How to be Successful in Senior Art

What you’ll need:

Information

Skills

Knowledge

Experience

purpose

understanding

“If you know what you are doing, you can do anything”

Moshé FeldenkraisIsraeli Physicist, 1904 - 1984

Know what the words meanProposition, brief, problem

Proposal for an inquiry; a statement of intention. A starting point for discovery and understanding; going beneath the surface; going deeper to develop rich understanding

Ideas Stylistic Influences: naturalism, cubism, surrealism, abstraction, symbolism, conceptualism, minimalism, pop, postmodernism, graffiti…Subjects: landscape, still life, portrait, cityscape, abstraction, location, light…Conceptual Themes: movement, aggression, psychology, politics, mood, ecology…Formal Issues; colour, form, balance, contrast, reflection, density, rhythm, tension, composition, surface…

Methods Ways artists gather and process information; strategies they use to develop images such as devices and structures for conveying conceptual themes; ways of using materials, tools, techniques and processes.

Conventions A way in which something is usually done.

Analyse To break down in detail

Critically analyse

To explain similarities and differences

Identify To specify briefly

Describe To give a detailed account

Explain To give reasons, say why, justify

Discuss To explore

Exemplars The best examples

Aim for excellence, not perfection

get started as soon as possible…

…take risks to find out & ‘Just Do It’…make a commitment to learn ‘Practise’…and meet deadlines

Use Your Workbook as a thinking diary

Art is about ideas… The trick is to get them down on paper…

In fact, it is very important for Senior Art to practise this a lot so you learn the skills of working systematically

This means:• Generate (Produce something, e.g a sketch)• Analyse (Examine it to understand it)• Clarify (Do some more sketches similar but with

differences. Consider the merits of each idea)• Develop (Advance the best ideas)• Synthesise (Combine best ideas to make something new) • Regenerate (Make it again, but in a different way…)

and again, and again….

Some students get confused by the word ‘drawing’ which is used in the visual art standards to refer to the

investigation process

“use drawing conventions in a range of media”“use drawing as the central means to generate, analyse,

clarify and develop…”

Use drawing as your “thinking tool”

drawing could involve combinations and layers of materials :

• Wash ground (dye) over paper• Acrylic paint (scraped over)• Collage (frottage on tissue paper)• Pitt Oil-based Charcoal• Shellac

drawing could involve a camera, software programme, a pair of scissors, string………

A drawing study can begin in pencil. You’ll be able to make tonal drawings like these if you make time outside school to practice your looking, thinking and shading skills. It doesn’t matter what you draw, just do it and enjoy it.

Year 11 (left), Y13 (right)

It’s all drawing…

… and, because there are many different drawing conventions that use particular materials, techniques, processes and procedures….

You need to work within the limits of a theme and use artist models that provide you with methods and ideas to explore and develop in your own work

Learn from Recent &Established Practice

This means artist models – Contemporary (now), Post-Modern (from late last century), Modern, (from last century), and traditional (past)

Here are someExamples…

Look CarefullyRead to find the reason

Write it down

Use pencil & small legible writing / type up your notes

House & ESOL students may be entitled to extra time, reader / writer

Write succinctly Edit, don’t waffle

A picture tells a thousand words

Learn from Your Artist Models

Choose them for their ideas and methods so they match the way you want to work, & to provide other points of view too (two is too few, five is too many) .

Copy what they do to start with…(it’s the best way to understand)

Try different combinations of their ideas..

Develop these, in your own work, to create something more original

.

Example of an

Artist Model For photomontage, multimedia

Martina Lopez

Problem-solving is not always a straight forward process in art

1 + 1 could = anything

Just as long as you show the process of arriving at your answer is valid because it is founded in the conventions, methods and ideas of recent and established practice, ie artist models

It’s an advantage to have lots of ideas up your sleeve

or rather, in your workbook

Too many vague ideas and too few ideas make problem-solving

in Art and Design difficult

You can’t plan everything

You have to be open to possibility

The staff in the Art Department will show you strategies and help

you make decisions

Subject matter

Formal Interests

Artists

Your ideas can start anywhere:

Deep understanding, sense of purpose

Broad constraintsTheme

Use Thinking Strategies

Mindmaps, analysis, clarification, evaluation….

Draw-in & evaluate

Draw out, & evaluate

Progress discussions, Conferences, photo

“snapshots” of progress

Begining ofassignment

End of assignment

Classroom Conditions

• Workbooks / Folios open• Subject matter visible• Ongoing inquiry process – questioning• Several works in production at a time• Progress discussions – regular snapshots &

documentation“thinking ahead” with sticky-notes, p/copies,

samples, swatches, thumbnail sketches & Artist Model images

Modular formatting, ongoing developmentof methods and ideas & decision making

Next slide shows…

Progression to Excellence

NZ Curriculum Level 8, Y13

Practical work for 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 (Painting) 2007

3.1 Practical Study (left)

Work identified as starting point for 3.2 (right)

End of Term One Snapshots

From 3.1

3.2 Task 2

Details of task 2

Task 3

This student’s 3.2 techniques and 3.1 research provided the ideas for the FOLIOTheme: figurative expressionism

Visual & sequential planning on thefolio

Final folio presentation

“Dream, believe, dare, do” Walt Disney

Believe you can do it, and you will do it.

Mount Hutt College Art Department