PAINTING TERMS

This page is intended to help artist, painters and visitors in search for the meaning and understanding about painting terminology.

The first word of an entry, printed in Bold Type, is the word to be defined. It is known as the "headword".

The following phrase is the definition that gives the meaning of the words.

Art - To create beauty and value in any type of particular application to a matter and forms. Literally art was derived from the Latin word ars, meaning "skill" has changed through history. The first artist was said to be the cavemen's who have decorating their caves (their home) with sketches of animals like horse, fish, cats, flowers, the wildlife to were they are living. The first illustrations was said to be in charcoal sketches (until the present time has been practiced as a medium) and carving with their chisel stones becomes a decorative artworks that recorded the drama of the prehistoric world.

Advancing Color - Dark or hot colors tend to move into the foreground. They're very aggressive... heavy tones such as Red, Black, Dark Brown, Dark Blues and Greens are among these.

Atmospheric Color - As the sunlight ascends and descends from day to day, its effects on forms optically influences how we perceive it's color. Prevailing light conditions in nature is constantly changing, which affects color relationships. In addition, there are gaseous molecules and water particles in the air which affects the atmospheres appearance regardless of the season. Fog will further diminish the intensity of a color.

Atmospheric Perspective- Understanding Atmospheric Perspective or (Aerial Perspective) is invaluable when painting landscapes. Using this system alone will give the impression of distance.
Distant forms in a landscape are cooler and lighter due to gaseous molecules and water particles in the atmosphere which affects a colors intensity. The tonal contrasts in the distance are subdued.
So, add more blue in the distance and add the modifier (white) to subdue the colors.

Color Temperature- Colors will affect the perspective and mood in a painting. Blues and purples will recede while reds and yellows will advance. The "cool" colors like blue is overpowered by the "warm" yellows and oranges.This is not to say that "warm" hues such as a red barn, should not be placed in the distance. One must use a modifier to subdue the intense reds of the barn.

Brown- There is a diverse amount of Brown in nature. This color can be mixed with any other color. It can be modified very easily without destroying it. Adding a touch of white to brown will bring out it's richness. Brown can be enhanced by adding red. Blues and Greens are used to darken this hue.The range of possibilities by adding other colors to Brown is endless.

Complimentary Colors- Red and green; blue and orange; yellow and purple... Colors that are opposite one another. When placed side by side they will intensify one another, making each more vibrant. This is useful when attempting to emphasize an emotion in your painting.

Circle Composition- Following the rule of thirds, you can place the center of interest in one of the focal points, then arrange other objects in your design to lead the viewers eye back to the center of interest.Glaze- Glazes are transparent colors applied thinly over an opaque color. It's usually brushed over a lighter hue. Glazes will intensify a color or subdue a color.

Focal Points- One of four points in the rule of thirds is designated as the center of interest in a composition. Limit your Focal Point (or center of interest) to one area. Any more than this will create conflicting elements in your design. You can get away with secondary centers of interest but make sure that your major Focal Point is up front in volume, size and shape.

Fresco (plural either frescos or frescoes) is any of several related painting types. The word fresco comes from the Italian word affresco which derives from the adjective fresco ("fresh"), which has Germanic origins. Fresco paintings are done on plaster on walls or ceilings.


Golden Mean- a compositional procedure to harmonize and unify unequal parts into the whole. It's a mathematical sequence found in nature... 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc. It's applied to a composition by dividing the support mathematically with lines and curves that intersect to delineate perfect proportions.

Graffiti - (singular: graffito; the plural is used as a mass noun) is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or any form of marking on property that does not belong to the artist. Graffiti is often regarded by others as unsightly damage or unwanted vandalism.

Hue- This is the name of a color within a spectrum color. For example, Prussian Blue, Ultramarine Blue and Cerulean Blue are all blues which are close in hue. When describing close or similar colors, the word hue is often used.

Illusionism-The use of pictorial techniques such as perspective and foreshortening to deceive the eye into believing that what is painted is real.

Popular in the Hellenistic period, especially in the painted fictive architecture at Pompeii, the technique was revived by Italian painter ANDREA MANTEGNA (1431-1506) in his ceiling for the Camera degli Sposi (1474) in Mantua.

Illusionist effects reached their height in 16th and 17th century Italian architecture, and in the peepshow cabinets of the 17th-century Dutch painters.

Imprematura- A transparent wash of color applied over a white support is called an imprematura. Bright colors are the best choice for this.

Intensity (or Saturation)- Refers to the brilliance or relative strength of a color. Adding a colors complimentary will reduce it's intensity.

Juxtaposition- Colors place side by side.

Line Composition - By positioning the center of interest to the left or right of the focal point (following the rule of thirds), you can design a line for the viewer to other elements of the composition. For instance, a deer painted on the far left of a wide formatted composition would confine the viewers attention to that area of your painting. If you include a river bank or a shore line that's below or intersects the deer, you're creating a line for the viewer to follow, thus leading the viewers eye through the rest of your composition.

Linear Perspective- This is the idea that receding parallel lines meet at vanishing points along a horizontal line called the horizon line. The horizon line is at eye level. As your view point changes, so does the angles of the parallel lines. Utilizing this system resolves much of your foreshortening issues; particularly when painting cityscapes.

Local Color- The true color of an object removed from all outside influence.

Overpainting- Layers of paint applied by scumbling or glazing is called Overpainting. The underlying colors optically mix with the subsequent layers creating a third color which is much richer than combing complimentaries on the palette.

Optical Mixtures- Pointillists such as Georges Seurat placed dots of colors side by side to create another color when viewed from a certain distance. The colors are Optically mixed. Seurats juxtaposition of color is brilliant.

Linear Perspective - A system of drawing or painting in which the artist attempts to create the illusion of spatial depth on a two-dimensional surface. It works by following consistent geometric rules for rendering objects as they appear to the human eye. For instance, we see parallel lines as converging in the distance, although in reality they do not. Stated another way, the lines of buildings and other objects in a picture are slanted inward making them appear to extend back into space. If lengthened these lines will meet at a point along an imaginary horizontal line representing the eye level. Each such imaginary line is called an orthogonal. The point at which such lines meet is called a vanishing point.

Photorealism - is the genre of painting based on making a painting of a photograph, recently seen in a splinter hyperrealism art movement. However, the term is primarily applied to paintings from the US-American photorealism art movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Primary Colors- Blue, Yellow and Red. These are colors that you simply cannot mix by using other colors. These are the three basic colors.

Receding Colors- Pale or cool colors tend to recede into the background, thus they give us the impression of distance.

Rule of Thirds- The Rule of Thirds is simple to remember and implement. It's similar to the golden section and just as effective. All you have to do is visualize your support as divided into thirds. The lines intersect at four points. These are called focal points. The center of interest is placed at one of the points. A horizon line in a landscape painting is often placed along one of the lines.
An experienced painter may break this rule in order to emphasize drama or emotion.
If you're new to painting, follow this rule until you gain a greater understanding of composition.

Secondary Colors- Green, Orange and Purple. The combination of two primaries results in a secondary color. Red and Yellow makes Orange.

Scumble- A Scumble is a semiopaque or opaque color applied thinly over a darker color. Like glazing, Scumbling is transparent, which is optically mixed with the color under it to produce a third color.

Shade- A color that is darker than it's normal value is refered to as a shade; deep green, dark blue.

Still life - is a work of art depicting inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, plants and natural substances like rocks) or man-made (drinking glasses, cigarettes, pipes, hotdogs and so on). Popular in Western art since the 17th century, still life paintings give the artist more leeway in the arrangement of design elements within a composition than do paintings of other types of subjects such as landscape or portraiture.

Temperature- Colors are warm, hot or cold in appearance; orange, red, blue. This is true within each category of color. There are hotter and colder colors in every category.

Tertiary Colors- This is a mixture of a primary and secondary color. Red and Orange makes Red-Orange.

Tints- A color is refered to as a tint when white is added. They're always lighter in value to it's hue. By adding white to red, a tint of pink is created.

Toned Ground- A support which is coated with an opaque color prior to painting is refered to as a Toned Ground.

Tone- The darkness or lightness of a color.

Underpainting- The first stages of a painting in which the elements and the tonal values of a composition are established is known as the Underpainting.

Value- When you describe a color as pale, light or very dark, you're refering to it's value. Imagine a color wheel in black and white. You're seeing the values.

Wet-in-wet- A technique used in painting in which the colors flow together. There's a risk of creating a muddy look when painting in this manner. Many brilliant masterworks have been painted using this technique. It's often used by Oil Painters.

Wet-on-dry- Painting over a dry layer of paint. It's much easier to control than wet-in-wet. Most acrylic painters use this technique.