Study

Terminology

The words a looking uses. Short meanings, for the studio — not a history of art.

The picture

Composition: How the parts are arranged. Where the eye enters, rests, and leaves.
Focal point: The place the picture asks you to look first. One is usually enough.
Balance: Weight across the picture. A small dark shape can balance a large pale one.
Crop: Where the edges cut the subject. A tight crop can strengthen; a loose one can weaken.
Negative space: The shapes around the subject. They are drawn, not left over.
Overlap: One form in front of another. The simplest way to show what is near.
Scale: How large a thing is against its neighbours. Scale, not detail, tells distance.
Horizon: Where sky meets ground. Its height changes whether you look down, across, or up.

Value: How light or dark a colour is, apart from its hue. Also called tone.
Hue: The colour family: red, blue, yellow. Not how light or strong it is.
Chroma: How strong a colour is. A greyed green has low chroma. A tube green has high chroma.
Key: The overall span of light and dark. A high key is pale. A low key is dark.
Warm and cool: Warm leans toward red and yellow. Cool leans toward blue. Warmth often comes forward.
Complementary: Colours opposite on the wheel, such as red and green. Side by side, each looks stronger.
Local colour: The colour a thing is thought to be — a lemon is yellow — before light changes it.
Broken colour: Small touches of different hues left unmixed, so the eye mixes them at a distance.

Contour: The edge of a form. A contour can be a line, or only a change of tone.
Gesture: The action of the pose or the growth of a plant, caught before the details.
Mass: The big simple shape. Mass first, then the features that sit on it.
Lost and found edge: An edge that disappears into the ground, then returns. Soft where the light is even, sharp where it turns.
Hatching: Parallel strokes that build tone. Cross-hatching lays another set across them.
Sfumato: Smoke-soft transitions, with no hard line between one tone and the next.

Support: What the paint sits on: canvas, panel, or paper.
Ground: The prepared surface under the picture. Its colour shows through thin paint.
Medium: What the colour is carried in — oil, water, acrylic, pastel — and the liquids added to it.
Underpainting: A first lay-in, often in few colours, that sets the drawing and the values.
Alla prima: Painted in one sitting, wet into wet, without a dry underpainting.
Glaze: A thin transparent film of colour over a dry layer. It deepens, it does not cover.
Scumble: A thin, dry, lighter film dragged over a darker colour so the dark still shows.
Impasto: Paint left thick enough to hold the mark of the brush or knife.
Fat over lean: In oil, later layers should have more oil than earlier ones, or the paint can crack.
Atmospheric perspective: Distance shown by paler, cooler, softer colour, not by smaller detail alone.