VOCABULARY

Aesthetics is understanding the nature, meaning and value of art.

Art Criticism is responding to and making judgments about the properties and qualities that exist in visual forms.

Art History is the study of artists and the contributions their art has made to culture and society.

Art Production is making art.

Collage is a picture made by sticking together pieces of paper, photographs (montage), or other two dimensional objects.

Color Wheel is an arrangement of colors showing their relationships. (Click on ‘Color Wheel’ from the home page for a classroom image).

Complimentary Colors are colors that are opposites on the color wheel. (Click on ‘Color Wheel’ from the home page for a classroom image).

Composition is the arrangement of objects, elements or forms according to the principles of art.

Diorama is a scenic representation in which sculpted figures and lifelike details are displayed.

Discipline-Based Art Education (DBAE) is an approach to teaching the Visual Arts. (See Aesthetics, Art Criticism, Art History, and Art Production).

Drawing is the creating of an object or form chiefly by means of lines.

Genre describes any category of artistic composition characterized by a particular style, form or content.

Illustration is a picture or diagram that helps make something clear or attractive.

Landscape is a representation, actual or fantasy, of land or sea whose chief subject is the general aspect of nature.

Media is the type of material, such as paint, clay, paper, etc., used in the creation of art.

Mosaic is a surface decoration made by inlaying small pieces of variously colored materials to form pictures or patterns.

Painting is the creation of an object or form chiefly by using liquid colors.

Pattern is a design based on the repetition of elements in a work of art.

Pigment is a powdered substance that is mixed with liquid and used to impart color to coating materials, such as paint and ink.

Pointillism is the application of small strokes or dots of color to a surface. From a distance the dots blend together to create an image.

Portrait is the representation of a person's face, appearance and/or character.

Primary Colors are the colors red, yellow and blue.

Printing is the transfer of an object or form onto paper by pressing a template coated with ink.

Prism is a transparent body that is bounded in part by two nonparallel plane faces and is used to refract or disperse a beam of light.

Sculpture is the representation of a form in the round or in relief by modeling clay, chiseling stone or casting in metal.

Secondary Colors are orange, green and purple created by combining two primary colors.

Sitter is the artist's model.

Still Life is a representation of inanimate objects, such as flowers or fruit, in a painting, drawing or photograph.

Stylized refers to something represented or designed according to a style or stylistic pattern, rather than according to nature or tradition.

Symmetry is the correspondence in size, shape and relative position of parts on opposite sides of a dividing line or median plane.

Tessellation describes a work of art that covers an infinite geometric plane without gaps or overlapping by use of congruent plane figures of one type or a few types.

Texture Rubbing is an image created by placing paper on top of a textured surface and rubbing with a flat crayon or charcoal.