Guyla - A Glossary of Art Terminology

Dabber: A soft pad holding the wax ground used in etching.

Damar: A coniferous, hard resin used as a varnish or painting medium, and sometimes as part of mixed media.

Dapping Block: A concave form used for forming metal.

Deaccession: To remove an artwork from a museum's collection, or the artwork that is removed. Works are typically deaccessioned through sale or exchange in order to acquire other works; rarely to support any other financial needs. During the art market of the 1980s, when prices were driven up by speculators, some museums resorted to the sale of what were considered secondary or redundant pieces in order to raise funds to acquire others. This is a controversial practice, raising questions as to whether such decisions reflect current tastes and will stand the test of time. Criticism is especially harsh against the deaccessioning of donations.

Dead Color: A term for colors used in underpainting.

Death Mask: A cast of the face of a dead person. Usually such casts have been made from a mold produced by placing gesso on the face. Such a mold is likely to be of one piece, since the face is generally sufficiently flexible to enable removal of the hardened mold, as long as a release agent has been applied. A life mask is very similar, except that a passage must be provided for breathing through the mold.

Debubblizer: A chemical brushed on wax models to prevent bubbles from forming during casting.

Deckle Edge: The feathery edge which is the result of the natural run-off of wet pulp when making handmade and mouldmade paper, or the result of sheets being torn when wet. The edge is simulated in machine made papers by cutting them with a stream of water when still wet.

Deckle: In papermaking, the upper frame that encloses the wet pulp on the mold. Unlike the mold, the deckle is a frame which is entirely open.

Design: The planned organisation of lines, shapes, masses, colors, textures, and space in a work of art. In two-dimensional art, often called composition.

Deckle Edge: The rough edge of handmade paper formed in a deckle. Also called featheredge.

Decollage: The tearing away of parts of posters or other images which were adhered to each other in layers, so that portions of the underlayers contribute to the final image.

Decoupage: The act of cutting out paper designs and applying them to a surface to make an all over collage.

Decoration: Something which adorns or embellishes; an ornamentation.

Decorative Arts: Serving to adorn or embellish; ornamental. An imprecise collective term for such art forms as ceramics, enamels, furniture, glass, jewelry, metalwork, and textiles, especially when they take forms used as interior decoration. Sometimes designated the "minor" arts to distinguish them from the "major arts" of painting, sculpture and architecture.

Decorum: Conventions in matching a subject of an artwork to a style or tone appropriate to it. A kind of etiquette expected in the treatment of an artwork's content.

Deed of Gift: A contract that transfers ownership of an object or objects from a donor to an institution. It should include all conditions of the donation.

Deform: To distort or change form.

Delineate: To depict by drawing with a tool which leaves a linear trail behind the drawer's gesture.

Dente Di Cane: A type of claw chisel having six or so fine notches in its carving edge.

Deoxidize: To remove oxides. Barium is an example of a deoxidizing substance, because it is used to deoxidize copper, bronze, and some other alloy. Flux is used to deoxidize surface in the process of soldering.

Depict: To make an image of, in two or more dimensions.

Depth: The apparent distance from front to back or near to far in an artwork. Techniques of perspective are used to create the illusion of depth in paintings or drawings. Examples of these techniques are: controlling variation between sizes of depicted subject, overlapping them, and placing those that are on the depicted ground as lower when nearer and higher when deeper.

Detail: A distinctive feature of an object or scene which can be seen most clearly close up. Also, a small part of a work of art, enlarged to show a close-up of its features.

Detritus: Loose fragments that nature or carving has worn away from rock. Often, by extension, the material or debris resulting from the making of any work of art; the disintegrated or eroded material left behind by past civilizations.

Die: A device used for cutting out, forming, or stamping material. Most common types include: a metal piece with a surface having a relief design used for impressing that design onto a softer metal, as in striking coins.

Dilettante: A dabbler in an art or a field of knowledge; an amateur. In the fine arts, a connoisseur.

Dilutents: Liquids, such as turpentine, used to dilute oil paint, the diluent for waterbased media is water.

Dimensions: A measure of spacial distance. The dimensions of three-dimensional spaces or objects are given as height by width by depth, and they are conventionally listed in that order.

Diminution: The principle which states that objects farther from the eye appear smaller and smaller, the further away they are located. Direct perceptive observations must overrule knowledge: it is known all telephone poles going down the street are equal in size, but must drawn as actually seen them The same is observable in the squares of a sidewalk which stretches out before the viewer.

Diptych: A picture or bas-relief made of two panels hinged together, often an altarpiece. Also, any picture consisting of two individual surfaces.

Direct Carving: A carving technique in which the form of the sculpture evolves as the artist works into the block, or is suggested by the shape of the block.

Direct Casting: In lost-wax casting, a technique in which the original model is lost or melted out of the mold. If the work is hollow, the wall of metal is generally heavy, the wax model having been modeled thickly over a core of very simple shape.

Di Sotto In Sù: A technique of representing perspective in ceiling painting.

Discrimination: To recognize differences and act upon that awareness.

Disfigure: To deform, damage, or spoil the appearance or shape of an object.

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 water-soluble paint using egg-yolk or glue size as a binder. Used mostly for flat indoor wall decoration, murals and posters.

Distortion: Any change made by an artist in the size, position, or general character of forms based on visual perception, when those forms are organized into a pictorial image. Any personal or subjective interpretation of natural forms must necessarily involve a degree of distortion.

Distressed: Material that is nicked and scratched, or in other ways shows signs of age, received through use, abuse, exposure to the weather, or through artifice.

Documentary Art: Any artwork the purpose of which is to present facts objectively, without inserting fictional matter, recording and/or commenting on some content, often political or social, by accumulating factual detail.

Documentation: Textual and/or photographic information that describes a work of art or image, recording its physical characteristics and placing it in context, as in records of works of conceptual art, earth art, or performance art.

Dolmen: Large stones (megaliths) standing upright with a horizontal stone balanced upon them.

Dominance: The principle of visual organisation which suggests that certain elements should assume more importance than others in the same composition. It contributes to the organic unity by emphasising the fact that there is one main feature and that other elements are subordinate to it.

Double Loading: Loading a brush with two colors side by side. This is a technique typical of tole and decorative painting. In order to double load, use a paint of creamy consistency, and drag one edge of the brush through the lighter color as many times as needed to fill that edge with color; then stroke the clean edge of the brush through the darker color in the same manner. Once the brush is loaded this way, blend the colors at the center of the brush by stroking on the palette. Using this technique, each brushstroke (application of color) deposits a gradation of the two blended colors.

Dragging: Applying relatively dry oil paints lightly over a surface, creating an area of broken color - the new color having attached to the high spots but not to the low, so that irregular portions of the undercolor remain exposed.

Drape Mold: A mold in which the outside shape is used.

Drawing: A work in pencil, pen, and ink, charcoal, etc., often on paper. Depiction of shapes and forms on a surface, chiefly by means of lines. Colour and shading may be included. Drawing is the basis of all pictorial representation, and an early step in most art activities.

Drawtool: A metal blade with a wooden handle at both ends used to strip wood.

Dress: To give the final texture to a hard medium, especially wood or stone, with chisels, hammers, points, etc.

Drier: A material that accelerates or initiates the drying of an oil paint or oil by promoting oxidation.

Drove: In carving stone, a flat chisel with a broad head generally used only for rough hewing. Also, a stone surface dressed with such a chisel.

Dry Brush: Applying relatively dry inks or waterpaints lightly over a surface, creating an area of broken color, the new color having attached to the high spots but not to the low, so that traces of the paper or undercolor remain exposed. This may be done by holding the brush so that the side of its bristles lie flat against the paper, or by pulling it rapidly across the surface. In oil painting, dragging stroke or scruffing is the name given to this effect.

Dry Foot: The foot of a piece of ceramic work that has been cleared of glaze.

Drying Oil: An oil that, when spread into a thin layer and exposed to air, absorbs oxygen and converts into a tough film.

Drypoint: An intaglio printmaking technique, similar to engraving, in which a sharp needle is used to draw on a metal plate, raising a thin ridge of metal that creates a soft line when the plate is printed. Also, the resultant print.

Ductile: A quality ascribed to metals which can be easily molded, or easily shaped; capable of being hammered thin, or drawn into wire.

Dummy: A hammer with a rounded head, usually of iron, for striking stone carving tools.

Dye: A dye is a pigment that dissolves completely, and is translucent. Textile fibers and fabrics are typically dyed in vats of the stuff. Because dyes are mixed with liquids just before their use, commercially produced dyes are highly concentrated. Natural dyes have been derived from a wide range of plant and animal sources, and are sometimes referred to as dyestuff. Dyes color by penetrating substances, in contrast to drawing and painting colors, which must simply adhere to sculpture. There are many types of dyes, varying in their effects, the means of their use, and permanence.

Dynamic: Giving an effect of movement, vitality, or energy.

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