Section

GLOSSARY OF ART TERMS

Edited by Mark Quinlan

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Warm Colours

In colour theory, colours which contain a large amount of yellow, as opposed to cool colours, which contain more blue. For example, a yellow-orange colour would be warm; a greenish-blue would be cool. Warm colours are thought to appear to be closer to the viewer, while cool colours are thought to recede into the distance. [...]

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Wash

A technique using ink, usually diluted with water, applied with a brush. Although drawings can be made with wash alone, it is more often used in conjunction with line or contour drawings in pen and ink to depict areas of light and shade. (Andrea Boscoli, Christ in the Temple; Giovanni Battista Tiepolo: Rest on the [...]

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Watercolour

While an ink is in effect no more than a solution of dye, watercolour is a dispersion of solid, finely ground, particles of coloured pigments that remain in suspension through the effect of Brownian motion - the random movement of microscopic particles when suspended in liquids or gases, caused by the impact of the collision [...]

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Watermark

A mark visible within the paper when held up to the light. The watermark is made by sewing into the screen of the paper mould a wire impression of the desired mark. When the pulp is placed onto the surface of the screen, these raised wires leave an impression in the pulp such that the [...]

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Waterscape

A painting of, or including a body of water. It might otherwise be called a marine picture, a seascape, or a riverscape, etc.

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Wet into Wet

The application of fresh paint applied directly onto or into still-wet paint of a painting in progress. Since lighter colours will usually mix with darker colours if laid over top of them while wet, the technique relies on painting from light colours up. This gives the painting a soft look, and allows the colours to [...]

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White Chalk

Primarily used to heighten drawings in other media. There are two types of natural white chalk: calcite or calcium carbonate, a soft and fairly brilliant white, and soapstone or stealite, a slightly harder, bluish white. (Pierre-Paul Prud’hon, Reclining Male Nude and Thomas Gainsborough, Wooded Landscape with Herdsman, Cows and Church).

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Winsor & Newton

Something of a minor British institution, the English art supplies firm Winsor & Newton was established in 1832, when William Winsor and Henry Newton, a chemist and artist respectively, set up in business at 38 Rathbone Place, London. In 1842 they patented the tubes of paint artists still use to this day. The collapsible, screw-cap [...]

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Woodcut

A relief printing process, in which the design is drawn directly onto the surface of a wood block, carved into the plank (as opposed to the end) grain of the wood. The parts that are to remain white on the print are cut away, leaving the black lines in relief. A woodcut can be printed [...]

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Wood Engraving

A kind of woodcut made developed in the eighteenth century. A woodblock of very hard wood is used, and is always cut across the grain. The wood engraver is able to make much more detailed work than the woodcutter, achieving an effect of closely worked lines that print white against black, as opposed to the [...]

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Worm’s-eye View

As if seen from the surface of the earth, or the floor. Looking up from below.