AO2: Refine ideas through experimenting and selecting appropriate resources, media, materials, techniques and process.
The 'journey' of discovery. ............................................................. 2 The process of development and experimentation. ........................ 4 A series of experiments with surprising outcomes. ........................ 6 A body of work, not one final piece. ............................................... 7 Risks taken in the exploration process........................................... 8
The 'journey' of discovery. • Describing your project or development work as a 'journey' is possibly the best description to give this aspect of your coursework. Just like any journey, your project(s) and sketchbook work needs to include a start, a middle and an end. The start being your initial thoughts and ideas, usually these would include some sketch work and illustrations along with comments and notes to explain your initial thoughts for an idea or project. The middle part of this journey requires substance and depth. For a strong 'middle' to your coursework or project journey, there are many ways that you can gain mark, here are some examples and ideas that may help you develop this part of your work. • Most projects and/ or items of coursework will usually begin with some drawing or sketching. A good way to start a project or item of coursework is to familiarise yourself with your work and idea by producing a series of sketches in a sketchbook. During this process, consider variety in your work. For example, don't do all of your drawings using the same size/ scale. Produce some studies/ sketches that are small, some that are medium and some that fill the page or even use double pages. It is also worthwhile leaving some sketches and drawings unfinished. By partly finishing a drawing or sketch, this will allow you to show development and structure in your work, which otherwise would be hidden by the finished article itself and not seen. • Leave room and space around your drawings and sketches so that you can add comments and notes. This could be a date and time of when you completed the work, it could also include a short explanation of what you intend to do, or how you think your work will develop, or maybe a couple of notes that explains your reflection and thoughts about the work, for example, after drawing or sketching your idea and work, now that you can see it, is it working out as you had in mind or planned? • Try to ensure that all work that you do in your sketchbook has a time/ date clearly posted along side the work. This could be individual items of work or by simply adding a date to each page. You should also label your work and pages. Add titles to each task or development piece that reflects what you have done. You could also add a small note that indicates how long you spent on a task too. By using and adding dates and titles throughout your sketchbook or development work, you are creating a clear and obvious 'timeline' of events throughout your work. Doing this will make your 'journey' of discovery clear and visible for any assessor as and when they look through your work. • Towards the end of any development work that you create in your sketchbook, another good way to gain a few important 'extra' marks would be to provide
some indication of your reflection about what you have done. Think of this as a kind of conclusion exercise, where you reflect on what you set out to do, look back at what you have done and then provide a short summary of how you think you have done. Providing a 'Reflection' about your own work is good way to add a little extra to your work that shows and demonstrates your understanding and knowledge about your own work.
The process of development and experimentation. • Providing evidence that you have 'developed' and 'experimented' both your project and coursework ideas and use of medium or materials, is crucial if you are to gain high marks for this assessment objective (AO2). Whenever you work on an item of work, you should clearly show and provide evidence that you have considered alternatives to your chosen outcome. For example, suppose you were working on a brief which uses the theme of landscape, and you have an idea in mind to produce a piece of work based on place that you visited on a recent holiday. Rather than simply working from one source such as a photograph or postcard of the holiday destination, initially you should try to develop a few possible outcomes, perhaps by working from more than one photograph taken at the holiday location. Or, another way forward would be to identify key features and items within a selection of photographs and bring these items together, a bit like a collage, to produce a montage or unique response to the holiday location. Doing this will also allow you to experiment with layout, structure and composition. Trying out a range of different composition's so that you can see what features work well, and which features to exclude from a final piece of work. • As well as developing the context or subject of your work, you also need to demonstrate that you have experimented with a range of suitable media for your work too. For example, suppose that you intend to produce your final outcome in acrylic paints. In your sketchbook, produce a series of small-scale studies of your final work/ idea. Then on each of these studies apply different possible colour schemes to each. This will show that you have explored and developed a final 'chosen' set of colours for your work, rather than simply mimicking the same colours as you see them on your source image(s). Another way to do this would be to produce a full page drawing of your intended outcome, and then divide this work up, into different work areas. You can then experiment and apply different colour schemes to each of these areas, producing one piece of work but with a range of alternative ways in which you could use colour for your final outcome. • When experimenting with colour, consider also a more subtle way to demonstrate your ability to explore and develop. For example, by using a range of tones within set colours could be a more effective way to develop your work, rather than just changing the actual colours. • You should also demonstrate that although you may have a set use of medium in mind for your final work, that you have at least considered the use of other materials, even if you decide not to use them in your final work. Take the previous example of the landscape based on the holiday destination. Suppose that you have decided early on that this will be a painting, and suppose that you have explored a range of different possible colour and tone schemes, before you go ahead and make a start on the final outcome, take a step back and use your idea or chosen holiday destination as a subject for exploring other materials, consider creating a version using pastels, oil and/ or chalk, or maybe just use pencil crayons. Try to include texture in your development work too. This can be achieved very easily by working on top of alternative papers and cards. For example, try tearing and shaping a few lengths of coloured papers, adding a layer of corrugated card or piece of fabric. Basically, try to build up a surface that uses a range of layers and materials. Draw or sketch your work on top of the mixed-media surface and then work into it with paints and other materials.
• Now consider all of the above suggestions of developing and experimenting, if you plan your development work carefully, it is possible to demonstrate that you have explored and developed colour, tone, materials and media all within your chosen ideas.
A series of experiments with surprising outcomes. • Sometimes, and more often than not, there will be times and occasions during the GCSE Art & Design course when you may feel out of your depth. This could be when a new material is provided for you to work with. Maybe you have had a bad experience in the past with a certain medium, the chances are that if given the choice you are likely to avoid using such materials for fear of failure. However, it is important that you demonstrate an ability or at least a knowledge and understanding of the use of a range of medium within your folder of coursework. For example, if all of your coursework was created using only a 2B pencil. An assessor would be asking questions about your ability and knowledge of other media. As a consequence many marks would not be gained due to a lack of depth or variety of materials used to create coursework. As such, you should try hard to work with as many different types of media and materials as possible. As for the materials that you struggle with, or find hard to achieve desired results from, try thinking of the subject as a type of sport. For example, take the sport of golf as an example. Just like Golf, in the subject of Art there are certain skills that can be developed, improved, worked on. In order to improve a Golfers overall game, practice is required. This practice may be on the skill of driving a ball from the tee. To do this a golfer would usually get themselves down to the local driving range and spend half an hour or so on just that one skill. Through many visits to the driving range, over time the golfers skill at driving will improve, and then when the golfer is next on a golf course, the skill of driving a ball from a tee and up the fairway may well see an improvement, and in some cases it may require the golfer to a few more visits to the local driving range. However, what will improve will be the golfer's confidence. And this is exactly like learning and developing a skill in Art and Design. The more practice taken to improve a weak skill will (if anything) improve the artists confidence at using and apply that skill in their work. With an improved confidence, the artists skill will then improve too. This will usually also help the artist take and tackle other weaker skills, which in-turn improves the artists confidence even more, and thus allows the artist to pursue other skills not yet tried due to lack of confidence. • So in essence, do not choose not to use a certain material or medium in your art simply because you lack the confidence to do so. Instead, practice using this material, and in time your confidence will improve. As your confidence improves so will your skill at using the material. • Outcomes gained through experimentation can be both surprising and rewarding. Demonstrate your own experimentation in your sketchbook. This could be a choice of colour that you may use in an item work, for example, most paintings will require you to mix and make your own colours and/ or tones. Instead of making your tones and colours on a plastic mixing palette or dish, use small scraps of paper to mix on. Save these scraps of mixing papers rather than throwing them away, and stick them into your sketchbook. This will then allow you to add comments and annotations that explains what you did, how you did it and weather or not you achieved the desired results. This is a good way to gain a few extra marks for AO2.
A body of work, not one final piece. • Although your final outcome or item of work for a project does gain you many marks, it is really important that you understand that the final outcome will only gain you up to 20 marks out of a possible 80. So where do the other 60 marks come from? Each assessment objective is worth a possible 20 marks each. The marks gained for each of the assessment objectives add up to give you a final score out of 80 marks. This is why it is really important that you learn and understand where and how you can earn your marks for each of the assessment objectives. Taking the time to read through the requirements of each assessment objective will pay dividends towards your final score or mark. • This known, is why you need to consider all of the work that you create during a project creates what is know as a 'Body of Work'. To summarise, a 'Body of work' can gain you a possible 80 marks. Where your final piece of work will only gain you a maximum of 20 marks. • Included within a 'Body of work' should be evidence of: ◦ AO1 - Links and connections with the work of other artists to your own work. ◦ AO2 - Experimentation's and Explorations of materials and media (this podcast), ◦ AO3 - Recording of ideas, observations relevant to your own work. ◦ AO4 - Present a personal, informed and meaningful response. • A final outcome is basically AO4 (assessment objective 4). • So in essence, a whole body of work is as (if not more) important that the final outcome itself, largely because for a body of work you can gain many more marks than you could gain for just the final outcome of a project.
Risks taken in the exploration process. • Inevitably as with most creative subjects, you will need to take some risks within your work. That does not mean that you should take unnecessary risks during a final outcome, which may jeopardise the end result and compromise your work. However, you should be willing to take a few risks during the development and experimentation of your ideas and work. Usually these risks would take place in your sketchbook, and would usually happen when you are trying out new materials quite naturally. What you need to try and do though is document these risks and assess the outcome of such risks that you may take. For example, lets go back to the idea of the holiday landscape project. Suppose that have explored and developed possible colour schemes and a range of materials to help you decide how to best develop and put together your final piece of work for this project. A risk that you may undertake could be to explore the inclusion of another medium or material in your work. One that you had not previously explored or used. For example, you may have seen some art work created by Tacey Emin. In the examples of work that you have seen, you notice how Tracey used thread within her work, which sparks off an idea to use this material in your own work. So even though you have explored and developed a range of possible materials that you intend to use in your final outcome for your Holiday Landscape, it is considered a 'risk' worth taking, and so, on top of a previous development piece you decide to use a needle and thread to bring in an alternative and new medium into your work. • That is one example of how you could take risks that are worth taking during the exploration process, and which will help you gain a few extra marks within this assessment objective - AO2.