Painting Terms and Definitions

Underpainting - the traditional stage in oil painting of using a monochrome or dead color as a base for composition. Also known as laying in.

Value - the relative lightness or darkness of a hue. Black is low value. White is a high value.

Varnish - generally, a more or less transparent film-forming liquid that dries into solid film.

Veduta - Italian for "view". An accurate representation of an urban landscape.

Vehicle - the entire liquid contents of a paint.

Venice Turpentine - an oleo resin - the semisolid mixture of a resin and an essential oil-derived from the larch and used primarily in making mediums and diluents for oil painting.

Verdaccio - old term for green underpainting.

Volatile - evaporating rapidly or easily.

Volume - the space that an object or figure fills in a drawing or painting.

Wash - a thin, usually broadly applied, layer of transparent or heavily diluted piant or ink.

Watercolor - a technique of painting using a binder made from a water-soluble gum. Watercolors can be transparent or opaque.

Water Tension Breaker - substance added to water or to water-based paints in order to reduce surface tension. eg. Ox Gall.

Wax Painting - a painting technique in which the binder is melted was. See Encaustic.

Wax Resist - the used of a waxy medium to make a design over which a colored wash is spread.

Wet On Wet - the application of fresh paint over an area on which the paint is still wet.

Wetting Agent - see Water Tention Breaker.

White Spirits - a thinner used with oil paints replacing Turpentine.

Xylography - rarely used term for woodblock printing. Also the mechanical reproduction of wood grain for decorative purposes.

Yellowing - this effect on oil painting is usually caused by one of three reasons:
-excessive use of linseed oil medium

-applying any of the varnishes that are prone to yellow with age

-an accumulation of dirt embedded into the varnish.

Zoomorphic - describes the forms of works of art and ornaments based on animal shapes.

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