IELTS Speaking Vocabulary - Talking about Art.

hello and welcome back i'm dennis with bestmytest.com and today we're going to continue our series for the ielts speaking test today's topic is artwork and how to talk about artwork we're going to talk about how to answer such questions as talk about a painting that you like or talk about a piece of art that you like or talk about a traditional piece of art that you like let's get started okay let's start by talking about different types of art the first we got is probably maybe the most common or the most well known as paintings and this is when you paint onto a canvas that's a painting now there's different styles of painting right and as through the history of humans the the kinds of paintings that were done have changed a lot and one very common one is called cubism cubism now it's called cubism because the things in cubistic paintings the people in cubistic paintings are very square there's a lot of sharp edges 90 degree angles things like that and this was popularized by picasso by pablo picasso okay next up we've got murals and murals are also a kind of painting except they are only on walls that's right so murals are a painting or paintings that are on walls now this could be inside your house you could have a whole wall that's a mural or it could be on on the street as you walk to walk down your city you might see a wall of a shop or something that has a mural on it it's an entire wall that is a painting that's a mural and you'll see these across the globe in cities all over the world all right next up we've got sculptures now sculptures like paintings have changed a lot throughout history from the greeks who were making sculptures out of granite and marble of their gods to modern post-modern art which is very abstract and without definite form and i like i prefer greek statues greek sculptures because i think they are a testament an epitome of high quality of skill and art and i don't really like postmodern because i have a hard time knowing what it is when i'm looking at it and you'll know if you ever find yourself looking at a post at a sculpture and scratching your head and you don't know what it is it might be a postmodern sculpture all right next up is a specific kind of sculpture and that's a bust and a bust is a head and usually the upper part of the chest it could go a little bit lower but usually goes to about right here and specifically we have a marble bust and that's a bust made out of marble you'll see these in museums and in in places in elegant places where people want to display the finer things in life so next up we have a portrait and a portrait is another kind of painting and a portrait is just a it's just a painting of a person it's a painting of a person now in modern times a portrait could also be a photo you can go have a portrait made with your family and that would be a photo so it's a painting or a photo okay and next up we have calligraphy and calligraphy just means an artistic style of writing and you see this a lot in in east asia in china or taiwan or hong kong where they have these um these character languages and people paint the characters in a very elegant and graceful way and you'll see these in asia you'll see these a lot on people's walls or in places of business to decorate decorate where they where they stay so it's a stylish writing okay the next one is not really a type of art it's it's a term that can be used for all kinds of art including music actually and that's masterpiece now a masterpiece is kind of just what it says it is a master piece of art and this is sort of the culmination the peak of an artist's work so beethoven's masterpiece was maybe the the ninth symphony and that was after him learning and getting better and better and better he made the symphony that was just the best it was the masterpiece so artists who who make a profession as artists they will all have a masterpiece and we also use this kind of um in everyday vernacular to talk about something that we really like it's like oh man i did you see that um that painting my my child did it was a masterpiece right it's not really a masterpiece but it's just a way to talk about how much you like something or how much you like a piece of art all right now that we've covered the types of art i'd like to talk about words and phrases that you can use on the ielts speaking test to talk about artwork to describe artwork let's have a look so the first is aesthetic aesthetic now aesthetic means related to beauty so you might say that that painting created an aesthetic pleasure for me and that means just a pleasure related to beauty there's another way to use aesthetic in in terms of art and that's to talk about um a certain school of art like cubism or abstract or postmar modern all of those schools have their own principles they have their own aesthetics so here you can use principles and aesthetics um you could they're synonyms so you might say a cubist aesthetic or a postmodern aesthetic that's the set of principles that characterize that kind of artwork so the next one is vivid and this is a very good word to use it is something you'll use a lot in paintings and it means that when something has a very bright color or a very striking contrast something that jumps out at you it has a it's very vivid so if you're at the museum and you see a painting that you like maybe it's an abstract painting with all different colors and you might say those vivid colors really evoke a feeling of nostalgia for example so vivid means colors that are very bright very striking and really really catch your eye so the next is elegant now we can use this in artwork but we can also use it in in other places and it means graceful or stylish right so graffiti you know if you see a mural of graffiti on the wall by your street that it might be beautiful but it's probably not elegant elegant is usually reserved for kind of a higher quality um of art a higher a higher gracefulness of art so you might say um the elegant looking at the painting of that woman um her elegant dress gave a feeling of sophistication to the piece for example okay so the next one is restrained restrained and that means holding back a little bit right so this is not a word that you use just for artwork you can say you know i have a restrained attitude and that means i kind of hold myself back and so a restrained piece of art is kind of is the kind of art that you can tell the artist isn't going all for it they're kind of holding something back they're kind of being modest in how they present their work or how they made their work so let's let's put this into an ielts question to an ielts context so if you were asked tell me about a painting that you like you can answer something like this um last time i was at the art museum i found myself surrounded by so many paintings they gave a very aesthetic atmosphere to the place and i was really admiring the vivid colors and the elegant paintings of people from all around the world but one thing that really struck me was how restrained some of the painters seemed to be as if they didn't want to give away everything at once all right let's talk about a couple verbs the first one is to depict and to depict means to tell what an artwork is about to tell what an artwork is about for example i could say yesterday i was at the art museum and i really enjoyed the painting that depicted the struggle between angels and devils in the in the bible story or i might say this painting depicts what life was like in the 1920s in in rural america for example so that's how you depict it's pretty simple just what is the painting talking about what is the artwork talking about and the next means is to evoke to evoke and that means to create a feeling inside somebody that means to create a feeling inside somebody so painting good artwork definitely should evoke some kind of feeling in you and so you might be standing at a looking at a statue of a greek god right and that might evoke a feeling of strength or a feeling of awe right so if you were asked to talk about a sculpture on the ielts test you might say i was standing at the greek exhibit in the museum and i was looking at this at the statue of david and i i had this incredible feeling it the statue evoked a feeling of of wonder and amazement as i just looked at it for for a really long time all right so the next is to be characterized by to be characterized by now we usually use this to talk about schools of art so and there's a bunch of them post-modern modern abstract realism uh cubism but like i said with aesthetic how each of those schools have their own set of principles so we can use these like to be characterized by to talk about those principles so for example um gothic architecture gothic architecture is characterized by very tall spires and very um very sharp arches right if you if you see a church if you're in europe and you see a church with a very sharp arch like that it's probably gothic why because gothic arctic architecture is characterized by sharp arches so use that to talk about the principles of a school of art okay so the next is juxtaposition and you can also turn this into you can also turn this into a verb to be juxtaposed and that just really just means that really just means that two things are next to each other and they're next to each other to create some kind of contrast now a lot of people make the mistake that it's opposites like black and white you know man woman that kind of thing but it's not juxtaposed just means that they're next to each other to create a contrast now it could be opposites but it doesn't have to be opposites so for example you might if you're talking about um a painting that you saw at the art museum and you might re you might say i really appreciate the way the artist juxtaposed the dark night sky next to the very light-colored lake that that evoked a feeling of confusion in me for example okay just a couple more now so next is brush stroke and it's what it says it is it's a struck stroke of a brush right and you can use modifiers adjectives in front of this to talk about it like maybe broad brush strokes and that would just mean that the painter is using a very thick brush and and not being very fine with it or it could be very fine brush strokes that you can't even see the brush strokes so that's something specific to paintings okay so the next one is another verb and that is to epitomize to epitomize now this can also be a noun and you can say it is an epitome of an epitome of so what is an epitome of what does to epitomize mean and that just means to be the perfect example of to be the perfect example of so i don't know if you've ever been to spain but in spain there is a there's a church called the sagrada familia and it is the epitome of gothic architecture it is the epitome of gothic architecture it is a marvelous marvelous cathedral if you ever get a chance highly recommend you go to check that out okay so you can use epitom epitomize an epitome in in your daily life you don't have to reserve it for artwork so um yeah it's a very good good word to use it really ups your vocabulary to the next level all right last but not least is contemporary and contemporary can be an adjective or a noun as an adjective it just means something that is of the present time of recent times so you might say that jackson pollock is a contemporary artist and that just means he's of this recent recent period time but as a noun it means that two things happened at the same time or two artists were making art at the same time so for example you could talk about i really appreciate pablo picasso and salvador dali and i really enjoyed both their paintings and then i was surprised to learn that they were contemporaries and that just means i was surprised to learn that they worked at the same time and had an influence on each other so that's what it means to be a contemporary all right let's put it into an ielts context let's imagine that you were asked to talk about a sculpture that you saw and enjoyed you might answer something like this the other day i was walking through the park and i saw a contemporary sculpture i think it was post-modern i'm not sure but it really evoked a feeling of nostalgia inside me and the best part of it was the juxtaposition of the metal of the sculpture with the grass and the greenery all around it that really added a contrast that i found enjoyable and i really think it was an epitome of how society should build cities so that they're both functional and beautiful okay i want to share with you a couple key phrases that will help you talk about paintings or photographs in a much more intelligent way so the first is in the foreground in the foreground and then in the background so foreground background what does that mean well a lot of paintings depict a three-dimensional space they show a three-dimensional space so in the foreground just means what's closest to the viewer so right now i'm in the foreground i'm in the foreground and the whiteboard is in the background right so in the foreground means what is closest to the viewer and in the background means that thing that is farther away from the viewer and you can use this for paintings or for photographs the next phrase is to be prominent in the now here i got artwork because you can you can say sculpture you can say painting you can say mural you could even say symphony you can apply it to music as well and to be prominent in it just means the most noticeable the most important part of that artwork let me give you an example so let's suppose that you were asked the question what's your favorite painting and why do you like it well i might answer something like my favorite painting is the last supper and i really like it because you can see very clearly in the foreground you can see the table with the 12 disciples and jesus is very prominent in the center of the painting but also what i really like about it is that in the background you can see very interesting details about what life was like back then that's why i liked the last supper all right i just got a few more words that i want to talk about paintings and the reason we're talking so much about paintings is because that's the most common kind of art it's the kind you're going to be talking about the most and you'll probably be asked about the most so the first is palette so a palette means two things it means the um the board that the painter holds and it's kind of they hold it in their hand like that and it's a big shape like that and they put the paint on it that's the palette but a palette is also the range of colors that an artist might have on the board so maybe the artist has a bunch of blues some grays and some blacks that would be his palette for that painting so the palette is actually the thing the paint is on and it's the range of colors that the artist uses the next is canvas and that is just the material that is used to paint on right and you can find them they could be framed they could be on a wooden frame or they could just be rolled up you can get canvas in a few different ways but paintings happen usually on canvases and brushstroke brush stroke we already covered it can be a fine brush stroke it can be a broad brush stroke now there's a couple other words i want to add here and this is oil acrylic and watercolor and these are just the basic these are the three major kinds of paint that a painter uses maybe they use oil paint or acrylic paint or watercolor paint and as you become more more experienced in talking about paint you'll be able to to notice the difference and notice which one is which all right that's our lesson for today about artwork we talked about types of art we talked about vocabulary that you can use to describe art for more ielts speaking questions please visit our website at bestmytest.com all right i'll see you guys in the next one

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Length: 20min 15sec (1215 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 16 2021