how do i say "washes" in spanish? it is an art term meaning to use paint that is very watered down?
i.e. "the artist use wash to fill in the background of the painting"
4 Answers
According to my dictionary, you can say "dar una mano de pintura a las paredes" for "give the walls a paint wash". It was listed under "art". I don´t know if it helps or not...
If you understand a lot of Spanish, you can try to find technical vocabulary like this on wikipedia. For example, look up "watercolor", then click the link on the left to get the page in Spanish. Unfortunately you need to understand both Spanish and the subject matter to make this work, and I don´t know enough about painting. Here´s the Spanish page if you want to try acuarela
The phrase "capas transparentes" stands out int the reference given by Kattya above. I think if you read through that you will find what you are looking for.
I am not an artist, by I know that a painter will dilute the paint with thiner and would say that, that paint was "rebajada" .
Also the same painter will refer to "white wash" as a "blanqueado" in many Latin American countries a lot of the tree trunks are painted this way.
You can also find helpful information in SpanishDict's dictionary entry for wash, which has this to say...
To wash a picture -> bañar una pintura o dar una mano de color transparente sobre otra
