How to Beautifully Describe Porcelain Works of Art with Vivid Language
Do your students struggle to find the right adjectives to describe art? If you want to beautifully describe a work of art, you use vivid language to create images in your readers’ minds. This will allow them to appreciate your descriptions even more than if you simply included the actual image itself!
Figurative language helps students find the right words for describing art, and it can also help them to come up with better writing in general. Let’s look at some examples of how figurative language can help students to write more effectively and beautifully about porcelain works of art.
In this post, we will be using images of porcelain works of art as a prompt to get the vivid language juices flowing. Words for describing art may come to you, the teacher, quite instinctively. However, students need systematic and thought-provoking prompts to learn how to do this. Of course, showing them interesting and new works of art get this job done!
The Importance of Teaching Kids to Use Beautiful Words
Figurative language is a skill that needs to be learned. It isn’t something innate; it has to be taught and practiced. Teaching kids to use beautiful words teaches them how they can make their own work stand out and make it even more interesting than just using plain old descriptions.
There’s a reason why someone will notice "He was as tall as a tree” when they read it, but pass right over "He was tall."
Good grief! Students always default to the most common words possible if we don't push them to explore vivid language. We must help them discover vivid adjectives to describe art.
So, what if, instead, we could get our students to say something like, "He was as tall as an ancient redwood or elm?" Trees are massive, awe-inspiring creations in nature; we want to help our students see how exciting and valuable it is to use words to paint a picture like that too!
Let's use some works of art to get the job done.
Looking at Works of Porcelain with Students
Looking at porcelain works of art and talking about them can be a lot more engaging than just using figurative language worksheets or a similes and metaphors worksheet.
Worksheets have a time and a place where their use is appropriate and necessary; but, worksheets are also mostly just boring!
So, instead, let's look at a beautiful image from my friend Antoinette Badenhorst's website.
Antoinette integrates ceramic art lessons to students of all ages, with history, mathematics, language arts, social studies, music, chemistry, and physics. Antoinette offers her artistic services regardless of the work space, equipment and available materials. (Mississippi Arts Commission)
I just have to put in a friend brag here, too. Antoinette lives very near me. I've been lucky to know her for several years. In fact, one of the very first arts workshops I ever took as a teacher learning to integrate the arts into her classroom was at Antoinette's pottery studio. So, I have nothing but glowing things to share about this wonderful friend.
This image shows a sculpted porcelain bowl. (Photography by Koos Badenhorst.)
Here are a couple of ways to help your students really look closely at the bowls for the works of art they are:
Feeling the Work:
No, they can't actually touch it, but they can pretend to. Have them take their finger and air trace the edges of these works. Make sure they look around the edges that make the top of the bowl. There's a wavy edge around the back of the bowl and large dips and tall points around the front. Students can draw the line as they see it in the image. Have them talk about it using these questions as prompts:
What did the finger do?
How did the movement feel?
If you were to draw this on paper, what movements would you use?
How would the air drawing and the actual drawing be similar and different?
You can do this same activity with your students regarding the lines on the front of the bowl that make up the design.
Next, draw the students' attention to the texture. They can identify what might be actual texture and what is implied texture due to it being a photograph. Have a discussion on the differences here.
2. List Making:
Have the students make a list of every word that was said during the activity above. This is a great activity to have students pair up to do before sharing with the whole group. Then, you can make an anchor chart with all of the words.
Make sure your students know that there is no right or wrong answer—simply learning how to think about what they see is enough for now. However, when you do hear a very plain, boring, used-up old word, ask them to say something else. In other words, don't write down words like "pretty." Make them immediately think of something else.
From here, you can have students write about the work of art. Let's get a little deeper into that now.
Helping Students Use Similes and Metaphors to Describe What They See
Students are often confused by figurative language, as they don’t understand that similes and metaphors aren’t meant to be taken literally. If a student describes a sculpture as beautiful, for example, ask them to describe it in more detail. Is it beautiful like a flower? Or beautiful like an angel?
Is "beautiful" even the right word to begin with? It might not be. Perhaps the trouble they have with similes and metaphors is they aren't starting with the right descriptor.
When they begin writing, have them go back to the word lists they generated and find a new word to use instead of beautiful. They will likely find a better word for what they are trying to say. For example, they might actually be trying to say it looks delicate.
If they were actually trying to say the bowl is delicate, their metaphors and similes will be clearer and less literal. For instance, I once had a student come up with "The bowl was as delicate as a newborn baby." That is so much more vivid than the original "beautiful like a flower." They've also dipped their toes in personification here, which is really exciting!
This is a great example of why I like to keep art prints in my classroom (and why I think every classroom, even core classes, should have them)! I reference my art prints often when we talk about vivid and description language. You can even create a mini word wall around these portraits that your students can refer back to, and use time and time again.
If you want to learn more about the benefits to including art prints in your classroom, I have a masterclass which explains how art prints can benefit you classroom and how to find the right ones for your specific subject area.
How Kids Can Use Bold, Specific, and Emotive Words to Talk About Art
Using figurative language is one way kids can learn how to effectively express their thoughts. Figurative language is speech or writing that makes comparisons between two things that aren’t usually compared, such as "The fire hissed like a thousand snakes."
Alliteration is using words that begin with similar sounds, such as fresh flowers; assonance is using words in which vowel sounds match up, but consonants are different, such as "go slow over the road." Generally, elementary students find alliteration easier to use.
Words that start the same are easier to generate. Having them generate lists of words that start with the same sound can be a powerful strategy to get them to use vivid language.
For instance, in the original student example, the student developed a list of words that begin like delicate: dark, dead, dangerous, desperate.
This strategy helps students start targeting the best words to communicate their ideas. It helps them be as specific and as intentional as possible in their word choices.
Getting Kids to Understand How to Paint a Picture with Their Words
At this point, students should have a lot of options for words they can use in their writing. The fifth grade student I've been talking about throughout this post eventually composed this finished piece of writing:
"The small, porcelain bowl tells a familiar story. The curves wrap around like the desperate fingers of the Grinch. Dangerously searching for ways to do harm to his neighbors, the Grinch points one long finger up and out. They don't know that he is really as delicate as a newborn baby. They will figure this out and help him learn to love Christmas after all."
BOOM! Mic drop! I literally can't even! That student started with an idea of the bowl reminding him of the Grinch, but couldn't really explain it or produce any vivid language around the idea until he participated in all of these strategies around the work of art.
It's Really All About Language Development
The key to becoming a better writer is learning how to use figurative language. Using a work of art as a prompt for developing vivid language is an excellent way to get students of all ages writing.
Using the work of art taught the students how to really look at something on a deeper level and then sus out words they'd not normally be able to access. It was a fun and engaging experience that got the students excited about the writing as well.
Because they were engaged with the artwork, they wanted to take the time to find the best words they possibly could to describe it. This is all part of the process of language development. We just made it much more fun and more systematic!
Got Questions? Thoughts? Hungry for More?
Let me know if you have thoughts or questions about this. I love to hear how you use my ideas in your classroom. I’m happy to chat more about the ideas as well! You can always hit me up on Instagram!
If you’re interested in learning more about how to get your students to look at art, check out the Looking at Art with Kids eBook in our TpT Store.