British Post-Impressionist group based in Camden Town, north London, founded by Walter Sickert in 1911. Other members were Bevan, Gore, Gilman, Ginner. The group painted realist scenes of city life and some landscape in a range of Post-Impressionist styles. Named after the seedy district of north London where Sickert had lived in the 1890s and [...]

n early precursor of the modern-day camera. The camera obscura (French: dark room) began as a crude device where a tiny hole in a wall would act as a lens having a very small aperture, projecting an inverted image on the opposite wall of a darkened room. First mentioned by Aristotle in the fourth century, [...]

Any fantasy subject combining real or imagined objects, usually townscapes, such as those produced by Guardi or Panini.

A representation in which the subject’s distinctive features are exaggerated. Caricatures, when well done, have a strong, undeniable but comical resemblance to the subject. The purpose of a caricature is to ‘loudly’ convey the subject’s unique character.

A full-size preparatory drawing for a painting, fresco, tapestry, or embroidery pattern. In the case of a fresco, the completed cartoon would be placed on the wet plaster of the wall and the outlines pricked or incised through the paper. Usually a fine black powder would be pounced, or rubbed through the holes or incised [...]

A water-soluble protein found in milk that is used as a binder for creating casein paints. Casein is sometimes used as an underpainting for oil or acrylic painting.

Reproducing in plaster, bronze, or plastic, an original piece of sculpture made of clay, wax, or similar material.

An emphasised area of a composition.

White or off-white inorganic material composed of calcium carbonate which is naturally occurring, although also produced industrially throughout the 20th century. See also black chalk, red chalk and white chalk.

Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) was a French painter of genre and still-life subjects, celebrated for the dignity and monumentality with which he depicted ordinary people and objects. The term ‘Chardinesque’ is employed to describe works that share these qualities.

From the Italian ‘chiaro’, meaning light, and ’scuro’, meaning dark, a term for the illusionistic use of gradations of light and shade on a form to suggest three-dimensionality in a two-dimensional image. The term is associated mostly with Leonardo da Vinci and the Caravaggesque painters of the 17th century.

A term describing either the specific historical periods in which Greek and subsequent Roman civilisations flourished, or a set of aesthetic values in artistic and other cultural expression inspired by those periods, including an emphasis on order, symmetry, balance, and simplicity.

The term used to describe 19th century art that took its inspiration from the arts and culture of Ancient Greece and Rome and which had a profound influence on the visual arts, literature, fashion and politics of the time.

A relatively smooth watercolour paper. Cold-pressed paper offers more ‘tooth’ which is often preferred by artist working in watercolour and pastel.

In the arts of painting, graphic design and photography, colour theory is a body of practical guidance to colour mixing and the visual impact of specific colour combinations. Although colour theory principles first appear in the writings of Alberti (c.1435) and the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (c.1490), a tradition of ‘colour theory’ begins in [...]

In the 1960s a group of Pop artists began to imitate the commercial printing techniques and subject matter of comic strips. The American painter Roy Lichtenstein became notorious for creating paintings inspired by Marvel comic strips and incorporating and enlarging the Ben Day dots used in newspaper printing - surrounding these with black outlines similar [...]

These are colours which complement each other - hence the name. The effect of this is to enhance the colours - they look stronger when placed together. This is because they contrast with each other more than with any other colours, and we can only see colour by contrast with other colours. The more contrast, [...]

Conception is the birth of an artistic idea, from the initial creative impulse through aesthetic refinement, problem-solving and visualisation/realisation. Execution is the second half of the creative process: the actual carrying out of the idea, in terms of method and materials, which often involves compromises and alterations of the initial conception. Artists often see the [...]

A person, amateur or professional, who through experience, has become highly sensitive to beauty in art. Also a term used to describe one who professes to be well versed in the fine arts.

Invented in 1795 by Frenchman Nicolas-Jacques Conté in response to the shortage of graphite in France during the Napoleonic Wars, Conté crayons were a mixture of refined graphite and clay. The process of manufacture used less graphite and, by altering the proportion of lead to clay, allowed the degree of hardness of the crayon to [...]

An Italian term, meaning opposite or opposing, in that it refers to a relaxed, upright pose highlighting the symmetry and graceful mechanics of human anatomy. It represents freedom of movement within the human figure, as in ancient Greek sculpture, the parts being in asymmetrical relationship to one another, usually where the hips and legs twist [...]

A method of printing using a copper plate, into which a design has been cut by a sharp instrument such as a burin, or an engraving produced in this way. Invented in Germany during the 1430s, the process is the second oldest graphic art after woodcut. In German art, it was developed in particular by [...]

Made in the form of sticks, crayons are composed of coloured pigments combined with oily, fatty, or waxy binding media. The type and proportion of the binder within the overall mixture determines the consistency, hardness, texture and tenacity of the crayon. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the term was used to describe fabricated chalks [...]

The use of fine overlapping planes of parallel lines of colour or pencil to achieve texture or shading. Used in traditional egg tempera technique; drawing in pencil, chalk, pen and ink; and engraving, etching, and other printmaking techniques.

An art form that employs two-dimensional geometric shapes to depict three-dimensional organic forms; a style of painting originated by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in the early 20th century whereby the artist breaks down the natural forms of the subjects into geometric shapes and creates a new kind of pictorial space.