The Questions Dictionary of Art [1 ed.] 9781441116406, 9781841900513

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ART ART

The Questions Dictionary of

Rob Barnes

PUBLISHING

The Questions Publishing Company Ltd Birmingham 2002

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The Questions Publishing Company Ltd 1st Floor, Leonard House, 321 Bradford Street, Digbeth, Birmingham B5 GET © The Questions Publishing Company Ltd 2002 Text and activity pages in this publication may be photocopied for use by the purchaser or in the purchasing institution only. Otherwise, all rights reserved and text may not be reprinted or reproduced or utlised in any form or by an by electronic, mechanical, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. First published in 2002 ISBN: 1-84190-051-6 Illustrations by Martin Cater Cover design by Martin Cater Printed in the UK Also available from Questions Publishing Limited: The Questions Dictionary of Science by J. J. Wellington ISBN: 1-898149-84-4 The Questions Dictionary of Geography and Environment by Professor Joy Palmer ISBN: 1-84190-031-1 The Questions Dictionary of History by Professor Joy Palmer ISBN: 1-84190-034-6 The Questions Dictionary of Religious Education by Dr Elizabeth Ashton ISBN: 1-84190-059-1 The Questions Dictionary of Music by Karen Thornton ISBN: 1-898149-85-2

To the teacher This dictionary is intended to help young people understand the meaning of many of the words they will come across when studying art and its history and practice. It includes words relating to the concepts and techniques of art and also the tools and materials used in creating art in its many forms, both in past and present times. Its content has been chosen to include words within the capabilities of pupils in the primary and early secondary years of schooling. All words are relevant to the teaching and learning of art in the National Curriculum. The dictionary will make a valuable addition to any primary classroom's collection of basic reference books and to every school's library of books on the subject of art. The best way to use it is to make it available in the classroom for children to use, either independently or together with the teacher, as circumstances require. It may be made available for teaching purposes as a book, or as individual word entries, photocopied and fixed to A5-size cards. The book as a whole and its individual entries may be used in a wide variety of ways: by pupils independently or in groups, or together with the teacher. Obviously, individual words or groups of words may be the focus of a particular lesson or line of enquiry, and the dictionary as a whole can be a rich source for browsing through during spare moments. Additionally, teachers who may be teaching outside of their own subject specialisation may find this book useful if they need 'refreshment7 in the language of art, a reminder, or, in some cases, if a word is new or completely unfamiliar to them. A bit of pre-lesson revision is always useful, even within one's own specialist subjects! For parents, too, this book can be useful, especially if they have not studied art for some time. The dictionary will be a valuable aid in refreshing their memory, learning some of the more specialised language of art, perhaps for the first time, or as a general reference. It might even help them to help their children with their homework! We emphasise that this book is not simply a list of words and their definitions. Many entries go beyond the straightforward word meaning to provide some explanation, context or example as appropriate - often through the relevant illustrations. Many of the words are linked or related to others, and are crossreferenced where appropriate at the head of the entries. Where a word appears in an entry in bold type, this means that it is defined elsewhere in the dictionary. So, if, during their study of art, pupils come across a word that they are not sure about, or are introduced to an unfamiliar word during a lesson, they can look up what it means and be directed to other relevant words. They can also just pick out any word and be set on a trail of learning of facts and ideas relating to the rich and varied world of art. Rob Barnes

Dictionary Entries

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Aboriginal art Aboriginal art is the traditional art of Aborigine tribes in Australia, going back as far as 50,000 years. Art was created on tree bark, sand or rock and had a religious function. Aborigines also painted their bodies and made sculptures. Designs often used a series of dots and symbols in limited earth colours, though today Aborigine artists use brighter acrylic colours. Their art is still connected with the sacred wisdom of their ancestors, so its patterns are difficult for other people to understand completely.

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Abstract art In abstract art, a painting or sculpture is an object in its own right, with shapes and colours which have artistic qualities. Abstract painting can ignore recognisable drawing and illusions of depth. Before the twentieth century, paintings and sculptures represented and interpreted recognisable things, so a framed painting was rather like looking through a window. Abstract painting is said to have begun in 1910 with Picasso and the Cubists. They were inspired by Cezanne, who said that the form of almost anything could be reduced to a sphere, cube or cone. Piet Mondrian's late work, and the works of Mark Rothko in the late 1950s and 1960s, are examples of abstract art.

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Abstract Expressionism Abstract Expressionism is an art form of the 1940s and 1950s, in which artists made marks and allowed paint to flow spontaneously, almost automatically. Some artists were concerned with brushmarks and paint effects, but others used the effects of blocks or rectangles of colour. Abstract Expressionists include Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning (mark makers) and Mark Rothko, Pierre Soulages or Nicolas de Stael (rectangles of colour).

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Acrylic Acrylic paints are, like other paints, still a way of mixing powdered colours and a glue into a fine paste that an artist can use, but they are no longer just made from oil and dry coloured powders (pigment): modern acrylic paints are actually made from acrylic acid. The process of making acrylic paints gets very technical, because the manufacturer produces a plastic called a synthetic polymer and this is used to make fine paints. Acrylic paints are popular because they dry more quickly than oil paints and do not crack so easily. They can be used thinly like watercolour or thickly like oil paints.

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Action painting (see also Abstract Expressionism) Action painting is the creation of paintings by splashing and dribbling paint onto surfaces. It began with large canvases painted by the American Jackson Pollock from 1947 onwards using this method. Action painting allows the mind to take over splash and dribble movements, creating a record of the movement of the paint. There is not always a plan in mind at the beginning, more a discovery of paint effects, and though Pollock sometimes did sketches, it was more usual not to plan anything. Some paintings were done with cans of paint hung from the ceiling, dribbling paint over the canvas as they swung. An important idea in action painting is to allow the subconscious mind to create as the artist responds to the effects of paint. Work by Robert Motherwell is another example.

Jackson Pollock © Questions Publishing Limited

Aquatint (see also Engraving and Mezzotint) Aquatint is a process used in making a printing surface on a metal plate similar to that used in etching, but in blocks of tone rather than lines. Artists in the eighteenth century wanted a method of creating a watercolour effect which could be printed many times. Aquatint is an effect produced by biting areas of the printing plate with acid (usually nitric acid) to create fine or rough areas. To the touch, these areas feel like very fine to rough sandpaper. The metal plate is inked and lightly polished so as to clean the top surface, but leave ink in the rough and fine areas. Dampened paper is pressed into the surface of the plate using an etching press. Examples of aquatint are seen in the prints of Goya.

Etching press

Aquatint by Goya

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Armature An armature is the skeleton, or support, which a sculptor uses to build a sculpture. The main idea here is in complete contrast to chipping away at a block of stone or wood. The artist builds up material such as plaster, wax or clay, usually adding it around a metal armature. The sculpture would collapse without an armature as it became heavier, and in the finished work the support is hidden inside the sculpture. Look at the works of Henry Moore and try to guess which use an armature and which are chipped out of stone or wood.

Stages in the building of a sculpture © Questions Publishing Limited

Art Brut Art Brut is a witty, personal art, often looking like tribal masks and 'doodled7 paintings of people. The French painter, Jean Dubuffet, collected such art from mentally ill patients, prisoners and children in the mid-1940s. It is taken more seriously now and is not always done by artists who have no training. Art Brut (French for Yaw art' and named by Dubuffet) can also be collages of broken children's dolls, toys, shells and beads as well as painted canvases. Human figures are often very brightly painted, with the eyes in faces almost always shown staring frontwards. There is rarely any perspective used, and people of varying sizes often seem to 'float' across the pictures. Apart from Dubuffet, look at the more recent work of Scottie Wilson, John Maizels and Mario Chichorro.

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Art Deco Art Deco was a popular design style in the 1920 and 1930s, characterised by sharp angles and bright colours which found their way into ceramics, fabrics and architecture. Orange, lime green, cream and black were much-used colours, and there was a hint of ancient Egyptian art derived from objects and decoration discovered in Egyptian tombs. In English pottery factories, many teapots were decorated in Art Deco style by women such as Claris Cliffe. In America, the style appeared in skyscrapers, shops and restaurants. Look for examples of sharp angles (often triangular shapes) in teapots, buildings, and fabrics of the time, and the style of dresses, hats and shoes around 1925.

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Art Nouveau The Art Nouveau movement grew out of a passion for crafts, and produced a style which was to be different from anything in the past. 'Art Nouveau' (French for 'new art 7 ), is said to have been used as part of the name for a Paris shop selling this style of goods in the late 1890s. You can recognise Art Nouveau easily by looking out for designs with twisted vegetables and flowers on furniture, lamps, posters and wallpapers of the time. Many buildings in Paris built just before World War I have Art Nouveau ironwork balconies. The underground rail system (Metro) still has original ironwork looking like giant lilies and creeping stretched garden plants. Fine examples of Art Nouveau are art works by Aubrey Beardsley, the designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the glass and jewellery of Lalique. In Europe there were the posters of Alphonse Mucha and paintings of Gustave Klimt.

-i

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Arts and Crafts Movement The Arts and Crafts Movement was a reaction against the age of massproduction, which began at the end of the nineteenth century, when factories began to produce objects like lampshades, doors and fabrics in quantity. Many artists began to see handmade crafts as superior in quality to the mass-produced factory products. William Morris is the best-known English designer who produced wallpaper, fabrics and furniture at this time. In Scotland, Charles Rennie Mackintosh was the great designer who made craft part of his designs for buildings. The Arts and Crafts Movement soon led artists and designers to set up workshops which were to lead to the more important international style known as Art Nouveau. Look at the Glasgow School of Art, where Macintosh designed almost every feature, including door hinges.

William Morris

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Assemblage Assemblage, as the word suggests, is art which is assembled from bits and pieces. Scraps and objects, the clutter of someone's life, may not seem artistic themselves, but when combined and assembled into a larger work of art, they can become fascinating. They can express a person's personal life through discarded objects, sometimes stuck to a board, sometimes assembled in a sculpture. In the late 1950s and early 1960s artists combined objects and paint, or several objects without paint. This was not completely new, as Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp assembled objects in the 1920s. Robert Rauchenberg's work is often a patchwork of paint, photographs, fabric and objects.

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Avant-garde The 'avant-garde7 in art challenges what we already know, and most modern artists think of themselves as creating something new, even shocking. The word 'avant7 is French for 'in front, or before7 and the term 'avant-garde7 has come to mean anything so far advanced that it is almost too new to be understood. More specifically, 7\vant-Garde7 can also apply as a group name to those modern artists working in the early 1900s, among them Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Marcel Duchamp and Fernand Leger.

Georges Braque Still Life: Le Jour, 1929

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Baren A baren is a pad used originally by Japanese printmakers to apply pressure to paper when printing. The artist inks a wooden block on which a design has been cut, places paper on the inked surface and rubs with a baren. This tool is traditionally made from bamboo, paper, silk and lacquer. The baren is a coil of braided bamboo skins wrapped around a silk-covered disc which has been made from layers of paper. This is lacquered and covered with a flat skin of bamboo which resembles a large dried leaf. A similar printing effect can be obtained by rubbing the back of the printing paper with a spoon or a small round sweet tin. Though this works, it is nothing like the involved traditional process used by a Japanese wood-block artist.

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Baroque The Baroque style was a seventeenth-century development characterised by energy and movement. It is marked in architecture by dramatic curves, undulating walls and spiralling decorations in buildings, and in painting by strong lighting and drama. Baroque art looks as if it has already begun to move, even take off in flight; in sculpture by Bernini, for example, feet leave the ground and saints float on clouds. People are painted and sculpted with open mouths, teardrops down the cheek and twisting gestures; fountains have animals galloping or writhing. See, for instance, the work of Velazquez in Spain and Caravaggio and Bernini in Italy. In England, Rubens the painter and Christopher Wren the architect are examples of artists who worked in the Baroque style.

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Bas-relief Bas-relief (literally low relief - bas is French for 'down there') looks like a carved picture half-sunk into its background. It is often seen as large decorated slabs of stone or wood fixed to a building. 'Relief means that the carving is raised above the surface so that it catches the light falling on it and makes shadows where it has been carved.The word low' is used because the carving is raised only a few centimetres from the background and is meant to be seen only from the front. (Imagine a human figure carved so that half of it is still submerged in its background scene.) Examples can be seen in wood-carvings from the fifteenth century decorating church walls and seating. Also look at friezes on ancient Greek temples and the decoration of ceilings in some stately homes.

Bas-relief carving by Michelangelo

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Batik Batik, which originated in Java (in Indonesia), is the traditional technique of painting in hot wax on fabric. Wax painting allows the artist to dip the cloth in dye to colour the areas that are not blocked with wax. Starting with a pale colour, such as yellow, then drying, adding more wax and dipping again, cloth can be dyed with several colours. Originally, a bamboo stick was used to paint the hot wax, but around the seventeenth century artists began using a small copper pot with spouts, which allowed greater accuracy. The modern-day version of this has a very small copper bowl and spout on the end of a stick. Called a tjanting tool, it is extensively used in batik today. The wax is removed from the fabric by boiling it and ironing out the remaining wax on paper. The earliest known examples from Java used only one dark blue dye called indigo, but modern dyes have changed this. A batik fabric can be worn or stretched on a frame to display it.

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Bauhaus style (see also Blue Rider) The Bauhaus was a German school of architecture and design set up in 1919 by Walter Gropius, an architect. Classes were offered in all crafts, architecture and painting. The Bauhaus style was one of clean practical designs, including chairs, silverware and rectangular, functional buildings. Students wore a uniform and studied industrial design as well as painting and sculpture. As in the Arts and Crafts Movement, no distinction was made between the importance of painting or that of making a teapot. The influence of this school was lasting, though it was closed by the Nazis at the outbreak of the 1939-45 war. Famous Bauhaus artists include Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky and of course Gropius. Some Bauhaus chair designs are still in production today.

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Blue Rider The Blue Rider (Der Blaue Reiter) was one of the most important modern art groups in Germany before 1914. The name was invented by the Bauhaus member, Wassily Kandinsky, who said he liked blue, and his fellow artist, Frans Marc, who liked horses. While Picasso and the French were in at the birth of Modern Art in 1910, the Blue Rider was responsible for much that was happening in Germany around that time. Another member of the group was Paul Klee.

Kandinsky

Marc

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Booktnaking Bookmaking is the process of designing a book from start to finish as an artistic project. Pop-up books, such as those by the twentieth-century artists Jan Pedanowski and David Pelham, are commercial examples of this art and craft. Bookmaking is an art form in itself and therefore not to be confused with bookbinding, as the bookbinder only puts covers on previously designed and printed work.

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Bronze casting Bronze is mainly a mixture of copper and tin and has been used since Greek and Roman times, and casting is the process of pouring molten metal into a mould made using sand or wax. A sand mould is usually made with damp sand around a plaster sculpture. Bronze sculptures are sometimes cast in several pieces and assembled into the finished sculpture. The casting of sculptures in bronze makes them more permanent and weatherproof. There are superb ancient bronzes from China and Africa (Benin); modern examples can be seen in the sculpture of Degas, Jacob Epstein and Henry Moore.

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Brushwork Brushwork is the effect of the brush, especially a stiff bristle paintbrush, on water, oil or acrylic paint surfaces. The canvas is then no longer a flat surface, but has a texture created by the brush. It is possible to see the direction of the brushstroke in, for example, the work of Vincent Van Gogh and French Impressionists such as Claude Monet. Brushwork is an artist's characteristic and personal way of using a brush. Long before Van Gogh, its personal marks could be seen in the surface of a painting by Rembrandt. In the twentieth century it came into its own in some abstract paintings where the frenzied brushwork seems to show off the style. Look at the work of Willem de Kooning, Picasso and Braque, where the mark of each bristle of the brush can often be seen.

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Burin A burin is a very sharp steel hand-tool used to cut a line into copper in the tradition of engraving. Sometimes called a graver, and also used on hard wood for wood-engraving, a burin actually removes the metal or wood from the surface. This leaves a line as sharp as the point of the tool itself. On copper, the lines this leaves are filled with ink before being printed and the surface of the copper plate is polished clean. On wood, the cut lines are empty and the surfaced is inked with a roller, giving the reverse effect from the same hand-tool. Engraved lines are always cut with a burin or similar tool, rather than scratched or etched with acid.

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Byzantine art Byzantine art was the art of the Christian empire of Byzantium, based on Constantinople (modern Istanbul in Turkey) between the fourth and fifteenth centuries. Art of the Byzantine period was mainly produced for church interiors and other buildings. Byzantine sculpture was almost nonexistent. Holy figures of the Christian faith were painted as icons; the usual subjects were Christ, the Virgin Mary, apostles and saints. Precious minerals such as gold and ultramarine were used in paintings, and the more wealthy the person who wanted the painting done, the more gold was included. In religious paintings, the larger figures were the most important ones as perspective was not used at this time. Byzantine artists would be asked to work in mosaic and fresco, as well as decorating churches with paintings. They also created jewellery in gold, silver and coloured enamel.

The Apostles detail from fresco, 1265 © Questions Publishing Limited

Calligraphy Calligraphy is the art of using a pen or brush to create fine handwriting. It can be very decorative, as in the ancient Lindisfarne Gospels copied out by monks (see also Illumination). Calligraphy as an art form in its own right was revived in England by William Morris in 1900. Sometimes carved into stone, calligraphy is part of all civilisations, especially in China and Japan, where lettering is traditionally done with a brush, and is important in Islamic art.

Cofligrapfo

Cdfarafky

Calligraphy © Questions Publishing Limited

Camera obscura The camera obscura is a device that was invented in the sixteenth century as a means of drawing accurately. A system of lenses and mirrors in a darkened box, sometimes viewed inside a tent, allowed the artist to project an image on a canvas and to draw the lines needed to copy the scene. Canaletto used a camera obscura in the seventeenth century to create his pictures of Venice. A slightly different example of a camera obscura can be seen in Edinburgh where, on a sunlit day, it projects fine images of the city onto a semicircular table. This is a tourist attraction, not something used by an artist, but the idea is similar.

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Cartoon The word 'cartoon' can mean two things. The most familiar is the witty or comic drawing seen in magazines and newspapers. Originally though, a cartoon was a drawing made full-size on a large sheet of paper. This was done to work out the details of the proposed picture or tapestry before painting or weaving. Artists, such as Leonardo da Vinci in the fifteenth century, would often fix the cartoon on top of their canvas and, with a sharp point, prick tiny holes in the canvas through the cartoon drawing. This marked the main lines ready for painting. Sometimes black dust was then pushed through the pin-holes to make the line clearer on the canvas.

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Casting Casting is a means of reproducing sculpture in bronze or other metals. The sculpture is first made in clay or plaster, then a hollow mould is made around it. Usually the mould is made of wet sand and has to be firm enough to pour hot liquid (molten) metal into it. Sometimes casting is done in several pieces which are then fitted together. Other castings are made using a wax copy of the sculpture, around which sand, or even plaster is poured. When hot metal is put inside the mould, the wax melts and the metal takes its place, cooling to a solid form. Casting is expensive, so sculptures are usually cast so as to be hollow and use less bronze. Degas' dancers and the work of Henry Moore are examples of cast statues and statuettes.

Degas — Dancer

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Celtic art Celtic art is the ancient art of the Celts, a people living in Europe long before the Romans invaded Britain. The tradition goes back to about 600 or 700 BC, and Celtic objects have been found in Greece, France, Germany, and Ireland as well as in Britain. Celtic chiefs were buried with jewellery, and much fine metal jewellery has been found in burial sites; their swords, shields and other armour were also decorated with Celtic designs. We think of Celtic art being complicated decorative curves on crosses and modern copies of jewellery. Fine examples of the Celtic decorative style are the Irish Book of Kells (see also Illumination), Scottish stone crosses and Celtic jewellery from all over Europe.

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Ceramics In general, ceramics are almost anything made out of clay, such as floor tiles, garden pots, pipes and toilet bowls, but in art this art term usually means pottery of a refined artistic 'studio7 quality. High temperature 'baking' of ceramic clay is called 'firing', often reaching 1,300 degrees Celsius. Depending on how high a temperature is needed to change clay into pot, the ceramics produced can be low-fired earthenware, medium-fired stoneware or high-temperature porcelain. Clay changes (vitrifies) at around 600 degrees Celsius and becomes hard. Earthenware needs to undergo glazing, being given a coating of glaze (like glass), before it becomes waterproof. Ceramics by Hans Coper and Lucie Rie are modern examples.

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Charcoal The charcoal that is used for drawing consists of burnt willow twigs and looks nothing much like common barbecue fuel. The twigs have to be burnt (charred) away from the air inside a charcoal burner, which is like an oven otherwise they would just become powdered ash. Charcoal is used for drawing without any of the fine details possible with pencil. It is particularly useful for large-scale drawings where the main light and dark areas can be easily marked.

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Chiaroscuro Literally meaning light-dark7 in Italian, the term 'chiaroscuro7 is used to describe the balance of light and dark in a painting. The Italian painter Caravaggio, who lived in the late sixteenth century, became best known for producing strongly lit dramatic effects in his painting. People and objects were lit almost as if on stage, with exceptionally strong light and shadows around them. Although chiaroscuro could be used to describe any light and dark effects, we usually take it to mean very strongly contrasting light and dark after Caravaggio's example.

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Collage Collage is a technique of sticking or gluing things like paper and cloth to a surface to make a work of art. The French word 'coller' means to glue or stick something. Artists like Picasso and Braque used the technique in the early1900s, and Matisse continued the technique using coloured paper instead of paint. In Britain, Kurt Schwitters produced hundreds of collages when working in the Lake District.

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Collograph A collograph (sometimes called 'callotype') is a print made from a surface which has paper and card stuck to it to form a design. Unlike a simple surface print inked with a roller, the collograph has ink wiped onto the surface and polished in places before it is printed using a heavy mangle or roller-press. This is rather like the process of etching or engraving, but using card and paper instead of metal plate. The collograph printing surface is usually varnished first so that the printing ink does not soak into it too much.

C\

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Complementary colours (see also Primary colours) Complementary colours are colour 'opposites' formed from primary and secondary colours. The opposite of red is green; yellow is purple; blue is orange (note that this only applies to mixing paints or pigments, and not to coloured light). The French Impressionists believed that something painted in a primary colour had shadows containing the complementary colour. A red object would therefore have some hint of green in its shadow, a yellow one would have purple. Watch out for the fact that some people will call purple Violet', but the definition is still the same whatever word is used.

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Composition Composition is the putting together of shapes, colours, figures and the remaining parts of a work of art so that they make a satisfactory whole. If an artist 'composes' a painting, it means trying to design it so it is created to the best possible effect in all its parts. In earlier centuries, composition had rules about where to place things to the best effect, and there were strongly held ideas about balance and harmony in a picture. Rules do not last for long in art, so it is worth thinking of composition as mainly meaning 'to put things in some arrangement that works well'.

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Constructivism Constructivism is the art form that grew out of collage, but instead of paper, Constructivists stuck glass, welded sheet metal and fixed together aluminium and brass sheets. The Russian artist, Naum Gabo, used metal and wires for his sculpture, the materials of much modern architecture. In the 1920s, Constructivists exhibited work which hung in space and moved around, like mobiles, and around the same time there were new materials to be used, such as Perspex, which is like a plastic 'glass' which can be cut, heated and bent.

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Conte Conte is a chalk-like crayon which is usually brown, black or white in colour. Conte crayons are effective on grey papers, though they can also be used on white. They are sometimes used to draw on canvas or to sketch a design and indicate light and dark areas before painting. A Conte crayon drawing often has the look of an old Italian drawing from the seventeenth century.

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Contour A contour is really the outline of a shape. We talk of someone having 'fine contours', meaning their shape seen in outline against a contrasting background. Contour can also be the fullness of the shape from low to higher parts, rather like the contours of a map which trace out similar heights of the land. Even here, we still mean the outline that can be followed around a particular part of something.

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Contraposto Literally meaning 'against the posture', contraposto was a favourite means employed by painters and sculptors in sixteenth-century Italy to give life and movement to a figure. First, the head was turned in one direction, then the shoulders angled the opposite way, and finally the legs twisted again in a new direction. Michelangelo used this to stunning effect, as did Tibaldi.

Michelangelo — The Heroic Captiv

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Crackle-glazing (see also Glazing) Crackle-glazing is a form of glaze used on pottery deliberately to create a network of fine cracks in the finished glaze. Unlike crazing, these cracks are not a fault, and the mixture of the glaze is made so that it always produces a crackled surface when the pot is cooled after firing to a high temperature. Black ink or pigment is rubbed into the surface cracks to emphasise the crackle decoration. In ancient China, potters used crackle-glaze to very good effect particularly with a glaze known as 'celadon' which lent itself to the technique.

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Crafts Crafts are often wrongly thought of as less important than arts because they can include practical items such as furnishings, knitting, jewellery and pottery. When made by hand rather than by machine, beadwork, glassware and woodwork are all examples of crafts. There are also 'country crafts' which can include items such as the traditional dollies made from straw at harvest time. William Morris, an English designer of handcrafted wallcoverings, fabrics and windows, raised the importance of crafts with his Arts and Crafts Movement, as did Charles Rennie Macintosh, who designed everything from houses to door hinges, knives and forks.

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Crazing Crazing is the effect on a ceramic tile or pot of a glaze which has shrunk too quickly and left gaps all over the surface. The effect is not usually meant to be deliberate, unlike crackle-glazing, so is considered a serious fault. 'Crazing7 is also used of paint on an oil painting that had too much oil in it and so 'crazed' as it dried, leaving a web of cracked paint where it shrank.

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Cubism (see also Abstract art) Cubism was a movement in twentieth-century art in which objects were reduced not only to cubes and spheres but also painted from several viewpoints simultaneously. The way we know an object is not just from one angle; Cubists constructed paintings from fragmented shapes that were a series of clues about the object seen from many angles. Light, shading and a sense of space, proportion or distance is absent from a Cubist painting, and it becomes an object in its own right. The Impressionist painter Cezanne inspired the reducing of objects to cubes and spheres, but Picasso, Braque and others developed this as a way of depicting them from several viewpoints at the same time. The influence of African masks was also an important one on the Cubists.

African masks © Questions Publishing Limited

Pablo Picasso - Guernica

Dada Dada was a group or club of artists and writers who protested against the values of art. During World War I, they chose the word Dada (French for 'hobby-horse') as a random meaningless word. Never an art movement, Dada adopted 'nonsense7, experiment and protest as a way of life; Marcel Duchamp, for example, exhibited a urinal as art, calling it Fontaine. Dada 'nonsense' quickly led to Surrealism, the art movement of dreams and the mind.

Marcel Duchamp — Fontaine (Fountain), 1917

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Decoration Decoration is usually a pattern on the surface of anything from a teacup to a building, and is meant to improve the appearance of a surface and give it character. It can also be flags and ornamental paper chains, but in art and architecture it becomes associated with a nation's character, such as the use of curves in French furniture, geometric pattern in Islamic art and interwoven lines in Celtic decoration.

Evenlode fabric by William Morris

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Design Design is the intentional organisation, form and decoration of things. A designer could design anything from a hang-glider to a room interior, but in both cases the design would need to take account of the function of these things. Thus, a painter can choose any imaginable shape, but designers may not be able to if they are designing a teapot, a boat or a poster. Some designs are created for mass-production, such as doors, windows, fashionable shoes and clothing. This is known as Industrial design'.

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Diptych A work of art made up of two images, usually paintings, prints or carved panels, which are combined to be seen as a pair. The two panels are usually hinged together so that they can be folded shut with the images on the interior faces to protect them, for instance during transportation. (A triptych is similar, but has three panels.) In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, diptychs and triptychs were often painted for display on altars in churches. The form was common in Byzantine art and in Japanese wood-block prints of the eighteenth century.

The Wilton Diptych © Questions Publishing Limited

Drawing Drawing is the making of a graphic record of observations or ideas. The artist selects and emphasises parts to give them importance or character. Drawing can be done in line, shading from dark to light or even with scissors, creating a cut edge to define a shape. When a drawing is done as a plan for some greater work, it is usually called a sketch. The most difficult aspect of drawing is representing three-dimensional space in flat twodimensional shapes, lines and shading.

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Drypoint Drypoint is a drawing technique for intaglio printmaking. The artist first draws on a flat copper, zinc, steel or plastic sheet with a very sharply pointed steel tool. Lines are scratched into the surface and then the plate is inked and polished ready to print. The scratched burr of steel holds the ink, giving a soft line when printed using an etching press. In time, the heavy pressure of the press eventually flattens the scratches, so only about fifty or fewer prints can be made.

Drypoint tools

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Edition In art an edition is a limited number of prints or bronze castings. The artist might number an edition of etchings 1/100, 2/100 and so on. In sculpture a much more limited number of identical castings would be made, often no more than six.

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Embossed Embossed means slightly raised above the surface. This effect can be seen in etchings, engravings and woodcuts where the pressure of the press raises parts of an otherwise flat surface. Paper is embossed more dramatically where parts of an etching plate are deeply cut or etched.

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Engraving (see also Aquatint, Etching and Mezzotint) Engraving was formerly a much-used method of producing prints, made by carving or cutting lines into a copper plate or hard wood before inking it. Engraving removes the metal or wood from the line, and ink can remain in the furrows left by the cutting tool. Swords, armour and jewellery are also engraved, but artists used engraving to reproduce drawings in fine lines, particularly before modern printing methods. Some engraving tools cut several lines at the same time, creating a shading effect.

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Etching (see also Aquatint, Engraving and Mezzotint) Etching is a process that usually employs nitric acid to bite lines into a copper, zinc or steel plate. The plate is first covered with wax to protect it. The artist scratches lines into the wax and the plate is then left in acid for between three and twenty minutes. The acid bites only where bare metal has been revealed, the longer time producing wider and deeper lines. The plate is then inked and printed. A drawing technique used in etching is cross-hatching (see Hatching and Cross-hatching). Rembrandt was a famous etcher who used this technique.

Waxing the plate

Drawing into wax

Final print

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Expression Expression is what we call the artistic interpretation or emotional buzz in a work of art. The work of art does more than represent: it has a character all of its own which has the power to connect with our feelings and make us respond to what we see.

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Expressionism Expressionism was an art movement beginning in 1910 which portrayed emotions in an exaggerated way. A popular subject was of people suffering, though later artists attempted to create abstract expressions of emotion. Artists to look at are Nolde, Vlaminck and Kirchner. A second, related group of artists called themselves the Blue Rider.

Edvard Munch — The Scream, 1893

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Fauvism Fauvism was a richly colourful movement in art lasting only from 1905 to 1908. It is characterised by the wildly bright colours that were used by artists such as Matisse, Derain and Rouault. This was the age of small groups of artists meeting in bars and cafes, and critics called this group The Wild Ones' or Fauves (which literally means 'wild beasts'), a hostile label which they adopted for themselves.

Matisse by Derain © Questions Publishing Limited

Feathering Feathering is a technique used by artists and interior decorators to create the effect of marble. A wet paint line is dragged with a feather to blend it into its background, much as in some patterns that are seen on real marble.

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Figurative art Figurative art leads us to expect the use of the recognisable human figure in complete contrast to abstract art. The abstract artist works without conventional drawing, while the figurative artist draws in a more traditional way. 'Semi-abstract7 and 'semi-figurative7 are similar terms used to describe work which retains some, but not all, proportions and details of a human figure. The varied work of Henry Moore includes 'figurative7, 'semi-abstract7 and 'semi-figurative' pieces. Religious rules mean that figurative art rarely features in Islamic art.

Henry Moore - Reclining Figure Draped © Questions Publishing Limited

Fixative Fixative is a very light varnish sprayed onto a charcoal drawing to stop it smudging. Some very soft pencil marks and pastel drawings are also likely to smudge unless fixative is used. Think of this as a coating of dried glue forming a protective, but invisible surface. Fixative is so light a liquid that it does not create a shiny surface.

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Folk art Folk art is art by untrained (usually peasant) artists following their local or inherited tradition of decoration and painting. Examples include decorated jugs and mugs by barge folk, cross-stitch samplers, some pub signs, stencilling in traditional patterns, traditional Celtic patterns, corn dollies and woven lavender. Folk art is not to be confused with primitive art which is a style of artwork in its own right.

Corn Dolly

Decorated jug

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Foreground The foreground is the area closest to the viewer at the front of a painting. In a traditional landscape there will also be a middle ground (the middle distance) and a background (the furthest distance). In paintings that employ perspective the objects contained in the foreground will appear larger.

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Foreshortening Foreshortening is the effect of perspective on something to make it appear as if it is receding behind or coming forward out of a flat surface. An example is a hand and arm pointing out of the picture - an illusion much favoured by Caravaggio; for instance, in the foreground in his painting The Supper at Emmaus we can see a hand pointing outwards, then an elbow, with the arm 'shortened' between the two. Uccello, in the fifteenth century, used the perspective trick of foreshortening to represent soldiers who had fallen in battle.

Detail from The Supper at Emmaus — Caravaggio

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Form Form, in the usual understanding, is possessed by a three-dimensional object, while a two-dimensional one has shape. However, people argue about what this means because almost everything can have a form, and there are no rules because people will say 'a three-dimensional shape' or 'a two-dimensional form'. The more popular definition of 'form' is that it applies to sculpture and buildings, rather than to painting and decoration.

Henry Moore — Reclining Figure

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Found object (objet trouve) Found objects are miscellaneous items selected and presented to public view by an artist as a work of art. Thus found objects (objets trouves) may be rubbish from a beach turned into a sculpture. This became one of Picasso's favourite ways to create sculpture: for example, he found an old bicycle seat and handlebars and turned these into a bull's head. Other artists have presented objects that they found as being art in their own right; the Surrealist Marcel Duchamp is one artist who did this.

Pablo Picasso - Head of a ~Bull, 1943 © Questions Publishing Limited

Fresco Fresco is painting on damp plaster. Fresco means 'fresh7 in Italian, and although frescoes can be painted on dry plaster, the tradition in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy was to paint with a watercolour onto damp plaster. The layer of damp plaster was applied to an area that was just the right size to be painted that working day. The artist needed to paint from the top of the design downwards to avoid the watery colour splashing on finished parts. Frescoes were mainly painted in churches, though there are examples in palaces and fine houses.

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Frottage Frottage is literally a rubbing (from the French word 'frotter', to rub). This can easily be done, for example, with paper and pencil over a coin. Brassrubbings done in churches are really frottages. The artist Max Ernst in the twentieth century used frottage as a technique, then stuck his rubbings to canvas, adding paint around them to complete the work.

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Futurism Futurism was one of the numerous art movements or groups of artists working at the beginning of the twentieth century. The Futurists published their artistic beliefs in a manifesto written by Marinetti in 1909 and published in the French newspaper Le Figaro. Their work shows machines and people in motion, as in Boccioni's Nude descending a Staircase, where there is the impression of snapshots of movement like a series of photographs put together into a moving picture of a person.

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Genre painting Genre painting is best thought of as 'scenes of everyday life7, in contrast to posed important scenes of special occasions. The subject matter is often whatever is going on in the house or street at the time. The main idea is to take very ordinary events, such as someone working in a kitchen, or sewing, and paint these scenes. Later this included painting of people at the theatre or at a drinks party. Genre painting survived through the centuries and the Victorians turned it into stories of life, with titles such as The Dignity of Work, The Press Gang or The First Born. Dutch seventeenth-century paintings and paintings by Tissot in the twentieth century are outstanding examples of genre painting.

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Glazing Glazing is a technique of covering a pot or other ceramic with a skin of glass. The pot is dipped in the liquid glaze (or it is sprayed on) and then transferred to a kiln which is heated to a temperature of around 1,000 to 1,200 degrees Celsius. The glaze ingredients turn to glass. Glaze can be in many colours, and examples by Lucie Rie show how varied effects can be achieved though its use.

Bowls by Lucie Rie

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Golden Section The Golden Section (sometimes referred to as 'the Golden Mean') is a particular proportion or line which is thought to create harmony in a painting. This ratio is 1:0.618 and it was used in ancient Greek architecture and a great deal of fifteenth-century painting. It was originally thought to be a calculation derived from the stars and planets. The proportions of buildings led to other descriptions such as 'the golden rectangle' whose sides are in this ratio. Many paintings are done on canvas whose sides are similarly 1:0.618.

Dividing a rectangle using the golden section

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Gouache Gouache is a thick water-based opaque colour. It is intended to be used as a surface colour which covers what has been sketched or painted beneath it. Gouache is finely ground high-quality pigment mixed with gums and wetting agents. The opacity can actually be varied by adding it to other water-based paint or by thinning slightly. Gouache is typically very smooth and dries to a matte finish, which makes it ideal for designers whose artwork will be photographed. Some artists prefer gouache to oil or acrylic as an opaque paint.

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Graffiti Graffiti generally take the form of art or lettering born of personal and group protest and are found painted, scratched or, more recently, sprayed on walls. Rarely are they more than the act of defacing a wall or even railway carriage, though there is a culture of lettering styles and colours used. It is an art form, but a very anti-social one, and is to be found almost everywhere and in every culture from the beginning of time.

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Graphic art Graphic art is art usually intended to be printed. It can be work done for advertising, but it also includes etching, engraving, relief printing and lithography. What began as drawing has become an art form in printmaking. Originally there was a strong connection, with drawing or 'graphing7 something to be printed in black and white rather than in colour.

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art © Questions Publishing Limited

Ground Ground in art means a layer of wax or paint on which a painting or etching is made. The 'ground7 for a painting might be a plain white undercoat of priming paint. Without this, the paint might sink into the canvas or wood panel. In etching, a ground would be a layer of wax (called a wax-ground) through which lines are scratched ready to be bitten by acid. A ground can also be used to mean the red priming paint put on a picture frame before gold paint is added. The red ground shows through the gold layer and gives it warmth.

Laying white ground on canvas

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Half-tone Half-tone is a term used in the printing trade to mean a photograph broken down into small dots, giving an impression of light and shade. There is literally half the tone the photo had in the original, but the half-tone is now printable. Half-tone is also a phrase used to mean the tones which are neither the darkest or lightest possible in a painting. Sometimes this is called the mid-tone, but half-tone is correctly used in printing a photograph.

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Hatching and Cross-hatching Hatching is shading using parallel lines all going in the same direction. Crosshatching is a technique by which layers of dark tone are achieved by crisscrossing parallel lines at different angles and is most often found used in etching: as cross-hatched lines hold more ink, they give darker shades. Rembrandt was a master at this technique, managing to make it look effortless rather than mechanical or studied.

Hatching

Cross-hatching

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Hue (see also Tint and Shade) Hue is the alteration either side of a spectrum colour that moves it towards its neighbour. For example, the colour red can change hue towards blue or yellow.This will apply to primary colours whether they are pigments (red, yellow, blue) or coloured light (red, green,blue). Hue refers to colours as they appear to the eye, regardless of their source.

Yellow

Orange

Red

Purple

Blue

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Icon (see also Byzantine art) An icon (the Greek word means Image7) was originally an image of Christ or other holy figure painted on a panel, usually with a gold background. The figures in these religious paintings are generally shown with a gold halo, and the colours and details of their costumes are painted strictly according to rules that ensured that icons were painted in exactly the same way for centuries. Icons are full of religious significance: they are primarily symbols, as well as being pictures of people.

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Illumination In art, illumination is decorated lettering that is done by hand, usually in handwritten books before the time of printing. Illuminare7 is the Latin word meaning 7to adorn7. Typically, a manuscript book would have the first (initial) letter of a chapter or section enlarged and painstakingly decorated, or the whole page would be given a detailed decorative border. Occasionally a small painting would be done in part of the page to 'illuminate7 the content of that page or to add something special to the manuscript for a wealthy owner. One of the finest examples of an illuminated manuscript is the Book of Kells, a copy of the four gospels thought to have been created by Irish monks on the island of lona around the year 800.

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Illusion Illusion in art is the deceptive impression of reality or of some other effect and has always been part of the artists technique. Perspective is an illusion. Some painting is meant to deceive the eye and pretend that a two-dimensional object is actually three-dimensional (an effect called trompe-roeil). This might be books painted on a secret door-panel in a library or a fly painted on picture frames. Paintings meant to be displayed high on a wall would be painted in exaggerated perspective to 'correct7 the effect. Stage scenery also uses perspective to create an illusion of great distance on stage.

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Image An image is something which represents or interprets the real world and is a word, often instead of picture, cartoon, photograph, memory or other visual record of reality. Image' is such a frequently used word that we tend to apply it by saying 'an image came into my mind' meaning 'a picture came into my mind/ Images are first and foremost visual, as in 'a photographic image' of something.

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Impasto Impasto has come to mean thickly applied paint. The paint is so thick that we can see lines created by the brush and lumps of paint on the canvas surface. In the twentieth century, Frank Auerbach in particular used a very heavy impasto technique, and Van Gogh painted in thick impasto over thinner paint.

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Impressionism Impressionism was one of the most popular and influential art movements of all time. However, the name itself was originally an insult: critics complained that instead of painting a sunrise, the artist Monet had only given an impression of a sunrise. The label is attached to work by a group of French artists who revolted against academic correctness from around 1875 into the early years of the twentieth century (Monet, supreme among Impressionists, died in 1927). Other important Impressionists were Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley.

Monet

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Incised Incised literally means 'cut'. An incised line might be found on a piece of sculpture, such as a head sculpted by Henry Moore. Wood engraving, steel, copper and lino-cutting techniques all use incised lines. An incised mark is not quite the same as a scratched one, as it is much sharper and deeper.

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Ink Ink is pigment (finely ground colour or liquid dye) in water or oil. Commonly used in pens and computer printers, inks are so finely mixed that they become a stain rather than a transparent watercolour effect. The earliest inks were made from lamp-black and glue. The first printing inks again used lamp-black, but in boiled linseed oil to make them more permanent on the printed page. Coloured inks really only came into common use with the discovery of new dyes in the mid-nineteenth century.

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Installation Installation, which became an art form in the twentieth century, is the presentation by an artist of familiar objects in a new setting or the construction of large-scale sculpture in the open air. The structure can be so complex and large that it needs to be installed or built on site, rather than transported from a studio. Some installations are created on a smaller scale, maybe in a location such as a wood or field. The idea of installing something familiar is not new: in 1938 Marcel Duchamp installed 1,200 bags of coal in a gallery. An installation can be a whole room or an environment created to be visited by the public.

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Intaglio Intaglio is the process of cutting or etching lines or textures into a metal plate before printing it. Unlike relief printing, which has a raised surface, intaglio printing is done from an image which is below the surface of the metal plate. It requires the artist to put ink in the lines and polish the surface of the plate before printing on dampened paper. The paper is pushed into the lines and becomes slightly embossed as a result.

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Islamic art Islamic art is the art particularly associated with the religion of Islam. An important feature is the use of calligraphy - special lettering as a main part of the design, made into elaborate patterns. A lampshade, tile or bowl might be decorated with calligraphy. Decoration following Islamic rules is found particularly in the mosque, the place of worship: there are no images of saints or prophets, as might be found in a Christian church, but there are rich abstract patterns instead. A few human figures do exist, but even these are actually used as pattern, rather than as a drawing of a recognisable person. Patterned carpets and textiles are also a feature of Islamic art.

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Key (see also Tone) The key, described as being either high or low, is the overall tonal and colour value of a painting or photograph. If a painting is done using very bright colours, or very light (white) tones, this is said to be painted in a high key. If the colours are duller and greyer, this is said to be a painting done in a low key.

Low key

High key

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Kinetic art Kinetic art is art with moving parts. In the mid-1950s kinetic art became very popular, and in sculpture, movement was achieved with electric motors, water or wind power. Its origins were long before this, in the 1920s, when artists such as Duchamp added moving parts to their pictures. Alexander Calder in the 1950s produced a number of carefully balanced mobiles intended to move as the wind caught them. An artist strongly associated with kinetic art involving motors and water-pumps was the sculptor Jean Tinguely, whose moving models can be seen in Paris outside the Pompidou Centre. .

Bougainvillea — Alexander Calder

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Kitsch Kitsch is 'bad taste art7, or popular art which has sentimental appeal. Its very awfulness is what we might find appealing, with the charm of models of nodding dogs and lava lamps. Kitsch is often 1950s and 1960s memorabilia, but to qualify as such it has to be the best of bad taste (tacky, decorated to excess, sentimental, and as ridiculously inappropriate to its function as ornamental gold bathroom taps).

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Land art Land art is done outdoors, usually in remote and unspoiled places where there is rarely ever going to be a viewer. Land art can be done using ice and snow, earth and rocks, such that it cannot be exhibited in a gallery or bought by anyone, and so that photographs are often the only record of what the artist did. Snow and ice forms melt and the weather erodes what the artist might have created. For this reason, a land artist is paid (commissioned) to produce work, not paid to exhibit it. Photographs of work by Richard Long and Andy Goldsworthy show examples of land art they have created.

Robert Smithson - Spiral Jetty, Great Salt Lake, Utah © Questions Publishing Limited

Landscape Landscape in art is traditionally the painting of rural scenes. There is a long tradition of landscape painting in China, dating from the sixteenth century. Some English seventeenth and eighteenth-century landscapes were included as background in portraits of the time, but around the same time the Dutch were painting landscapes for their own sake (as in the work of Jacob van Ruisdael). Landscape became a mature art form in the nineteenth century with painters such as Turner in England and the French Impressionists. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Monet, Sisley, Pisarro and other French painters worked outdoors (en plein air) rather than painting in their studios.

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Line A line is the continuous mark made to describe shapes. This is sometimes called the outline and can be sharp, soft, thick, thin, dark or pale, depending on what drawing instrument is used. A line is like a thread or narrow mark. What seems a very simple artistic device can be very varied and still called a line'. It is said to be one of the first continuous marks an infant will make when scribbling on paper with a pencil or crayon.

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Lino-cutting Lino-cutting is a method of making an artistic print from a linoleum surface. A piece of lino is first cut away with various tools to create thick and thin lines, textures and patterns. This is called the lino block. What remains of the raised surface of the lino can be printed under pressure once inked. A linoprint is the final result of printing a lino block or several lino blocks superimposed to create different colours and effects. Fine examples can be seen in prints by Picasso and Michael Rothenstein.

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Lithography Lithography is a method of printing that originally used large flat blocks of limestone as the printing surface. Today metal or plastic sheet is used. The stone or plastic has a greasy image drawn on it in wax crayon or liquid wax, and the stone or metal plate is then dampened and an ink roller passed over the surface. Lithography works because grease and water do not mix: the greasy image attracts ink, but the damp areas repel it. Lithography is therefore a surface print unlike a method of printing which has raised or incised areas. Under pressure, the ink will transfer to paper. Examples from the nineteenth century include commercial posters by Mucha and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Preparing the stone

Drawing onto prepared surface

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Local colour Local colour is the actual colour of an object when reproduced in a painting. If a face is pink, it is painted pink, even if it is seen in a light which makes it appear another colour. If a jacket is red, it is painted red. This contrasts with an artist's decision to change the colour of an object to something else in order to fit the genre or ideas of the painting. So even though a jacket might be red, it could be painted any colour the artist wished if local colour was ignored.

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Maquette A maquette is a small-scale model for a larger piece of sculpture. This might be a scale model in clay, wax or plaster intended to be cast in bronze full size later. A maquette allows the artist to experiment on a small scale. Several maquettes might be made and the best chosen for making the final sculpture. A maquette is therefore like a sculptor's sketch.

Model for a sculpture by Michelangelo © Questions Publishing Limited

Marbling Marbling is a technique for making patterns on paper similar to those that occur in marble. Inks are floated on a surface such as water or a liquid made from Caragheen (Irish) moss, and paper is laid on top of this to pick up a pattern of swirling ink blobs. Caragheen moss is more dense than water, allowing much more control of these patterns, which can be combed into the surface using various tools such as knitting needles and combs. The finished marbled paper is used traditionally for fine bookbinding.

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Mask-making Mask-making is an art or craft associated with the theatre, merry-making and some religious rituals where a person's identity may need to be hidden or altered. Some of the best traditional masks come from Italy, where the Venice festival of a masked ball has inspired shaped, three-dimensional masks. Other traditional masks can be found in many cultures, especially in African and North American Indian traditions. Theatrical masks, known from ancient Greece, are an obvious use of mask-making, and in Victorian times paper masks were also very popular with children. A half-mask may also be attached to a stick and held in front of the face.

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Medium (plural: media) The medium is the material or materials used in a work of art. Paint is one medium. Mixed media are therefore artworks created using more than one medium. A sculpture of wood, metal, steel and paper would therefore be described as being 'mixed media' for the purposes of a catalogue. Another meaning of medium is the liquid that is mixed with powdered colour to make paint: this can be oil, water or acrylic.

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Mezzotint (see also Aquatint, Engraving and Etching) Mezzotint is a laborious method of creating a dotted texture on a copper plate for printing. The artist covers the plate with layers of dots using a toothed tool called a mezzotint'rocker7. Some of these dots (burrs) are then scraped off the plate to create white or grey areas of tone. Parts of the plate are polished, leaving the remaining textured area to pick up ink. A mezzotint has a very distinctive fine dotted tone. It was at its height in the eighteenth century as a means of illustrating books and reproducing pictures.

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Miniature A miniature is a very tiny painting, usually in a small oval frame. The name comes from 'minium' (or red lead) which was a red oxide paint used in illustrations. The most commonly found miniatures are portraits painted in gouache or watercolour. Oil paint has been used to paint on metal or ivory, but water-based paint is more usual. The finest of artists' brushes are needed. Have a close look at the amazing detail in a miniature such as the ones painted in the sixteenth century by Nicholas Milliard, who painted portraits of Queen Elizabeth I and her courtiers.

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Minimalism Minimalism, or minimalist art, is art reduced to its utmost simplicity. One black canvas, for example, would be a minimalist painting. In the 1960s, the artist Frank Stella produced canvases containing only a few parallel lines. More controversially, Carl Andre exhibited a pile of bricks at the Tate Gallery in London. The main idea of minimalist art is to present the viewer with as little as possible.

Carl Andre - Equivalent Vlll, 1966

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Mobiles (see also Kinetic art) Mobiles are balanced, hanging sculptures. The great exponent of mobile art was Alexander Calder in the 1950s and 1960s. His hanging sculpture was a series of metal shapes connected by rods and was moved by a sudden draught, by touch or by the wind. As the parts of a mobile move, so the sculpture changes shape. A mobile does not have electric motors, though in some galleries, where there is no draught, motors have been added to move the mobiles in the air.

ject in Y— Alexander Calder

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Modelling Modelling is the making of a three-dimensional representation of something in clay, plaster or a similar medium. The model is built up bit by bit, unlike carving which actually chips away at a block of stone (see Stone-carving) or wood, reducing its mass. Sometimes the word 'modelling7 is used to described the way an artist has painted a three-dimensional shape on a canvas so that it appears to be solid.

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Modernism (see also Post-Modernism) Modernism is a very widely used term for art and architecture produced between 1900 and 1960. It is characterised by new materials (such as aluminium), clean lines and functionality. The architect Corbusier, in particular, was called 'modernist7 in style as he preferred steel and concrete to more traditional building materials such as brick, stone and slate.

Le Corbusier New Spirit Pavilion, 1925

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Monochrome Monochrome means '(of or done in) one colour'. Sepia photographs, black and white prints or paintings done entirely in a single colour are monochromes. The opposite of this is polychrome, meaning '(of or done in) many colours7. The words 'monochromatic' and its opposite 'polychromatic7 are adjectives very commonly used to describe the colour of a work.

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Monotype Monotype in art is a printing method where only one print can be made ('mono7 meaning one). The artist uses printing inks on a glass or laminate surface in such a way as to paint, roll and block out areas with thin paper shapes. When the final design is ready, paper is pressed onto the surface and a single print is taken.

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Montage A montage is a work built up of several layers, whereas a collage is the sticking down of almost anything to a surface. Often the items used in a montage are photographs (photo-montage), but the idea is to assemble images rather than to use parts of them as texture or colour disregarding their subject matter.

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Mosaic Mosaic is the decorative covering of a wall, floor or similar surface with small pieces (often cubes) previously cut from coloured stone, marble and glass. The polished stone pieces (tesserae) would be set into a layer of cement and angled slightly so as to catch the light and shimmer; pieces of glass containing gold leaf would be used to increase the rich effect. Roman floors were often covered with mosaics, and mosaic-work is also found on walls of Christian churches, particularly in Italy and Greece. The technique is much older than either Greeks or Romans: examples of mosaics several thousand of years old have been found in Sumeria.

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Mural A mural is a wall painting, usually on a grand scale. Fresco is a traditional mural technique, though modern murals in buildings are generally created with acrylic and other paints. One of the earliest examples of murals is cave painting such as that found at Lascaux, in France.

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Naive art Naive art, sometimes referred to as primitivism, is art mainly by untrained artists. Painting tends to be simple, often childlike in its composition and bright in colour. It often ignores techniques such as perspective that are used by artists who have learned their drawing at art school or with a trained artist. Scenes painted are often of local life and there are some similarities with folk art. The Frenchman Henri Rousseau, a customs official, was an untrained artist whose work became very well known in the 1880s and 1890s. Two other famous naive artists of the twentieth century were 'Grandma Moses7 in the USA and Alfred Wallis, whose work now hangs in the Tate Gallery, London.

Henri Rousseau © Questions Publishing Limited

Narrative art Narrative art is art which tells a story. Victorian painters were renowned for their sentimental tales told through a painting. Typically, an important moment in a story was painted, so carefully constructed and detailed that the viewer could guess what had gone before and what was about to happen. Narrative paintings such as those by Millais and Holman Hunt showed biblical scenes and moral tales of fortune. Narrative painting was developed strongly with the nineteenth-century English group called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.

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Ophelia (Detail) © Questions Publishing Limited

Offsetting Offsetting is the technical term for the transferring of ink on a surface (which could be thin paper) onto another surface pressed against it. Offsetting is useful because it can show what an image looks like in reverse. Sometimes an artist needs to see a mirror image as many printing processes work from mirror images of the original. The process of lithography sometimes uses an offset image from which to print, as does relief printing, etching and engraving.

Offset lithography plate and printed image

Offsetting © Questions Publishing Limited

Oil painting (see also Acrylic) Oil painting is painting using paints made of a pigment (colour) mixed with oil. The oil paint is brushed, sprayed, trickled or scraped onto a canvas or panel and stays usable for at least a day. Some oil paints can be very slow drying, so 'dryers' are mixed with the paint. Before using oil as a medium for pigment, artists used egg-white (see Tempera). Jan van Eyck is said to have pioneered or improved the technique of oil painting in the early fifteenth century.

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Op art Op art is short for 'optical art7, which is art intended to tease the eye with optical effects. In the 1960s Bridget Riley was a major artist using op-art techniques. Viktor Vasarelly was another op-artist, but one who used colour to greater effect. A great deal of op art is black and white in abstract black and white shapes, often giving the illusion of movement. Bridget Riley's painting called The Fall is a well-known op-art work.

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Origami Origami is the art of folding paper into three-dimensional shapes. Usually the designer tries to make recognisable creatures such as birds, frogs and fish. Other origami objects might be boats or aircraft. Origami is the Japanese word for 'fold', and the art (or craft) originated in the eighth century in Japan and was used to create objects used in the Shinto religion. These days there are origami clubs and Internet sites.

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Palette A palette is the surface, usually made of wood, on which an artist mixes paints. The traditional shape for a palette is oval with a hole for the thumb, and, though there are many other designs possible, the oval design is so traditional that it has become a symbol for artists. Another meaning of the term 'palette' is the range of preferred colours an artist has used in a painting, digital image or coloured drawing.

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Pantograph A pantograph is a device used originally for scaling up a drawing. Shaped rather like part of a trellis fence, the centre point follows the line of a drawing, and the pencil at the outside arm draws at a larger scale. The remaining arm is used as a fixed anchor for the pantograph to work.

Drawing point

Tracing point

Fixed point

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Papier mache Papier mache is a modelling medium made of pulped paper which is squeezed until most of the water has been wrung out of it. It is not to be confused with building up layers of paper (paper laminating). When it dries it is very strong indeed, and we would need a handsaw to cut it. In Japan, furniture such as chairs and tables have been made out of papier mache. It is a light, strong modelling material, but the pulp needs to be thinly spread or it will take weeks to dry thoroughly.

Working the paper pulp

Japanese papier mache box

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Pastel Pastel is a substance made of coloured powder mixed with glue and shaped into a stick to make a drawing tool. Pastel crayons can be fragile and smudge easily if not carefully handled. Sometimes pastel has an oil added (making it oil-pastel), but more usually it is chalky in consistency. A pastel drawing can look very like a painting and needs to be 'fixed7 if it is not to smudge (see Fixative). Examples of work in pastel are to be found in coloured drawings by Degas.

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Pastiche A pastiche is something created 'in the style of7 rather than a copy of something. It is not quite a forgery, but intended to follow the style and manner of the artist used as the model for the pastiche. A pastiche can be a comic 'send-up7 of a piece of art work as well as being strongly influenced by a style.

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Patina Patina is the effect of ageing on the surface of some materials such as bronze or wood. Patina is a much-valued effect in antiques, giving an extra quality of age. However, a surface patina can be deliberately faked and does not always mean that something has aged naturally. Left long enough, bronze will develop a green patina, and brass, for example, a dull brown one.

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Pattern A pattern is most often thought of as decoration on a surface such as flooring or on objects like clothes, pots and vases. Patterns can be regular, symmetrical, repeating or irregular. We tend to think of a pattern having a sequence or order to it, rather like the decoration on an Eastern carpet or on a chessboard. Irregular patterns can be found in nature, such as those on leaves or rocks.

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Pen and wash Pen and wash technique is traditionally a combination of a black line drawing done with waterproof ink and a pen to which watercolour is added in a wash effect. The watercolour does not destroy the pen line because the ink used is waterproof. From the time of the quill (feather) pen, drawings have been done in pen and ink. Examples of this technique can be seen in the seventeenth-century pen drawings by Rembrandt, where brown 'wash' has been added.

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Pencil A pencil is a drawing tool, usually of wood with a graphite and clay core to it (not one made from lead as is sometimes thought). Originally, however, the word 'pencilling' referred to brushwork. The graphite mix can be made very dark and soft by adding much more graphite to the clay mix (coded 6B). At the other extreme, a very hard and light-toned pencil will have far less graphite in its mix (coded 6H). An artist would most likely prefer to use a 2B or B pencil, while technical diagrams require an H or 2H. The softer the pencil, the more frequently it will need sharpening, and the blacker the line.

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Perspective Perspective is a drawing system or way of representing objects as they gradually look smaller in the distance. The Italian Brunelleschi probably discovered perspective in the fifteenth century, and it was taken up by his younger countrymen Uccello and Piero della Francesca. Uccello famously painted a battle scene using perspective, with distant Vanishing points' for fallen spears and fallen soldiers. The main feature of this new perspective was that parallel lines go towards points on the horizon. The mathematics can be complex where several vanishing points are used, and artists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries often rejected perspective as being far too mechanical to express their artistic ideas. We have come to accept drawings in perspective as being realistic, but it is still a trick or illusion.

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Pigment Pigment is coloured powder which is mixed with oil, gum or acrylic to make paint. Pigments come from many parts of the world. At Roussillon, in France, the earth has 22 shades of ochres and browns used for making paint. These are 'earth' colours, but new bright chemical dyes were also discovered in the late nineteenth century, changing painting for ever. The French Impressionists could not have painted their brightly coloured works without new pigments being available. Before this time, a bright yellow, green or red was impossible to make. The only way to make colour look bright was to paint the rest of the picture in rather dark and gloomy colours.

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Plaster cast A plaster cast is an identical plaster copy of an original work. When a sculptor makes something in clay or wax, the next stage is to cover the work with a thick layer of plaster so that it does not dry and fall apart. The process used is to cover the clay with a thickness of plaster to make a mould. Usually the sculptor divides the clay work into sections to make the mould in several different pieces. The clay is then removed from the plaster, and the hollow mould that remains is coated on the inside with soap, or covered with clingfilm, so nothing will stick to it. The mould is then bound together and more plaster poured inside. When the mould is removed, the result is a plaster cast of the original clay sculpture.

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Plate mark A plate mark is the mark left on paper by the outside edges of an etching or engraving plate. Etchings are printed on dampened paper under great pressure. The etching plate is pushed into the surface of the paper, leaving a mark around the outside of the printed area.

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Pointillism Pointillism relies on the idea that dots or blobs of pure colour, such as yellow and green, could make a brighter green once the viewer stepped back from the painting. Consequently, artists such as Seurat painted on a large scale to achieve the effect of pure colours at a distance. When these paintings are reproduced in art books, the effect tends to be lost. Pointillism developed after Impressionism in art.

Detail of pointillist painting

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Pop art Pop art, developed in the 1950s and 1960s, made use of popular images, such as the designs from soup cans and tea packets. David Hockney and Peter Blake in Britain and Robert Rauchenberg in the USA were artists who helped to form the Pop art movement.

Whaam! Roy Lichtenstein, 1963

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Portraiture Portraiture is the painting or sculpting of a likeness of a person. Before photography it was customary for the wealthy to have their portraits 'taken7 This might be just head and shoulders, or a full-length picture of the person being painted (the sitter). Artists such as Gainsborough and Reynolds in the nineteenth century were much in demand for their portraits. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, portraiture has survived because a painting is much more than a snapshot of a person, and not all modern portraits aim for a recognisable likeness of the sitter.

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Post-Modernism (see also Modernism) Post-Modernism is a trend in art and architecture created after about 1960; the name means 'after Modernism7. In architecture there was a move towards the use of steel, panelling and large areas of glass. This was also accompanied by greater use of curves and prefabricated sections of building. Architects such as Richard Rogers and Norman Foster are considered 'postmodernist' in their style of design.

Lloyds building, London

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Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group started in 1848 by three English artists: Rossetti, Millais and Holman Hunt. They disliked the artificial narrative art of their time and the artistic Yules' of the Royal Academy painters. They wanted to return to a period before the Renaissance painter Raphael, when figures were grouped without strict rules of composition. Truth to nature7 was their guide, and they painted subjects from poetry and religion, rather than cattle, ships and stories of everyday life. Their painting was very detailed, using light, bright colours. This contrasted with some of the gloomy and sentimental paintings of other artists living at the same time, though it resulted in some unusual colouring of clothes and costume.

Rossetti The Day Dream (detail) © Questions Publishing Limited

Primary colours (see also Complementary colours) Primary colours in paint are red, yellow and blue, reflecting these parts of the spectrum of white light. When mixed together, red and blue make purple, yellow and blue make green, and red and yellow make orange; these are called secondary colours. Primary colours cannot be made from any other colours, whereas secondary colours can. Pigment is different from coloured light, where the primary colours are red, green and blue.

Purple

Red

Yellow

Orange

Secondary colour Blue ) Primary colour

Green 1 Secondary colour © Questions Publishing Limited

Primitive art Primitive art is tribal art by artists not formally trained in a Western tradition of art. It is sophisticated in its own right and full of meaning (see Aboriginal art). It is the art of masks, hunting tools and ceremonial costume, but also includes images such as paintings in caves and on rocks. Examples may be seen in the London Museum of Mankind and in the British Museum. It is different from primitivism, which is naive art.

Cave paintings

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Printmaking Printmaking is making a linoprint, woodcut, etching, screenprint (called a serigraph in the USA) or lithograph as a work of art. The essential difference between this and commercial high-speed printing is that the print is created by hand, often taking weeks to complete. Many prints are handcoloured and printed on presses which are antique by today's standards. Originally each printmaking method had once been a commercial process, but was then used as an art form by artists prepared to give their time to it.

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Proportion Proportion is the relation of one part of a drawing or design to other parts. If something is 'out of proportion7 there is an odd difference of scale or size in relation to the remaining drawing or design. Buildings also have 'proportion7, and in the sixteenth century artists and architects looked for the perfect proportion for their work. This perfect proportion became known as the Golden Section.

Ground floor Proportions in architecture

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Realism Realism in art is painting and drawing in such a way that it seems that the objects shown (apples for example) can almost be picked up or touched. Realism is far more than a photographic effect and has an artistic quality, as can be seen in pictures painted by Courbet in the middle of the nineteenth century. In a development of Realism, the Super-realists of the 1960s and 1970s painted shiny objects, such as chrome handles and the surface of water, again painted sharply in a way not possible to see in a photograph.

Kettles - photoreal airbrush

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Relief (see also Relief printing) Relief is the relationship of higher and lower parts on a surface that is not entirely flat. A carved or cast panel is described as being in low relief, or bas-relief where the scene or design is almost flat but not quite.

Relief panel by Michelangelo

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Relief printing Relief printing is printing done from a raised surface. Traditionally, movable type was assembled for printing a book and was a relief surface. Relief is the opposite of intaglio, which is a design etched or cut beneath the surface from which it is printed. Relief printing includes linocuts, woodcuts and wood-engravings. Japanese wood-block prints are also relief prints. Printing block

Movable type

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Renaissance A renaissance is a 'rebirth', and in art the word is used (with a capital R) to describe the great period of Italian art in the fifteenth, sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Renaissance began in the fourteenth century in Italy, but spread throughout Europe as artists and architects developed its ideas. Wealthy families in Italian cities such as Venice and Florence, as well as the Roman Catholic Church, gave employment to many artists and architects. Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo and Bellini are famous Renaissance artists.

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Replica A replica is a perfect copy or duplicate of a work of art. These days it can wrongly be used to mean a smaller version or model of the real thing.

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Representation (see also Figurative art and Realism) Representation in art is the creation of a likeness of something. Representing something assumes a faithful likeness rather than using artistic licence to change things.

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Rococo The Rococo style followed the Baroque and, during the eighteenth century, took to extremes the Baroque's curves in architecture and art. Shell designs, scrolls and curls decorated buildings almost to ridiculous extremes of ornamentation. The Palace of Versailles in France is a fine example of this style. A great amount of decorative gold (gilding) was used. In painting, Watteau is an example of this period of art.

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Sculpture Sculpture is the art of making forms in the round. Often these represent people. Traditionally sculptors chipped away at stone, carved wood or modelled in clay. Some models are later cast in bronze or fibre glass. In the twentieth century, sculpture began to be made from discarded objects, reclaimed materials and natural materials such as twigs, pebbles and ice (see Found object). Sculpture is three-dimensional art as contrasted with painting, which is two-dimensional.

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Scumbling Scumbling is working an opaque layer of paint over the top of another layer so that both layers can still be seen. It is different from glazing, where the lower layer shines through a transparent glaze of colour. Scumbling tends to look rough in texture as the lower layer is revealed as an uneven, broken effect.

Scumbling:

Light over dark

Dark over light © Questions Publishing Limited

Secondary colours (see also Complementary colours) Secondary colours are made by mixing two of the three primary colours: red, blue and yellow. This applies only to paints (pigment) and not to mixing coloured light. The secondary colours in paint are green (blue and yellow mixed together), purple (red and blue) and orange (red and yellow). Almost any secondary and one other colour mixed together produces a brown, which is why a water-pot does not stay clean for long. This is because there are really three colours making up the brown, one of them a secondary (already a mix of two primaries).

Red

Blue

Purple

Yellow

Orange

Green

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Self-portrait A self-portrait is a portrait of the artist painted by himself or herself. Examples are the self-portraits by Rembrandt, which the artist painted of himself throughout his lifetime from young man to old. A self-portrait is often a way for an artist to study painting technique without the expense of paying or persuading someone to sit for long periods of time.

Rembrandt

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Sepia Sepia is a brown pigment used to make a drawing ink. As a colour it was much favoured for ink drawings and sketches. Photographers in the early twentieth century 'sepia-toned7 photographs to look more like old paintings and drawings. The pigment itself originally came from a cuttlefish (sepia fish), though modern dyes have replaced this source of colour.

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Sgraffito Sgraffito is the technique of scratching a design on a surface. A potter might scratch the surface of a pot to incise the decoration. On dry clay, this is dangerous, as it produces a fine carcinogenic dust.

Sgraffito technique in paint

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Shade (see also Hue and Tint) A shade is the addition of black to any colour. Like many words in art it has come to be wrongly used, as in a 'shade chart'. Shading is adding shadow, for example by adding shade to a drawing.

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Shape Shape is the two-dimensional outline of something, rather than a rounded three-dimensional form. A geometric shape would therefore be a triangle or square, not a pyramid or cube. People still use the word to mean other things, but 'two-dimensional outline7 is the most usual meaning.

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Silk-screen (see also Stencil) Silk-screen, called serigraphy in the USA, is essentially a sophisticated form of stencilling. A fine mesh (originally silk, but now a modern fabric) is tightly stretched over a frame that looks like an empty picture-frame. A stencil is created, usually through photographic means to give detail to the stencil. Light-sensitive coatings block holes in the fine mesh. The remaining clear mesh allows ink to pass through. The process is used to print fabrics, though Paolozzi and Warhol are among artists who have created artworks using the technique.

Screen

Inking the screen

Final print ) Questions Publishing Limited

Sketch (see also Cartoon) A sketch is the first, often rapidly made, design or rough draft for a work of art. Sketching is an artist's way of collecting information for further use. Painters would sometimes sketch in oil before creating their masterwork, noting colours and light effects. Oil sketches by John Constable are notable examples.

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Staining Staining is the deliberate application of a strong dye to a material such as wood or glass. Stained glass is glass to which has been added a stain or dye. Staining tends to be permanent so long as it does not fade in strong light.

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Stencil A stencil is a mask (often made of waxed paper) through which a design can be cut and pigment brushed into the holes. Used in interior design, it is also a means of printing designs on fabric instead of printing from a block. Industrial fabric-printing uses a 'photostencil' rather than a paper one, but the principle is similar. In screen-printing, the stencil was glued to a silksurfaced frame before ink was pushed through it. When stencilling is done using a paper mask for decorating, the paintbrush must be almost dry so that no colour runs under the stencil.

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Still life A still life is a painting of objects such as a bowl of apples, flowers, vegetables and so on arranged into an attractive subject. Life is 'still' because the objects chosen do not move. The artist Cezanne painted still-life pictures, as did many Dutch artists in the seventeenth century.

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Stippling Stippling is texturing a paint surface with many dots. This effect is created by using a stippling brush and is nothing to do with Pointillism. Stippled drawing was a method of shading in dots and much used in the nineteenth century.

Texturing using stippling brush

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Stone carving Stone carving is cutting or chipping away at stone. It is the most ancient of sculpture methods and dates from long before Greek and Roman times. The sculptor carves to 'discover' the sculpture within the stone. This is the opposite of modelling, where the sculptor builds up the sculpture from almost nothing.

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Style A style in art is the set of characteristics of a period of art or of an artist. The Baroque style was full of concave curves and spirals. The Impressionist style was marked by thick brushstrokes, brilliant light effects and blobs of bright colour.

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Surrealism Surrealism is an art movement or style of painting using dreams and fantasy for its inspiration and subject matter. The Surrealists in the 1920s included Salvador Dali, Chirico and Max Ernst. Many paintings by Surrealists had weird titles that mean nothing, with some work more nightmare than dream. Odd sizes, liquid metal and a fur teacup are typical of dream objects included in Surrealist paintings.

Salvador Dali — Metamorphosis of Narcissus (detail) © Questions Publishing Limited

Tempera Tempera is a paint binder used to hold together powder colour (pigment). This binder was traditionally yolk of egg and water (known as egg tempera) and it was used extensively up to the end of the fifteenth century. It was used less as oil paint grew in popularity, but it is still used today for icon painting. Similar in quality to gouache, it combines pigment and a gluelike binder. The watered-down yolk in tempera acted as the binder, and it dried quickly to a hard paint surface. Some artists used the whole egg and some just the white for a surface binder. Egg is sticky, which is why it is ideal for binding powdered pigments.

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Terracotta Terracotta is a red-brown clay often heated to high temperature in a kiln (fired) to make garden pots. It is also used to make clay casts of sculptures. The distinctive red-brown colour is attractive when fired, without the need for further colouring.

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Texture Texture on a three-dimensional surface is the roughness or smoothness which can be felt when touched. Rough stone, such as granite, has a natural surface texture. In completely flat work, such as a decorative print or painting, texture is just the effect or illusion of surface roughness as captured by paint and shading. The painting imitates a real texture.

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Tint (see also Hue and Shade) Tint is the addition of white to any colour.

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Tjanting tool (see also Batik) A tjanting tool is a hand-held implement with a small copper bowl at the end of a wooden stick, used for creating batik prints on fabric. The bowl is filled with hot wax and the artist trails this across a fabric to make a surface pattern. The waxed areas prevent dye soaking into the fabric. Tjanting tools occasionally need to be immersed in boiling water to remove wax which may otherwise block the spout.

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Tone Tone in art is the lightness or darkness of something such as paint or pencil shading. We think of tones being different shades from white through greys to black. In fact a light colour, such as yellow, has a light tone, while a dark blue has a dark tone. Tonal value7 refers to a painting's range of light and dark tones.

Dark

Mid

Light

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Trompe-Poeil Trompe-l'oeil ('deceive the eye' in French) is a painting made to appear so life-like that the viewer can be fooled into thinking that the object shown is quite solid and real. A typical example would be a handle painted on a door, or a violin painted as if hanging from a hook.

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Topographical art Topographical art is a painting or drawing done accurately as a record or map of some place. A topographical artist would create the impression of detail in an accurate drawing of architecture, landscape or townscape.

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Typography Typography is the art of setting type to the most pleasing design. Although it is mainly computers that do this now, the job of setting type for a book is an art that needs great skill and a good design sense. Typography has its own traditional rules of use, but computers have made the practice of typography more flexible.

Typography (^ijp^^a^^ Typography

Typography TYPOGRAPHY iypo0ra,.*,r

typography Typography

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Varnish Varnish is a surface layer of transparent paint put on after the painting is finished. In the nineteenth century, art exhibitions at the Royal Academy in London used to have a Varnishing day7 when an artist exhibiting a painting could coat its surface with shiny varnish. Paintings which are varnished may eventually need to be cleaned as varnish turns yellow over the years, and later even a dirty dark brown.

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Video art Video art is the production of an art form using the video camera rather than conventions of paint or drawing. This is not simply making a video as a film, but a work which can exist without needing a dramatic story or plot.

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Wash (see also Pen and wash) Wash is a technique used in watercolour painting. Paper is usually soaked with water and colour applied such that it runs down the surface. By holding the paper upright or not, various blurred and blended colour effects can be achieved. Works by Turner, such as his sunrises, are examples.

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Watercolour Watercolour is a painting technique that uses very finely ground paints which may be thinned with water. The finest colour is very expensive and quite unlike crude colours such as poster paint or powder colour. The artist builds up effects by applying a wash of colour. The brightness of the paint depends on the white paper showing through the pigment. In Victorian England it was considered a social talent to be able to paint in watercolour and 'sketching parties7 in the open air were often like today's summer picnics. Turner, Cotman and Cezanne all painted in watercolour.

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Woodcut A woodcut is a print from a wooden printing surface where the grain of the wood clearly runs on the surface and can be seen in the final printed work. The cutting needed makes use of the grain in a way not possible in wood engraving. Woodcuts are usually much more vigorous and large scale than wood engravings because fine detail is not possible. Work by Edvard Munch is a modern example. Wood block

Print from block

prewoi

Woodcut tools

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Wood engraving Wood engraving is a technique that produces a printing surface from the polished end-grain of certain woods. This means that the artist can cut very fine marks in any direction, regardless of the grain of the wood. An engraving tool is used as well as fine gouges. Wood engravings are usually very small in scale. Thomas Bewick's output is remarkable for its fine detail and workmanship.

Engraving tools

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