The purpose of this paper is to show how activating perception, imagery and creativity facilitate the mastery of specific skills of visual arts education. Specifically, the study aimed at answering two questions: How can teachers enhance visual and creative expression?; and What criteria should be used to evaluate specific learning of visual arts skills? Based on a literature review on visual language two specific exercises were devised: one concerning the elaboration and meaning attribution of an image and the other the illustration of a concept. The two exercises were applied to 100 13-year-old students of a rural community in Portugal. The exercises were evaluated in terms of fluency, flexibility, originality, elaboration, expressiveness and adequateness. The results reveal statistically significant differences in these dimensions after the completion of second exercise, revealing that it is possible to use elements of the visual code to express ideas in creative ways. (Contains 1 table.)