Earth Colors - Pigments, such as yellow ochre and umber, are obtained by mining; usually, they are metal oxides. Also, see color, color wheel, and warm colors.
Ébauche - Type of under-painting or oil sketch. Unlike the monochromatic grisaille underpainting, which is used in preparation for the glazing of color layers, ébauche is used to block in color with thin paint and helps the artist connect color with form so that further decisions on hue, value, and chroma can be made.
Edge - The painterly control of blurriness, especially along the boundary of a form, helps immerse a form in a background, creating a sense of depth or suggesting dim illumination.
Edges - Where two things meet. Also, the edge may refer to a quality sensed in artworks other than a smooth decorativeness; that may be a sense of something unusual, disturbing, controversial, or in any of many other ways more demanding of the audience. Also, see aliased and anti-aliased, ancipital, align and alignment, avant-garde, banausic, bland, butt, definition, dissonance, feather, French curve, frisson, grotesque, incongruity, fascinating, juxtaposition, margin, marginalia, perpendicular, signature, straight, tangent, tension, and theater.
Elegance - Refinement, grace, and beauty. Tasteful opulence in form, decoration, or presentation. Restraint and grace of style.
Elements of Design - Basic components or "elements" of an artwork, including line, shape, value, Space, Size, texture, and color.
Ellipse - A plane curve, especially a conic section whose plane is not parallel to the axis, base, or generatrix of the intersected cone or the locus of points for which the sum of the distances from each point to two fixed points is equal.
Elongate - Stretching an object or figure lengthwise, thus altering its proportion and making it look taller and more slender; a distortion often interpreted as stylization.
Emboss or Embossing - A designed surface in which parts are raised.
Empathy - Sympathy for another's situation, feelings, and motives. An imaginative projection of one's own feelings to an object or event.
Emphasis - Refers to the created center of interest, the place in an artwork where your eye first lands. Emphasis is a principle of design.
Engraving - Printing technique in which an intaglio image is produced by cutting a metal plate or box directly with a sharp engraving tool. The incised lines are inked and printed with heavy pressure.
Etching - Printing technique in which a metal plate is first covered with an acid-resistant material, then worked with an etching needle to create an intaglio image. The exposed metal is eaten away in an acid bath, creating depressed lines that are later inked for printing. This technique was thought to have been developed by Daniel Hopfer (1493-1536). Etching surpassed engraving as the most popular graphic art during the active years of Rembrandt and Hercules Segher in the 17th century, and it remains one of the most versatile and subtle printing techniques today.
Exaggeration - Showing something in a way that enlarges or overemphasizes its importance.
Express - To communicate one's thoughts or feelings through words, gestures, or art.
