The study of the elementary characteristics of an artwork, such as its colour, shape and spatial arrangement, can turn into a tool for understanding the contribution that perceptual and cognitive mechanisms have in the aesthetic response. As part of the art project Test Verbovisivi (2015) by Dionigi Mattia Gagliardi, we asked a group of 73 participants to visually depict four adjectives - namely beautiful, ugly, figurative, abstract - that are frequently employed in the description of paintings and artworks in general. We examined the images produced by each participant on three complementary levels - colour, shape and spatial arrangement - in an attempt to identify recurrent aesthetic qualities. Preliminary data from our study indicate the use of colour as the most significant property in the choice of image representation in relation to the chosen adjectives.