high-key

high-key

Describing something that is done or felt in a significant or dramatic way. Modeled on the phrase "low-key." OK, yes, I'm high-key obsessed with this picture, but isn't it so pretty?
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • key in
  • off key
  • off-key
  • wired
  • wiring
  • hot wire
  • transpose (something) from (something) (in)to (something)
  • key off
  • transpose (something) to (something)
  • under lock and key
References in periodicals archive
The plan was to initiate a simulated power loss five to six miles west of Bay Minette and let the student handle the simulated power loss with a wave-off, before reaching high-key at 3,000-feet AGL.
The prints in "Some Incredible Journeys" feature Cookson's intricately layered prints of city scenes, all graphically sophisticated and using an unusual high-key palette of blues, yellows and purples.
THE ICING ON THE CAKE Finally, I gave the class members chalk or pastel sticks in yellow, cream or white to work the high-key accents into their drawings.
Finally, the large overlapping object will help define compositional space if students apply lighter, high-key colors inside the object's framework and darker, low-key values outside.
We have journeyed to Sweden and Chicago, we've been televised for high-key events like the Last Night of the Proms and we've even been backing singers for Christina Aguilera at one of the biggest showbiz events ever to be held in Scotland.
He uses aspects of familiar objects in high-key colours and malleable forms - the curve of a seat, the rail around a bar, or a tile of rubber floor covering - and exposes its essence by using it in an alternative way.
"It can easily be paired with wood for a warm, endearing feel, or with bright metal for a high-key modern aura," he says.
American Impressionism is represented by the lightly brushed, high-key works that such artists as Chase and Hassam executed in the late 1800s; Realism, by the darkertoned urban scenes that Henri, Sloan, and their colleagues of the so-called "Ashcan School" produced beginning about 1905.
High-key in tones, the photograph is ambiguous but emotionally taut.
I was beautiful, I was smiling, I was gurgling gleefully...and I was high-key hairy.
The new Instax Mini 9 is also equipped with a close-up lens in addition to features such as automatic exposure measurement for aperture settings and high-key mode that enables users to take brighter photos - perfect for portraits.
Equally transfixing, a more recent post-AfriCOBRA trio of body-scale paintings in acrylic centered on the depiction of musicians and their instruments amid a swirling consonance of almost baroque, high-key geometric patterning and deliriously tessellated fills.
She does much with it, ranging from crusty to drippy, from water-colour effects to patches of high gloss, the hues often high-key reds and yellows countered by sobering darks and leavened with a tart and non-fleshy Gustonesque pink.
Daniel Mindel introduces a more radioactively luminous palette to proceedings--one of several ways in which Webb has dropped many of the real-world affectations of the first film in favor of a more high-key comicbook story world.