A Great Work of art described in words with detailed delivery instructions

A Great Work of art described in words
This resource offers a very detailed description of how the activity can be set up and managed to engage your students and get the best out of them. The main skill being taught here is descriptive writing. The way language is used to present this lesson is key to the success of it and to assist in this there are included transcripts of the actual words you could use to explain the stages of the lesson to your students.
Overview
In this resource the idea is for your students to each find a great piece of art that they admire, or use an image that you have provided for convenience. They are to describe it in words and read their description to the class so that the class can imagine how the painting looks, before they actually view it. Then show the piece of art to the class and discuss how the actual piece of art compares to the image they had in their minds created from the written description. Students seem to enjoy this as it highlights the power of words to evoke visual images.
Materials required:
A set of a variety of suitable printed colour pictures to be distributed as one between two. Have copies of the pictures on your computer ready to be projected onto the screen for the whole class to see at the right time, that is to say, after the written description has been read out loud and imagined by the whole class. You could select examples of art across a range of time and place.