Painting Vocabulary Review

Review the images of rectangular prisms above and practice drawing this form from various vantage points (above, at and below eye level).

Pop quiz in the near future. Make sure you know these terms!

Hue: color

Monochromatic: a color scheme derived from a single base hue, and extended using its shades, tones and tints (that is, a hue modified by the addition of black, gray (black + white) and white.

Underpainting: an initial layer of paint applied to a ground, which serves as a base for subsequent layers of paint. Underpaintings are often monochromatic and help to define colour values for later painting. There are several different types of underpainting, such as verdaccio and grisaille.

Analogous colors: colors that are adjacent to each other on the color wheel. Some examples are green, yellow green, and yellow or red, red violet and violet.

Triadic colors: The triad color scheme is three colors on the color wheel in a triangle. Example: Orange, Purple, and Green.

Complementary colors: colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel, such as blue and orange, red and green, purple and yellow. Complementary color schemes have a more energetic feel. The high contrast between the colors creates a vibrant look, especially when used at full saturation. Complementary colors can be tricky to use in large doses.

Saturation: How pure or bright a color appears. To de-saturate a color of given intensity in a subtractive system (such as paint), one can add white, black, gray, or the hue's complement.

Opaque: not transparent or translucent; impenetrable to light; not allowing light to pass through.

Transparent: having the property of transmitting rays of light through its substance so that bodies situated beyond or behind can be distinctly seen.

Local Color: the natural color of an object

Tint: a base hue plus white

Tone: a base hue plus grey or a neutral pigment.

Shade: a base hue plus black or the hue’s complement.

High & Low Key painting: A high Key painting contains values on the lighter end of the value scale, starting at 1 (lightest) and going to approximately 5 (middle value). A low-key painting is composed of predominantly darker values from 5-10 on the value scale.

Neutral color: usually means without color. Neutral colors such as beige, ivory, taupe, black, gray, and white appear to be without color, and yet in many applications these hues often have undertones of color.

Wet into Wet or Alla Prima: (Italian, meaning at first attempt), is a painting technique, used mostly in oil painting, in which layers of wet paint are applied to previous layers of wet paint. This technique requires a fast way of working, because the work has to be finished before the first layers have dried. It may also be referred to as 'direct painting' or the French term au premier coup (at first stroke)

Glazing: A glaze is simply a thin, transparent layer or coat of paint and glazing is simply building up color by applying thin, transparent layers or coats one on top of another. Each glaze modifies the color of what’s already been painted on the canvas.