SCUMBLING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Scumbling

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noun

Scumbling n.

(Fine Arts)

(a)

A mode of obtaining a softened effect, in painting and drawing, by the application of a thin layer of opaque color to the surface of a painting, or part of the surface, which is too bright in color, or which requires harmonizing.

(b)

In crayon drawing, the use of the stump.

The color so laid on. Also used figuratively. "Shining above the brown scumbling of leafless orchards."

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Etymology of 'Scumbling'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Scumbling" Quotes from Famous Books

... our painters a century ago to achieve the effects of the old masters by imitation when they should have been illustrating a faith of their own. Contemplate, if you can bear it, the dull daubs of Hilton and Haydon, who knew so much more about drawing and scumbling and glazing and perspective and anatomy and 'marvellous foreshortening' than Giotto, the latchet of whose shoe they were nevertheless not worthy to unloose. Compare Mozart's Magic Flute, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Wagner's Ring, all of them reachings-forward ...

— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... pictures besides colour which can be seen with indifferent light. But to match clear tint against clear tint, and put together harmonies, there is no getting away from the problem! It is all sheer, hard exercise; you want all your light for it; there is no slurring or diluting, no "glazing" or "scumbling," and it should form a part of the teaching, and yet it never does so, in our academies and schools of art. A curious matter this is, that a painter's training leaves this great resource of knowledge neglected, leaves the whole thing to memory. ...

— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall