Emotions
Uncover how artists and works of art express emotions and elicit emotional reactions.
Our cross curricular resources make connections between art and other subjects, encourage new ways of thinking, and inspire art making. Send us feedback or propose a resource.
About this resource
Use art from our artists and collection to discover how artists have conveyed human feelings, reactions and sensations.
Using this resource
You can use this resource in class or at the RA. You can use the whole page or incorporate one or two sections into your existing teaching plans.
This resource uses the following elements to encourage students to consider how to express and interpret emotions:
The face
Understand different types of emotions and how to express the whole range in art.
Relationships
Find out how artists portray different emotions to describe the relationships between people.
Colour
Examine how artists use colour and shape to convey different emotions.
Curriculum links
Alongside subjects like geography, english, mathematics, and science, art and design underpins all of our resources
• Different types of relationships
• How relationships may affect health and wellbeing, including mental health
• Healthy minds, including emotional wellbeing, resilience, mental health
• Use relevant strategies to build their vocabulary
• Articulate and justify answers, arguments, and opinions
• Give well-structured descriptions, explanations, and narratives for different purposes, including for expressing feelings
• Participate in discussions, presentations, performances, role play, improvisations and debates
• Consider and evaluate different viewpoints
Facial expressions
Human faces are the most direct and obvious way to express and communicate our different emotions. For centuries, artists have tried to catalogue and identify different human emotions within different facial expressions.
Learn together
Let’s see how:
• faces express specific emotions
• artists have used facial expressions to illustrate different emotions
• different emotions were historically named and classified
Look together
• How do you think this person is feeling?
• Apart from their expression, what else helps create the emotion in this image?
• When might you feel like this?
Feeling Cross
Thomas Banks made this chalk drawing in the late 18th century. It conveys forceful emotions! The dark colours and strong lighting accentuates the feelings of sternness and resolution in the sitter’s face. While this image was initially made as a portrait, it would’ve been a useful model for the artist to use again when depicting a character in anger.
Look together
• How do you think this person is feeling?
• What’s she doing with her face to express that feeling? Can you mimic her expression?
• Is it a pleasant emotion?
Feeling Thoughtful
This small oil painting on board shows a contemplative young girl lost in her own thoughts. The tilt of her head and her downward gaze away from the viewer, make her look calm and serene. The use of muted colours and lack of background adds to this sense of quiet introspection. The artist painted many portraits of children whom she encountered on her extensive travels to Jamaica, Asia and Africa.
Make it your own
Using a globe, trace the journey from Jamaica to London. As a class, discuss how you would feel if you were to arrive in London from a distant location for the first time.
Look together
• How do you think this person is feeling?
• What are three things you notice in this image?
• If the face was removed from the painting, would it still feel happy? Why?
Feeling Happy
This painting by Young Artists' Summer Show artist Bella, is of her mum. Bella writes: 'I've never painted a portrait of someone else before but I wanted to be brave and paint something new.' While the face is very simply described using bold and exaggerated shapes, it’s instantly recognisable as a portrait. The bright red smiling mouth and the use of joyful colours and shapes in the background help express happiness.
Emotional Rollercoaster
This video from the Young Artists' Summer show is by Frederick, Age 10; Isaac, Age 7; Gabriel, Age 10; Riccardo, Age 6; Carolina, Age 9; Anna, Age 11; Robert, Age 10; Eleanor, Age 10; Samuel, Age 9. The artists say: "This piece is called ‘Emotional Rollercoaster: a post lockdown movie.’ Every character illustrates a particular emotion - disgust, shame, etc. The names of the contributors and their emotions are in the credits. Enjoy! (Sorry about all the puking, but that's what the lockdowns did to us...)"
Visit the RA
This large painting is a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Last Supper which Leonardo painted on the walls of a convent refectory in Milan.
This copy is nearly the same size as the vast original and was painted not long after Leonardo completed his work which was deteriorating due to his experimental use of paints.
This prized copy has given artists and art historians an important record of what Leonardo’s masterpiece would have looked like.
Betrayal
The painting represents a scene from the New Testament.
It describes the moment when Jesus gathers his closest disciples to dinner to reveal that he will be betrayed by one of them.
As Christ describes this act of deception, the Apostles react with varying emotions including, amazement, anger, and confusion.
Different feelings
Artists celebrated and often copied this work.
They were especially interested in how da Vinci expressed so many different emotions in the Apostle's faces and gestures.
Each of the thirteen individual facial expressions were made into prints and have been used as models for artists ever since.
Look together
• What do you think is going on in this painting?
• What do you think each person is thinking? Are they all experiencing the same emotion?
• How do their hands and faces convey their different reactions?
Relationships
While emotions are personal, sharing our feelings is how we build and define our relationships.
Artists represent different emotions and feelings to describe the relationships between people.
Artists use facial expressions, poses, postures and gestures to show who people are to each other and how they feel about one another.
Learn together
Thinking about how our emotions help us construct and demonstrate our relationships, let’s see how:
• Relationships between people can be described by the emotions and feelings they share.
• How artists have represented different kinds of relationships.
• How poses, postures and gestures can describe different kinds of emotional relationships.
Look together
• Imagine your eyes are ears—what can you hear in this painting?
• Can you describe the relationship between the people in the image?
• Why do you think the artist selected this particular moment as a subject?
Parent and Child
YASS artist Annabel made this painting using a photograph from the artist’s family album. describes this image as ‘A painting of me as a baby with my dad’.
This image captures an intimate and playful moment that expressed the bond between parents and children. The father’s loving gaze and supporting gesture of lifting the child up, emphasises the parent’s role as a carer and protector.
Look together
• What emotions are these two figures feeling?
• Do you ever feel this way towards others?
• Do you think the artist has changed their appearance? If so, why?
Rivals
These two pen and ink figures belong to an album of caricatures by the artists William Daniell and George Dance.
Made to entertain the artists, their family, and their friends, Daniell and Dance exaggerate the figures' emotions.
Depicting the faces in profile allows for greater distortions and comic appearance.
Because they're facing one another, they seem to interact in an atmosphere of rivalry and mistrust.
This image challenges the viewer to decide on their relationship to one another.
Make it your own
In groups of four, choose two students to role play a disagreement using as many emotions as they can, and two students to sketch them. Once finished, place the sketches alongside one another and enjoy the comical effect!
Look together
• How well do you think these girls know each other?
• How do their gestures and faces describe their relationship?
• Who in your life might you hold in this way?
Siblings
This is an image by the printmaker Sir Francis Haden of his twin daughters Sarah and Jane.
With their arms around each other's shoulders, their physical proximity describes their emotional closeness.
Clearly captured in a moment of happiness and contentment, both girls are smiling and looking ahead.
Visit the RA
This circular marble relief sculpture by Michelangelo is one of the RA’s most celebrated works of art.
Left unfinished by the renaissance sculptor Michelangelo, it depicts the Virgin Mary along with her son Jesus and her nephew John the Baptist.
A common religious subject in Christian Europe, the subject of a mother and child is nonetheless universal and intimate.
Michelangelo challenges the tradition of a more static embrace, by using a dynamic pose. We can see the Christ child wriggling across his mother’s lap!
On the left, the slightly older child John is holding and presenting what appears to be a goldfinch. While Mary looks on serenely, Christ turns his face and looks with uncertainty at the little bird which was used as a symbol of Christ’s future death.
Look together
• How do you think this work of art was made?
• What do you think is the relationship between the three figures?
• How has the artist described how they feel about one another?
Colour and emotions
Different colours affect our emotions in different ways. We also associate certain colours with different feelings. For instance, we talk about feeling blue when sad, being red with anger, feeling green with envy.
In this section we will look at how artists have used colours, as well as abstract shapes and marks, to both describe different emotions and elicit different emotional responses from their audiences.
Learn together
We'll explore:
• colour as a language of feelings
• how colour is used to express different emotions
• how abstract shapes are used to express emotions
• how different kinds of marks are used to express emotions
Look together
• Can you name all the colours and shapes in this painting?
• How does this painting make you feel?
• Imagine this image in black and white, would it feel different?
Feeling Bright
This large-scale painting by Vanessa Jackson is abstract, colourful and dynamic. This painting doesn't represent anything in particular, but it does use colours and shapes to express emotions.
While paintings are static, the repetition of narrow rectangles and their placement at an angle creates a sense of movement and rhythm.
To paint Look on the Bright Side, the artist started with the sap green colour of the background, which reminded her of autumn in America, and then chose the orange-red to counter it, then the blue to react against that. She says 'colour’s never static: colour’s always moving. So the forms are moving'.
Look together
• Can you find and count all the circles in this painting?
• How does this painting make you feel?
• Thinking about the past week, which day does this image illustrate for you?
Today’s Feelings
This painting was made by YASS artist Leela who writes:
‘Wednesday is a large mixed media canvas showing how I was feeling on the Wednesday that it was created. It depicts my mood and the emotions that I wanted to share. As a young autistic artist, my main reason for making art is to try to invite people into my visual world and to make sense of my own emotional life.’
Along with selecting specific shapes and colours to make her painting, Leela has also used expressive marks.
Make it your own
Decide as a class on a colourful medium to express your emotions, producing individual work on A4 paper. Complete an ‘emotion timetable’ by representing the days of the week in a chronological visual display.
Look together
• If this image was a sound what would it be?
• Is this painting calm or threatening?
• Imagine yourself in this painting, what kind of world would it be and what would you do in it?
Angular Feelings
The Cuban artist Carmen Herrera’s work is celebrated for its striking simplicity.
She selects limited colours and shapes and uses symmetry and asymmetry to create a variety of different movements and rhythms.
Her compositions often include just one or two bright colours which are painted very precisely so that the shapes look smooth and have crisp edges.
The results are pure, colourful and geometric abstractions which allow the viewer to consider their feelings and react emotionally to the compositions.
Create
Write, design, and edit with these cross curricular classroom activities.
See the world through coloured goggles
Learning how colours interact with each other is an important part of any young artist’s toolkit.
Join us to experience colour on a sensory level through these easy-to-make coloured plastic goggles.
Thoughts on a postcard
What you need
Blank A6 postcard | Pen or pencil | Felt tip pens or coloured pencils
Steps
Select one of the many works of art in this resource which includes a person and think about how the person or people in this image are feeling.
Write a postcard to them asking
• One thing about themselves
• One thing about where they are
• One thing about what they’re doing
• And one thing about how they’re feeling
Try and make an emotional connection with them by sharing one thing about yourself.
And finally
Illustrate your postcard with a drawing.
Emoji Emotions
What you need
Printouts of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper | Stickers or Printout of a selection of face emojis | Glue and Scissors
Steps
• Spend time looking at Leonardo’s Last Supper and chat in a group to see if you can identify different emotions and feelings in each figure.
• Select a face emoji which best describes that emotion
• Use collage to replace all the faces with an emoji
How successful are emojis in communicating emotions?
This activity can also be done digitally and you could use another image or painting with multiple figures.
Pulling faces
Pricking and pouncing
Is a traditional method of transferring a design from one surface to another. This is the technique Leonardo da Vinci and his contemporaries would’ve used to transfer their designs onto another surface to be painted. Because only the most essential lines are pricked, it is a good way to create a concise image.
What you need
Camera and printer | Sheet of drawing paper | Push pin | Charcoal | Paper clips or tape | Sheet of corrugated card
Steps
• Start by taking a photograph of yourself pulling an emotional or dramatic face
• Print the photograph in black and white on A4 photocopy paper
• Using a push pin (and a piece of cardboard to protect your desk!) make small holes along the major lines of the face and features leaving a centimetre gap between each hole
• Place your pricked image on top of a sheet of drawing paper and secure using some tape or paper clips
• Rub charcoal over all the little pricked holes and push the charcoal dust through the holes by rubbing with your finger
• Remove your pricked photograph to reveal the pounced image!
• You can use a pencil to join the dots together
Image gallery
Studies of faces, 7th June 1878
Study for the Head of Pax, 1933
Black Drawings, 1991-1992
Portrait of John Malin, ca. 1768-69
Jamaican Girl, ca. 1956-60
Mummy Portrait, 2022
I painted my mummy because I like painting. I've never painted a portrait of someone else before but I wanted to be brave and paint something new. I used all the colours that I like in this painting. My favourite parts of the painting are the pink and purple circles. I enjoyed painting Mummy and I would like to paint her again, maybe on pink card instead of yellow card next time.
Copy of Leonardo's The Last Supper, c.1515-20
Tom and Ted, 2022
Fatherly Love, 2022
My project came about through an exploration of my own heritage and understanding my background through my art. Inspired by Njideka Akunyili Crosby, I have created large hybrids of acrylic painting with photo transfer and collage, feeling her use of family photos as the base of her collage to anchor her work to her own culture was key to the navigation of my own. As a mixed woman, I am tethered to two identities which I feel have given me a dual perspective on many things and this duality is what I have tried to convey through my work. Understanding where my identity has led me to fit into family, friendships and a greater sense of self was a major influence for me in this project. This art has helped me turn the common mixed-race experience of feeling disconnected or lonely in our identity, into something appreciative and expressive.
Two caricature male heads in profile
The Twins - Sarah and Anne Haden, No. II
The Virgin and Child with the Infant St John, ca. 1504-05
Coloured Plate representing sections at right angles with the tertiary cross axes
Look on the Bright Side, 2014
Wednesday, 2022
Wednesday is a large mixed media canvas showing how I was feeling on the Wednesday that it was created. It depicts my mood and the emotions that I wanted to share. As a young autistic artist, my main reason for making art is to try to invite people into my visual world and to make sense of my own emotional life.
Iberia no. 25, 1948
Credits
Produced by the Royal Academy’s Learning team in collaboration with Aliki Braine, Karly Allen, Leah Golding and Caroline Marcus Associates.