Guyla - A Glossary of Art Terminology

Paint: Pigment which is dispersed into a liquid. Types of paint include tempera, watercolor, oil paint, gouache, enamel.
-oil paint linseed and cottonseed; slow drying. (correct, change, variety of effect.)
-water-colors gum and diluted with water. (small scale, light, transparent.)
-gouache gum plus white. (opaque, can be painted over.)
-acrylics chemical binder. can be mixed with medium. dries very fast.

Painterly: Descriptive of paintings in which forms are defined principally by color areas, not by lines or edges. Where the artist's brushstrokes are noticeable. Any image that looks as though it may have been created with the style or techniques used by a painter.

Painting: Works of art made with paint on a surface.

Palette: A slab of wood, metal, marble ceramic, plastic, glass, or paper, sometimes with a hole for the thumb, which an artist can hold while painting and on which the artist mixes paint. A flat tray on which an artist spreads out and mixes his colours while painting. This term has also come to be used as an adjective for describing a particular artist's choice of colors.

Panel: A wooden surface used for painting, usually in tempera and prepared beforehand with a layer of gesso. Recently, panels of masonite or other composite material have come into use.

Paper: Archival prints are done on rag paper. It is Ph-balanced, and it bends rather than breaking or cracking. Arches is the most commonly used brand-name of rag paper.

Paper Pulp: Modeling material made by mixing small bits of paper and wheat paste.

Papier Mache: Modeling material made of paper and liquid paste molded over a supporting structure.

Pastel: Pigments mixed with gum and pressed into a stick for use as crayons. Work of art done with such pigments are referred to as pastels. It comes in a stick form and consists of dry pigment or powdered color which is mixed into a paste with resin or gum tragacanth, made into a stick and allowed to dry. A work of art produced with pastel crayons; the technique itself. Pastels vary according to the volume of chalk they contain; 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.

Patina: A film or an incrustation, often green, that forms on copper and bronze after a certain period of weathering and as a result of the oxidation of the copper. Different chemical treatments will also induce myriad colored patinas on new Bronze works. Bronzes may additionally be painted with acrylic and lacquer.

Pattern: A pattern is a design to make a decoration on a surface. Patterns can be man-made; for example, patterns on wallpaper, clothes, carpets. Patterns can occur in nature; for example, stripes on a zebra or spots on a leopard.

Patron: A person who pays an artist to make him a particular painting, sculpture, mural or any other piece of art.

Pencil: A. It used to mean an artist's brush. B. In the present day, it represents a drawing or writing instrument made by encasing a stick of graphite in wood or metal.

Pencil Signed: A signature that is written by the hand of the artist, in pencil. The signature is usually located in the lower right portion of the work, below the image in the white margin. A pencil-signed print bears original status.

Pentimento: A condition of old paintings where lead-containing pigments have become more transparent over time, revealing earlier layers. An underlying image in a painting, as an earlier painting, a part of a painting, or an original draft, that shows through, usually when the top layer of paint has become transparent with age.

Perspective: A way of making a picture look real or three dimensional and of drawing distance accurately. It also means techniques that make things look real on a flat surface or 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.
-Linear perspective
is made by lines. The vanishing point is where all the lines meet. The horizon line is an imaginary line that goes from side to side on the picture; it shows the eye level of the artist. The vanishing point is on the horizon line.
-Aerial perspective
is changing colours in the background to show that things are in the distance. Usually the colors are lighter or bluer.

Photography: The art or process of producing pictures by the action of light on surfaces sensitized by various processes.

Photogravure: Prints in which the original image is photographed through a finely cross-ruled screen onto copper-plates, the margins and non-printing areas of the plate are covered with acid resist and the plate is then etched. A type of intaglio printmaking. In this method the proofs are pulled on dry paper through an etching press. Also called Heliogravure.

Pictorial Space: The illusory space in a painting or other work of two-dimensional art that seems to recede backward into depth from the picture plane, giving the illusion of distance.

Picture Plane: An imaginary flat surface that is assumed to be identical to the surface of a painting. Forms in a painting meant to be perceived in deep three-dimensional space are said to be behind the picture plane. The picture plane is commonly associated with the foreground of a painting.

Pigment: A coloring substance made from plants, earth, or minerals and other or synthetic pigments. When mixed with binders it becomes paint, ink or crayon, etc.

Plaster: Malleable material which hardens when dry and is made from a wide variety of materials. Most mixtures contain limestone, sand and water, with hair added as a strengthener.

Plaster of Paris: Also known as plaster, it can be mixed with water, hardening to a smooth solid which does not shrink or lose volume, because it hardens before all the water can evaporate. A common building material as well as a versatile medium in sculpture. A kind of plaster that is popularly used for carving and making casts. It is made up of dehydrated gypsum and is mixed with water.

Plate: Any thin sheet of metal that is engraved or etched so as to be printed from. The metals most commonly used for plates are steel, copper and zinc.

Plate Signed: Prints in which the artist's signature is put onto the plate itself, and then transferred to the print through the same process as the rest of the design.

Plein Air: (open air) The feeling that a picture really gives the impression of the open air, a quality much sought by the Impressionists. In a more restricted sense, it applies to landscapes actually painted out of doors, with the intention of catching this quality. The practice is relatively recent, at least as far as finished pictures are concerned, and it was this concern for a non-aesthetic quality which underlies the remark said to have been made by Degas, that Monet's pictures always made him turn up his coat collar.

Pochoir: A stencil and stencil-brush process used to make multicolor prints, for tinting black and white prints, and for coloring reproductions and book illustrations, especially fine and limited editions. Pochoir, which is the French word for stencil, is sometimes called hand coloring or hand illustration. This process was much used in Paris during the early decades of the 20th century. Especially popular in the art deco period, used for fashion plates amoungst other things.

Point of View: Angle from which the viewer sees the object.

Polychromatic: Having many colors, as opposed to monochromatic which means only one hue or color.

Porcelain: An extremely hard, translucent variety of ceramic ware made with kaolin and silica and fired at a high temperature and often used for fine dinnerware, vases, and sculpture.

Portfolio: A body of finished work.

Portrait: A work of art that represents a specific person, a group of people or an animal.

Portrait Format: This refers to the physical size of the painting where the height is greater than the width. The upper torso of the human form is the most common subject for these paintings.

Positive Space: The space in a painting occupied by the object depicted (not the spaces in-between objects).

Pottery: Objects, and especially vessels, which are made from fired clay. It represents the various articles made of fired clay.

Preliminary Sketch: A planning sketch, usually on a smaller scale, to determine the basic arrangement of a design or larger work of art.

Presentation: the way a work is shown after it has been completed. The state of the paper, messiness or tidiness. In painting or drawing this can mean a frame or a mount.

Primary color: The colors yellow, red and blue from which it is possible to mix all the other colors of the spectrum. Any hue that, in theory, cannot be created by a mixture of any other hues. Varying combinations of the primary hues can be used to create all the other hues of the spectrum. In pigment the primaries are red, yellow, and blue.

Principles of Art: Ways artists organize the elements of art. The principles consist of balance, emphasis, harmony, variety, gradation, movement, rhythm, and proportion.

Principles of Design: Guidelines that artists use in composing designs and controlling how viewers are likely to react to the image. Balance, contrast, proportion, movement, emphasis, variety, unity and repetition are examples of the principles of design.

Print: This represents an image of which many copies are present. The image is typically taken from a silk screen or a woodblock or the negative of a photograph.

Printmaking: The artist designs and manufactures one or a series of prints, such as woodcuts, silk-screens, linoleum, etc.

Process Portfolio: A portfolio that includes a series of work that changes over time.

Profile: The side-wise appearance of a person's face. The outline of a building or an object.

Proofs: A version of the artwork produced for review.

Propaganda: a powerful means of influencing - and corrupting - others with ideas, feelings and moods.

Proportion: Size relationships between parts of a whole, or between two or more objects perceived as a unit.

Provenance: (Source, origin). The provenance of a work of art is its pedigree. A complete record of its ownership is its provenance, and it is the duty of the cataloguer to establish, as far as humanly possible, the provenance of a work of art. In some cases, e.g., the Sistine ceiling, no doubt is possible, but the exact pedigree of a picture by Vermeer or Van Gogh is a matter of great importance, especially to the dealer trying to sell it.

Pug-mill: a machine for mixing and squeezing the clay which has been re-cycled.