Art Attack: The Vocabulary of Creativity: Stroke of Genius: Words About Painting

As a noun, abstract refers to an excerpt or a summary of a larger written work. As an adjective, abstract means something that is not connected to the real world, existing only in the mind. In the case of visual art, an abstract painting is not representational —meaning it's not a picture of something real, like a person or a vase of flowers — but rather uses shape, color, line and texture to make an image that doesn't depict something else.

If you see aqua in aqueous, that's not a coincidence. Aqua is Latin (and Italian) for water. Watercolor, gouache, and acrylic are all examples of aqueous media: paints that use water as their solvent.

In Italian, chiaro means "light" and scuro means "dark." Our words clear and obscure both derive from the same roots. So chiaroscuro means "light-dark" and refers to a style of painting that depicts dramatically lit scenes with bold highlights and dark shadows. This style originated in the Italian Renaissance, and was perfected a little later in the Baroque period, most famously by Caravaggio.

If you apply paint to a surface using a toothbrush, or the chewed-up end of a stick, that's daubing.

Fresco means "fresh" in Italian, which is also used the way we use "wet" to describe paint that's just been applied. When painting a fresco, paint is mixed into wet plaster on a wall.

Medium has multiple meanings, but here it refers to the "oil" in "oil paint." When you mix powdered pigment with a liquid — linseed oil, acrylic emulsion, or beeswax, for example — each of those different substances is the medium. The words binder or vehicle are sometimes used instead. If you see a piece of art labeled with the term "mixed media," that means more than one kind of paint or material was used to create it.

A palette is a wooden board or other surface for mixing paints. Palette can also describe the color scheme in a painting, or in the decor of a room. Don't confuse it with palate, which is part of your mouth and also a term for your taste in food. A pallet is a wooden platform, used in shipping, that allows forklifts to move bulk items easily, and also a term for a simple bed on the ground.

Pastel refers to a kind of crayon, where pigment is combined either with plant gums or oil and compressed into sticks. Pastel also means a particularly pale color, with a fair amount of white mixed in, like you would see in a drawing made with pastels.

Perspective, the use of lines converging on a vanishing point to accurately depict three dimensions on a two-dimensional surface, was the defining innovation of the Renaissance. Invented by the architect Filippo Brunelleschi around 1415, it transformed the art of painting forever, making images —especially buildings and landscapes — appear much more lifelike and real.

Pigments are intensely colored powders made from a variety of materials: mostly mineral, some vegetable, and a few animal (mainly insect). Depending on the medium a pigment is mixed with, the result can be anything from oil paint to watercolor to pastel.

Renaissance means "rebirth" in French. It refers to a period in European history, roughly the fifteenth century, during which time huge advances were made in art, architecture, literature, and the sciences. Florence, Italy is famous for having been the most fertile city during this time, with Leonardo DaVinci and Michelangelo its most famous residents.

A saturated color is the opposite of pastel: rich, deep, and intense.

The plural of still life is still lifes. Really!

Surreal is French for "more than real." Surrealism was a movement that began in France after World War I that used bizarre imagery, often taken from dreams, to create strange, haunting, and sometimes funny works of art.

When something in a painting — or a film, or a novel, or a poem — stands in for something else, that's symbolism. Frida Kahlo is famous for her symbolistic paintings.

Once a painting is fully dry, an artist might choose to varnish it. This makes the surface more shiny, and can add a layer of protection against light scratches and other damage. In French, gallery openings are known as vernissages, or "varnishings," because in earlier times the artists would apply a coat of varnish to the new paintings on the first day of an exhibition.

Many ancient manuscripts were written on vellum, which was much more durable than paper.

Linseed oil, which is the medium for pigment in oil paint, is a viscous fluid: very slow to pour out of a jar. Honey is another good example of a liquid with high viscosity.