes and a paint with his ears. Gertrude Stein
Abstract art is a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered. Al Capp
Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century. Marshall McLuhan
All art is but imitation of nature. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time. John Ruskin
An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one. Charles Horton Cooley
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world. George Santayana
An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness. Henry Miller
An artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs. Edgard Varese
An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have. Andy Warhol
An artist never really finishes his work, he merely abandons it. Paul Valery
Art begins with resistance - at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labor. Andre Gide
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. Gilbert K. Chesterton
Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms. Roy Lichtenstein
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton
Art in Nature is rhythmic and has a horror of constraint. Robert Delaunay
Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed. Kahlil Gibran
Art is either plagiarism or revolution. Paul Gauguin
Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth. Theodor Adorno
Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth. John Ruskin
Art is not a thing; it is a way. Elbert Hubbard
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art. Harry S. Truman
Art is science made clear. Wilson Mizner
Art is subject to arbitrary fashion. Kary Mullis
Art is the desire of a man to express himself, to record the reactions of his personality to the world he lives in. Amy Lowell
Art is the only way to run away without leaving home. Twyla Tharp
Art is the right hand of Nature. The latter has only given us being, the former has made us men. Friedrich Schiller
Art is the stored honey of the human soul, gathered on wings of misery and travail. Theodore Dreiser
Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time. Jean Cocteau
Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. Pablo Picasso
Art, in itself, is an attempt to bring order out of chaos. Stephen Sondheim
Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere. Gilbert K. Chesterton
Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies. Anish Kapoor
Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything. Gustave Flaubert
Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued. Jean Rostand
By the work one knows the workman. Jean de La Fontaine
Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. Scott Adams
Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs. Tom Wolfe
Drawing is like making an expressive gesture with the advantage of permanence. Henri Matisse
Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad. Salvador Dali
Even a true artist does not always produce art. Carroll O'Connor
Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures. Henry Ward Beecher
Every artist was first an amateur. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Every artist writes his own autobiography. Henry Ellis
Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression. Isaac Bashevis Singer
Every good painter paints what he is. Jackson Pollock
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. W. Somerset Maugham
Every time a student walks past a really urgent, expressive piece of architecture that belongs to his college, it can help reassure him that he does have that mind, does have that soul. Louis Kahn
Fashion is only the attempt to realize art in living forms and social intercourse. Francis Bacon
Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together. John Ruskin
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. Pablo Picasso
Great art picks up where nature ends. Marc Chagall
I choose a block of marble and chop off whatever I don't need. Auguste Rodin
I cry out for order and find it only in art. Helen Hayes
I don't paint things. I only paint the difference between things. Henri Matisse
I don't think there's any artist of any value who doesn't doubt what they're doing. Francis Ford Coppola
I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for. Georgia O'Keeffe
I like to pretend that my art has nothing to do with me. Roy Lichtenstein
I paint with shapes. Alexander Calder
I think an artist's responsibility is more complex than people realize. Jodie Foster
I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning. Andy Warhol
I've been called many names like perfectionist, difficult and obsessive. I think it takes obsession, takes searching for the details for any artist to be good. Barbra Streisand
If we could but paint with the hand what we see with the eye. Honore de Balzac
If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it. Anais Nin
If you hear a voice within you say "you cannot paint," then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. Vincent Van Gogh
Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal. Lionel Trilling
In art as in love, instinct is enough. Anatole France
In art the best is good enough. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is a mistake for a sculptor or a painter to speak or write very often about his job. It releases tension needed for his work. Henry Moore
It is only after years of preparation that the young artist should touch color - not color used descriptively, that is, but as a means of personal expression. Henri Matisse
It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools of art. Oscar Wilde
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal. Igor Stravinsky
Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life. Oscar Wilde
Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. Oliver Wendell Holmes
Love of beauty is taste. The creation of beauty is art. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. Gilbert K. Chesterton
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea. John Ciardi
Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist. Franz Liszt
My hand is the extension of the thinking process - the creative process. Tadao Ando
My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art. Clara Schumann
My love of fine art increased - the more of it I saw, the more of it I wanted to see. Paul Getty
My mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope." Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso. Pablo Picasso
My painting does not come from the easel. Jackson Pollock
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist. Oscar Wilde
No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language. Theodore Bikel
Of all lies, art is the least untrue. Gustave Flaubert
Our natures are a lot like oil, mix us with anything else, and we strive to swim on top. Joan Rivers
Painting is easy when you don't know how, but very difficult when you do. Edgar Degas
Painting is the art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather, and exposing them to the critic. Ambrose Bierce
Personality is everything in art and poetry. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Rationalism is the enemy of art, though necessary as a basis for architecture. Arthur Erickson
Rules and models destroy genius and art. William Hazlitt
So vast is art, so narrow human wit. Alexander Pope
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance. Aristotle
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. William Faulkner
The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity. Walt Whitman
The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist. Novalis
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. Pablo Picasso
The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work. Emile Zola
The artist who aims at perfection in everything achieves it in nothing. Eugene Delacroix
The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep. Paul Strand
The arts are an even better barometer of what is happening in our world than the stock market or the debates in congress. Hendrik Willem Van Loon
The awareness of our own strength makes us modest. Paul Cezanne
The beginning is the most important part of the work. Plato
The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure. Dale Carnegie
The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. Friedrich Nietzsche
The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist. David Hockney
The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract. Ellen Key
The most profound things are inexpressible. Jenny Holzer
The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways. Ansel Adams
The object of art is to give life a shape. William Shakespeare
The principle of art is to pause, not bypass. Jerzy Kosinski
The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. Jerzy Kosinski
The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. Pablo Picasso
The real art of conducting consists in transitions. Gustav Mahler
The sculptor produces the beautiful statue by chipping away such parts of the marble block as are not needed - it is a process of elimination. Elbert Hubbard
The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Theodor Adorno
The very essence of the creative is its novelty, and hence we have no standard by which to judge it. Carl Rogers
The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don't dare reveal. Elia Kazan
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. Ansel Adams
This world is but a canvas to our imagination. Henry David Thoreau
Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is. Henri Matisse
To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. Henry David Thoreau
To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there's no such thing as perfect. Alexander Calder
To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way. E. M. Forster
To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist. Robert Schumann
Treat a work of art like a prince. Let it speak to you first. Arthur Schopenhauer
True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist. Albert Einstein
Trying to force creativity is never good. Sarah McLachlan
Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. Jonathan Swift
Vitality is radiated from exceptional art and architecture. Arthur Erickson
What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. John Updike
What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. W. H. Auden
When I make art, I think about its ability to connect with others, to bring them into the process. Jim Hodges
Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable. George Bernard Shaw
Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others. Albert Camus
Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse. Winston Churchill
Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake. E. M. Forster
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
William Blake
ACRYLIC EMULSION A water dispersion of polymers or co-polymers of acrylic acid, methacrylic acid, or acrylonitrile. Acrylic emulsions dry by evaporation of the water and film coalescence.
ACRYLIC SOLUTION A solution of acrylic resin in a volatile solvent. Paints made with an acrylic solution binder resemble oil paints more than those made with acrylic emulsion binders.
ADDITIVE COLOR A color that results from the mixture of two or more colored lights, the visual blending of separate spots of transmitted colored light.
ALKYD Synthetic resin used in paints and mediums. As a medium Liquin from Winsor and Newton works as a binder that encapsulates the pigment and speeds the drying time. In Paints W&N Griffith paints are good example of alkyd paints.
ALLA PRIMA Technique in which the final surface of a painting is completed in one sitting, without under painting. Italian for "at the first".
ANHYDROUS Free from water.
ARCHIVAL Refers to materials that meet certain criteria for permanence such as lignin-free, pH neutral, alkaline-buffered, stable in light, etc.
ASTM The American Society for Testing and Materials. An independent standard for certain paint qualities, adopted by most manufacturers.
BINDER The nonvolatile adhesive liquid portion of a paint that attaches pigment particles and the paint film as a whole to the support.
BISTRE A brown, transparent pigment.
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 COLOR Opaque paint, such as gouache, which has the covering power to obliterate underlying color.
BRUSHWORK The characteristic way each artist brushes paint onto a support..
CANVAS Closely woven cloth used as a support for paintings.
CARTOON Other than what we watch on TV it is a planning device in mural painting, often a full-scale line drawing of the design, without color and tone.
CASEIN A natural protein obtained from cow's milk. Produces a flat, water-resistant film.
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.
COCKLING Wrinkling or puckering in paper supports, caused by applying washes onto a flimsy or improperly stretched surface.
COLLAGE 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.
CO-POLYMERS A polymer in which the molecule is of more than one type of structural unit..
COPAL A hard resin used in making varnishes and painting mediums.
DAMAR A resin from conifer trees, used in making oil mediums and varnishes.
DEAD COLOR A term for colors 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.
DESIGNER COLORS Best quality Gouache paints, often used in commercial art.
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.
DISTEMPER A blend of glue, chalk and water-based paint, used mostly for murals and posters.
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 A liquid in which small droplets of one liquid are immiscible in, but thoroughly and evenly dispersed throughout, a second liquid. eg. Acrylic Emulsion
ENCAUSTIC Literally, to burn in. A painting technique in which the binder is melted wax.
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.
FIXATIVE A solution, usually of shellac and alcohol, sprayed onto drawings, to prevent their smudging or crumbling off the support.
FRESCO A painting technique in which the pigments are dispersed in plain water and applied to a damp plaster wall. The wall becomes the binder, as well as the support.
FUGITIVE COLORS Pigment or dye colors that fade when exposed to light.
GESSO A white ground material for preparing rigid supports for painting. made of a mixture of chalk, white pigment, and glue. Same name applied to acrylic bound chalk and pigment used on flexible supports as well as rigid.
GLAZE A very thin, transparent colored paint applied over a previously painted surface to alter the appearance and color of the surface.
GOUACHE Opaque watercolors used for illustrations.
GRISSAILLE A monochromatic painting, usually in gray, which can be used under colored glazes.
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 ARABICA A gum, extracted from 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 perceived color of an object, identified by a common name such as red, orange, blue.
HYGROSCOPIC Absorbing or attracting moisture from the air.
IMPASTO A style of painting characterized by thick, juicy color application.
IMPRIMATURA A thin, veil of paint, or paint-tinted size, applied to a ground to lessen the ground's absorbency or to tint the ground to a middle value.
INTENSITY The purity and brightness of a color. 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"
LAKE A dye that has been chemically or electrically attached to a particle and does not bleed or migrate.
LATEX A dispersion in water of a solid polymeric material.
LEACHING The process of drawing out excess liquid through a porous substance.
LEAN Used as an adjective to describe paint thinned with a spirit, which therefore has a low oil content.
LEVIGATING A method of water-washing pulverized pigments to clear the particles of dissolved salts or organic matter.
LIGHTFAST Resistant to fading or other changes due to light.
LOCAL COLOR The actual color of an object or surface, unaffected by shadow coloring, light quality or other factors.
LOOM STATE Canvas that has not been primed, sized or otherwise prepared beforehand for painting.
LATEX A dispersion in water of a solid polymeric material.
MATIERE Paint.
MAROUFLAGE A technique for attaching, with glue, mural size painting on paper or fabric to a wall.
MASSTONE The top tone or body color of a paint seen only by reflected light.
MAT A stiff cardboard with a window cut out of the center, attached to a backboard.
MATTE Flat, nonglossy; having a dull surface appearance. Variant spelling - matt.
MEDIUM The liquid in which pigments are suspended. Also a material chosen by the artist for working. Plural is media.
MIGRATION The action of a pigment or dye moving through a dried film above or below it.
MIXED MEDIA In drawing and painting this refers to the use of different media in the same picture.
MONOMER A material with low molecular weight that can react with similar or dissimilar materials to form a polymer.
MOSAIC Picture making technique using small units of variously colored materials (glass, tile, stone) set in a mortar.
MURAL Also referred to as wall painting. this word describes any painting made directly on the wall.
MUSEUM BOARD Multi ply board made of cotton rags or buffered cellulose to ensure chemical stability and neutrality.
PALETTE The surface which a painter will mix his colors. Also the range of colors used by an artist.
PATINA Originally the green brown encrustation on bronze, this now includes the natural effects of age or exposure on a surface.
PENTIMENTO A condition of old paintings where lead-containing pigments have become more transparent over time, revealing earlier layers.
PIGMENTS particles with inherent color that can be mixed with adhesive binders to form paint.
PLASTICIZER Ingredients added to paint to either make it flow or be easily redissolved.
PLEIN AIR French for "open air". Term describing paintings done outside directly from the subject.
POLYMER A series of monomers strung together in a repeating chainlike form.
PRECIPITATE An inert particle to which dyes can be laked.
PRESERVATIVE A material that prevents or inhibits the growth of microorganisms in organic mixtures.
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 The numerical ratio of the speed of light in a vacuum to its speed in a substance.
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.
SANQUINE A red-brown chalk.
SAPONIFICATION The process in which a paint binder, under moist and alkaline conditions, becomes transparent or discolored.
SCUMBLING The technique of applying a thin, semi-opaque or translucent coating of paint over a previously painted surface to alter the color or appearance of the surface without totally obscuring it.
SECCO Italian for "dry". A technique of wall-painting onto dry plaster, or lime plaster that is dampened shortly before paint is applied
SFUMATO Italian for "shaded off". Gradual, almost imperceptible transitions of color from light to dark.
SGRAFFITO Technique in which the surface layer is incised or cut away to reveal a contrasting color.
SHADE Term for a color darkened with black.
SHELLAC A yellow resin formed from secretions of the LAC insect, used in making varnish.
SILICATE Material, such as sand, that is composed of a metal, oxygen, and silicon.
SILVERPOINT A drawing method using a piece of metal, usually silver wire, drawn on a ground prepared with Chinese white, sometimes with pigment added.
SINOPIA A red-brown chalk used for marking-out frescoes; also the preliminary drawing itself.
SIZE Material applied to a surface as a penetrating sealer, to alter or lessen its absorbency and isolate it from subsequent coatings.
SKETCH A preliminary drawing of a composition.
SQUARING UP A method for transferring an image to a larger or smaller format.
STRAINER A wooden chassis for textile supports that has rigid, immovable corners.
STRETCHER A wooden chassis for textile supports that has expandable corners.
SUBTRACTIVE COLOR Color resulting from the absorption of light.
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 Technique of painting in which water and egg yolk or whole egg and oil mixture form the binder for the paint. Used also as a term for cheap opaque paints used in schools.
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 color lightened with white. Also, in a mixture of colors, 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.
TRAGACANTH A gum , extracted from certain Astragalus plants, used as a binding agent in watercolor paints and pastels.
TROMPE L'OEIL French for "deceive the eye". A painting with extreme naturalistic details, aiming to persuade the viewer that they are looking at an actual object, not a representation.
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 relative lightness or darkness of a hue. Black is low value. White is a high value.
VARNISH Generally, a more or less transparent film-forming liquid that dries into a solid film.
VEDUTA Italian for "view". An accurate representation of an urban landscape.
VEHICLE The entire liquid contents of a paint.
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 Old term for green underpainting.
VOLATILE Evaporating rapidly or easily.
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 A technique of painting using a binder made from a water-soluble gum. Watercolors can be transparent or opaque.
WATER TENSION BREAKER Substance added to water or to water-based paints in order to reduce surface tension. eg. Ox Gall.
WAX PAINTING See Encaustic.
WAX RESIST The use of a waxy medium to make a design over which a colored wash is spread.
WET ON WET The application of fresh paint over an area on which the paint is still wet.
WETTING AGENT See Water Tension Breaker.
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.
XYLOGRAPHY Rarely used term for woodblock printing. Also the mechanical reproduction of wood grain for decorative purposes.
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.
ZOOMORPHIC Describes the forms of works of art and ornaments based on animal shapes.
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Art, Mind and Soul
Artist and creator Also see Jim Thompson's technical art web site at www.jt-techart.com