Impasto

Impasto is a painting technique in which paint is applied thickly enough for brushstrokes or palette-knife marks to remain visible. Its raised surface makes texture part of the image.

Oil painting: A painting method that uses pigments bound in drying oils, commonly linseed oil. Slow-drying oil paint can be layered and shaped into substantial ridges.
Vincent van Gogh: A Dutch Post-Impressionist painter known for expressive color and energetic brushwork. His thick, directional strokes make surface texture carry emotional force.
Pigment: A colored, insoluble substance dispersed in a medium to give paint its color. Impasto is made from paint whose pigment is carried in a thick medium.
Glazing (painting technique): A painting technique that layers thin, transparent paint over a dried underlying layer. Glazing builds optical depth through transparency rather than raised paint.
Palette knife: A blunt, flexible tool used to mix paint and apply it to a surface. Its edge and broad blade form distinct ridges and sculptural strokes.
Rembrandt: A Dutch painter and etcher of the seventeenth century, renowned for portraits and dramatic use of light. He used raised highlights to give selected passages a striking physical presence.
Binder (material science): A substance that holds particles together and adheres them to a surface. The binder gives paint cohesion as thick marks dry or cure.
Scumbling: A painting technique that applies a thin, broken layer of opaque or semitransparent paint over another layer. Scumbling exposes underlying color through broken coverage, not thick relief.
Brushstroke: A mark made by moving a brush across a painting surface. Impasto preserves the stroke’s physical shape instead of flattening it.
Frank Auerbach: A British painter known for densely worked portraits and city scenes. His heavily built surfaces show impasto as a sustained process of revision.

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