Futurism – An artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century. It emphasised speed, technology, youth and violence, and objects such as the car, aeroplane and the industrial city

(Pronounced fyoo-chur-riz-uhm)

To remember the meaning of Futurism, recall the following mnemonic:

Your kid's future is them (Futurism) driving a speeding, high technology supercar around an industrial city.

Many Futurism pieces contain bright colours and curved lines, distorting a view.

Joseph Stella, Battle of Lights, 1913-14

Umberto Boccioni, Elasticity, 1912

Futurism Project

To create an image characteristic of the futurism style, we are going to draw a scene from a collage of photographs in a slightly distorted and brightly coloured style.

The first step is to create a futuristic image by sticking different images down on paper. Try to find futuristic images, whether in magazines or printed from a computer. Think about Futurist paintings, gather images like rockets, cars, cityscapes, aeroplanes and industrial scenes.

Once you are happy with your collage of images, use the Mammoth Memory grid technique to draw the outlines of it onto your paper. You can simplify the shapes into more basic forms.

Over the top of your image, draw a collection of curved and straight lines, at different angles.

Within the new sections, repeat parts of the outline to create a more interesting image.

You can now colour your image with pencil crayons. Start blocks of colour first.

Try to stick to similar groups of colours for each part of the image, i.e. make the trees a collection of greens, and the city a range of blues. This is present in many Futurism artworks.

Where the lines you added intersect the outline, use these points as markers to change the tone of each colour (swap from a lighter red to a darker red, for example).

In each section, shade a gradient from one side to the other. You can use a black pencil crayon on top of the colours to heighten the shadows.

Futurism.