Thick paint raised above the surface of the painting. Traditionally in oil painting the darks are thin and transparent. The lights are thicker and opaque. The very lightest whites were impasted as the thickest paint of all.
During the last hundred years it has become common for artists to apply impasto effects in all parts of a picture, often in an attempt to emphasize brush-marks as characteristic of Vincent Van Gogh. Some painters make all the paint heavily impasted, sometimes to great effect.
