• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
Click for our sponsors
  • Themes
  • Springboards
  • Artists
  • Activities
  • Videos
  • Gallery
  • Search
  • Shop

Getting Started

In order for us to start talking about art – and all its many manifestations, meanings, methods, modes, styles, stages, stories, facets, formulations, features, and even facts – we need language with which to do so.  

It needs to be a “language” in two senses: 

One is a language of words – we need the right words to discuss concepts, precisely pinpoint ideas, describe imagery, and articulate our responses. 

The other is the visual language of the art form itself – the “art language” used by an artist to create the artwork. in other words, just as a written story is made up of words and sentences, an artwork has parts that make up the whole and convey its meaning.

We call these components the elements of art. 

We begin by learning about some of these elements, focussing on line. 

How Images Speak

  • Springboards: Why look at art?
  • Springboards: What is ‘abstract art’?
  • Activities: Looking at pictures, finding the words
  • Springboards: The birth of abstract painting
Fred Schimmel

Speaking in line

  • Springboards: How does line make meaning?
  • Activities: Drawing the line
  • Activities: Lines of gesture
  • Artists: Marcus Neustetter
  • Activities: Drawing Sound

Abstract Art in South Africa

  • Artists: Douglas Portway
  • Artists: Louis Maqhubela
  • Artists: Bill Ainslie
  • Artists: Ernest Mancoba
  • Artists: Larry Scully
  • Activities: Talk About Abstraction

Speaking in Colour

  • Activities: The colour paper chase
  • Activities: Creating secondary colours from primary colours
  • Activities: Creating tertiary colours from primary colours
Contact us
Join Imbali Artbook Teachers' Forum

developed by Blackman Rossouw | Copyright ©Imbali 2020 See Details

Join Imbali Artbook Teachers' Forum on Facebook.

Get the full resource for your school. Buy the book.