Visual textures

The Year sixes have been learning recently about Modernism in their Arts lessons. Modernism was a movement in the arts in the first half of the 20th century that rejected traditional values and techniques and emphasized the importance of individual experience. It supported innovation and experimentation with a tendency to abstraction and with an emphasis on materials, techniques and processes. One of these techniques was the use of visual textures. 

Abril Bucero – 6º C

Ainhoa Barderas – 6º D

Álvaro Franco – 6º B

Daniel Ruíz-Conejo – 6º B

Daniela Barca – 6º B

Guilherme G´ómez – 6ºB

Inés Chaves – 6º B

Lara Elena – 6º A

Our students have observed the painting “Houses in Unterach on Lake Atter”, which shows a landscape of a small town near a lake. It was painted by Gustav Klimt (1916). He was an Austrian symbolist painter and was one of the pioneers of Austrian Modernism. Gustav Klimt's pictures reflect the artistic and scientific discoveries and developments that shaped the period. In some of his paintings, as in the example that we have already mentioned, he created visual textures by the repetition of small brushstrokes, dots or other shapes.

Texture is the physical surface structure, this means, how an object feels when we touch it. Real textures are those that can be touched, whereas visual textures are those that are simulated in a picture, giving us an impression by simply looking at the painting. Visual textures are not 3-D, but playing with light and paint, we can create a perfect atmosphere that transmits to us a similar impression to a real texture.

Laura Santos – 6º B

Pelayo Rami – 6º B

Santiago González – 6º B

Sara Marín – 6º C

Sofía Heredero – 6º C

By observing the sample of the famous artist mentioned above, our students had to colour their own version of the painting using different visual textures. It seems easy, but it isn’t, as they could only use coloured pencils to carry out this task, which is more difficult than if they use acrylics, as the original author did. Here you can see some paintings that our students did. I hope you enjoy them!