art and media vocabulary practice
Part One: Arts and media vocabulary definitions game
Choose one of the words below and explain it without using any of the words in the box until your partner guesses which one it is.
| abstract/ non-figurative | atelier/ studio | automatic pencil/ mechanical pencil | average |
| baby word | broadsheet | canvas | caption |
| charcoal | chisel | comic | cop show |
| costume drama | couch potato | cubism | dish/ satellite dish |
| expand/ increase/ rise | expensive/ dear/ prohibitive | glossy | graffiti |
| ink | negative | paintbrush | palette |
| pointillism | pop video/ music video | portrait/ group portrait | positive |
| pot/ vase | Roman building/ Roman architecture | sculpture/ statue | semi-abstract |
| still life | stone | subtitles | sunflowers |
| tabloid | the box | the seventies | water lilies |
| weather forecast | wood | your stars/ star signs/ astrology | zapper |
Ask your partner about any of the words you don’t understand and ask them to explain in English, then do the same with the whole class.
Part Two: Arts and media vocabulary drawing game
Choose one of the things above and draw it until your partner guesses. You can use numbers and symbols but no letters or words
Choose one of the things above and explain its appearance without mentioning its materials, colour or function so that your partner can draw it and work out what it is. It might help if you draw it first somewhere your partner can’t see and then describe that drawing to them. Things you might want to mention:
Shape Size (Usual) direction Positions Pattern
No pointing or gestures!
Draw lines across the list below to divide it into categories of useful language to describe art.
- Tiny/ Miniscule/ Minute/ Microscopic
- Huge/ Massive/ Gigantic/ Enormous
- Fairly big
- Life-sized
- Medium-sized
- Pretty small
- Standing
- Sitting
- Lying (down)/ Reclining
- Squatting
- Leaning
- Top right corner
- Bottom edge
- Right hand side
- Centre/ Core
- Platform/ Plinth
- Stand
- Base
- Wide/ Width/ Broad/ Breadth
- Narrow/ Narrowness
- Long/ Length
- High/ Height
- Thick/ Thickness
- Equilateral triangle
- Semi-circle
- Hourglass
- Rectangle/ oblong
- Ellipse/ oval/ egg shape
- Diamond
- Much wider
- By far the tallest
- A little bit thicker
- On
- Above
- Under
- In front of
- Opposite
- Behind
- Near/ Close
- Separate/ Distant
- Adjacent/ Touching
- Next to
- Pyramid
- Cone
- Cut off cone
- Tube/ Cylinder
- Spiral/ Helix
- Extended cube
- Hemisphere
- Straight
- Zigzag/ Spiky
- Parallel
- Curve/ Bend
- Wavy/ Wiggly
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Diagonal
- At ninety degrees/ At right angles
- At forty-five degrees
- Transparent/ Translucent
- Glowing/ Shining/ Emitting light
- Reflective/ Glossy
- Matt
- Leaf
- Pinecone
- Twig
- Bark
- Stone
Ask your partner and then the teacher to explain any you don’t understand. Can you add any more to those categories?
Work together to quickly draw each of those things.
Draw something that needs at least three things from the lists to describe and dictate it to your partner until they have drawn it correctly.
Choose one of the pictures on the page your teacher gives you that is easy to describe and do so until your partner has produced a reasonable picture of it. It’s not a guessing game, so you can mention what it is, its materials and colours etc – but no pointing or other gestures!
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