- Intaglio: A technique where the ink is applied beneath the surface of the matrix into any lines or textures made. Intaglio techniques include: engraving, etching, mezzotint, aquatint and drypoint.
- Planographic: A technique where the matrix retains its entire surface however some parts of the matrix are treated in order to make the image. Planographic techniques include: lithography, monotype and digital printing.
- Relief Printing: A technique where the ink is applied onto the surface of the matrix. Relief techniques include: woodcut, lino cut, collographs and stamping.
- Stencil: Areas of the matrix/surface are blocked off with a non-permeable material to form a stencil, which is a positive of the image to be printed; including: screen-printing, monoprinting and colour inking techniques.
- Lithograph: A method of printing from a prepared flat stone, metal or plastic plate.
Painting:
- Body Colour: paint which has been made opaque by an addition of white. It is perhaps the simplest way of using paint as it does not depend on the ground or on underlying colours for its effect. Colours and tones are simply mixed and set down as they are intended to be seen; because body colour is opaque, light reflects from its surface, and the painted area is perceived as flat colour without visual depth.
- Frottie / Sfomato: (more liquid than paint) Frottie is a term commonly used to describe the preliminary laying of colour as a thin, transparent or semi-transparent covering. Opaque paint smeared into place so thinly that it can be seen through may also be regarded as a form of frottie.
- Rubbing: Children paint with their fingers, but so did great artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Titian and Turner. No other method of application gives such an even, controlled and uninformed thin covering of colour. It also allows less medium to be used, and so enables you to put down fat colours very thinly without dilution, and in the long term it can mean a more durable and permanent paint film. However, it is important to remember that certain pigments are toxic and that some media can act as irritants.On these grounds, it's advisable that you avoid bringing paint into contact with the skin, except when the delicacy of the sought-after effect demands it.
- Scraping Back: First, an area of paint is set down in any chosen manner, and then, whilst it is still wet, the edge of a straight-bladed palette knife is drawn across the painting surface to remove virtually all the paint, leaving only a smeared trace. If transparent colour is used, the result resembles a wash, and if body colour is scraped back, the effect is like that of a frottie or thin scumble.
- Scumbling: To drag paint over the surface of an image in a half-covering fashion, so that it leaves irregular broken traces of colour which allow the underlying paint or ground to show through. When thick paint is used, the brush or knife is heavily loaded and skimmed across the painting surface with a light touch to encourage a random deposit of paint.
General:
- Surrealism: An international art movement which developed from the art of Dada (1915) and the writings of Freud. It was a modern art style interested in the exploration of dreams and the subconscious. It often involves the irrational or unusual combinations of unrelated objects and imagery to create a feeling of disquiet or mystery. It fuses the dream world with reality.
- Gesture: Marks created as extensions of arm or body movements; movements of parts of the body to show feelings or ideas.
- Surface: The outer or topmost boundary or layer of an object. Colours on any surface are determined by how incident rays of light strike it.
- Subject: That which is represented in the artwork.
- Tone: A quality of colour, arising from its saturation (purity and impurity), intensity (brilliance and dimness). A range of colour.
- Template: A pattern used as a guide in making a form with accuracy, as when using stencil.
- Texture: An element of art, texture is the surface quality or 'feel' of an object.
- Juxtaposition, Juxtapose: the state or position of being placed close together or side by side. so as to permit comparison or contrast.
- Linear: A painting technique in which importance is placed on contours or outlines.
- Frottage: The technique of rubbing with crayon or graphite on a piece of paper which has been placed over an object, or an image achieved in this way.
- Figurative: Describes artwork representing the form of a human, animal or a thing; any expression of one thing in terms of another thing.
- Medium: The material or technique used by an artist to produce a work of art.
- Manipulation: To manipulate is to change or model something by careful use of the hands; to manage shapes and forms in a space, less by additive or subtractive techniques than by moving things around.
