EXAM SEASON

Exam season is upon us again, for all Year 11, 12 & 13 students it's time to get busy! You all have between 4 - 6 weeks of school to prepare for the actual exam, so it's important to work in a very concentrated and specific fashion. 

TOP TIPS for EXAM SUCCESS

1. Communicate with your teacher/s! We are here to guide you towards success. 

2. Plan your time. You will need to, at very least, fill a sketchbook full of preparation work BEFORE the exam. 

3. Follow this basic working structure: 

- select a question / starting point

- record and observe

- analyse the theme 

- research artist references 

- experiment with materials and processes 

- develop and review your ideas 

- personalise your work 

- complete and present your final piece 

- evaluate

4. Your work has to fit into the ASSESSMENT OBJECTIVES. No matter how interesting and creative your work is, and no matter how many compliments you get for it, you won't get the marks if it doesn't fit within the 4 objectives. Each of these objectives is worth 25%, and so you need to spend approximately 25% of your time on each one. 

5. Attend the after-school lessons. Wednesdays 3 - 4pm for GCSE; Thursdays 3 - 4.30pm for AS/A2 Level. Also, use your "free" time to do some extra work. GCSE students should be using some of their lunch times to complete extra work; AS/A2 students should be setting aside a minimum of two "free" periods a week to work in the art rooms. 

6. Use the following websites to help you get inspired: 

- the William de Ferrers School in Essex has kept an excellent online gallery of all exam classes work over the last six years. As the work is categorised by grades, and includes the candidates prep' work at the bottom of the page, it is an excellent facility for you to understand the scope and ambition needed in order to reach a particular grade in a specific examination. I can't recommend this site enough - GCSE Fine Art ; AS Fine Art ; A2 Fine Art.

- GCSE bitesize has really good information regarding the assessment objectives, together with visual examples of student's work and suggested artist references. 

- The Tate Gallery has an extensive 'search' function, and will give you much relevant contextual information on just about every established artist you can think of. 

- The Young Tate section of the website has an exam help feature, which will guide you towards relevant IDEAS and ARTIST REFERENCES. 

- The American equivalents of the Tate, MOMA in New York, and the NGA in Washington are also excellent resources when researching artists and developing ideas. 

Art exam season can be overwhelming, but remember that it can be a really rewarding time too. This is when YOU SHOW US your ideas, your artistic skills and your creative flair. This is your time to shine, and to raise your grade as high as possible. 

Best of luck to you all.

R Davies

between two schools (yr12)

It's been fascinating to watch the New Nailsea School being built through the safety of the art room windows. The implication that change is coming our way has led to many interesting discussions in and out of the classroom. Our AS Fine Art students have been developing a piece of public art that will express some of the feeling engendered by such a transition. 

Street Art is a increasingly accessible and accepted form of fine art expression. The genre has its roots in graffiti and urban culture - democratic art of and for the people. The Tate Modern Gallery in London recently held a massive celebration of this art form, validating it in the eyes of many. The Tate's Street Art page has some really good links and context if you're looking for interesting practitioners and ideas. One of the featured artists, blu, is particularly ambitious and skillful. 

                      

Our AS fine art students looked at the work of Japanese graffiti collective Rinpa Eshidan to get stylistic ideas for their piece of public art. They decided to explore the viewpoints, feelings and moods created by the new school building, locating it on the hoarding separating the old and new schools. 

Step one was to suggest an agreed mood and tone to the background of the hoarding. It was not at all messy work!

The students then transferred moods, tones and feelings into abstract mark-making. The collective compositional plan was started on the left by expressing feelings of anxiety, and ended on the right with calm and happy. 

It was interesting for the AS students to receive feedback from other Nailsea pupils as they worked in such a public way. I'm pleased to write that these comments got increasingly positive as the work really began to take shape. 

                              

Visit our gallery to see all the photos of this work-in-progress. 

R Davies