***gcse art & design grade 8/9 booster guide***

Hello GCSE Art Students!

I'm Farhan and I did GCSE Art. After the long and painful journey of **** I hated, I got 200/200 in my GCSE Art, so I thought I'd use my experience of GCSE Art to string a guide (attached) together on how to reach a Grade 8/9, or in other words how to get 90%-100% in your Art GCSE. This is a strenuous journey, and pretty much ALL of it HAS to be done to get a Grade 9, but just put your mind to it, practice, manage your time well and I'm sure you guys will definitely get the grades

Have fun...?

- Farhan.

My teacher never really explained the grades or even anything basic like the fact that we had to annotate everything, so I think I'm far from getting a 9, but I think with this I could easily get a 7 or an 8!

Hi!
Thank you for this! Do you regret taking art for GCSE because im really fed up with it now and find it so pointless.
I really regret taking art!

errr yes and no, lemme explain
yes because it was very time consuming and it did affect quite a few of my other GCSEs and really in the long run it doesn’t do much for me.
no because the critical/analytical skills i learned from researching other artists and the way my skill in art has shot up in the past couple of years alone makes it worthwhile. there are some skills in art that are incredibly facilitating. it was Art that helped me get almost full marks in English Lit because my ability to psychoanalyse got so on point, and also I want to apply to Medicine and become a surgeon - doing art really helps with your hand control
these reasons are unique to me but maybe you find value in what i say (maybe not!) but really it’s all down to the person. at the end of the day it’s another GCSE that’s going to be written everywhere and you should work as hard as you can for it, but ultimately it’s down to you

Will this guide still earn me an 8/9 in AQA art?

I also got full marks in my art GCSE but I would like to point out that I didn't fulfil all of the criteria suggested on this thread, for example, I did not include title pages.

My art teacher explained to me (and it was clearly effective) that the main things that you must include are:

-observational drawings (drawings copying close up photos in relative detail, trying to make them realistic)
-artist references (do not include any info on the actual artist just on how they have created their artwork, the effect it has, your opinions of it and how it will influence your work. For some of your artists, you must create a piece in their style showing how you have responded to their work)
-photography (it is important to include multiple photoshoots throughout your project as well as smaller groups of photos where appropriate)
-pieces using paint (it is important to show that you are confident with the use of colour)
-annotations (keep all of your annotations neat and write them as if writing a diary - what you like/dislike, what is effective, what has an impact)
-development (each page should link to another page but note that it does not have to directly link to the pages immediately before and after, in fact you can get extra points for "imaginative leaps in ideas")

Remember DO NOT:

-include overly large titles or writing of any kind, if it is too big, bright or obvious, points will be deducted because it distracts from the work
-forget to include any of the criteria listed above
-leave large empty spaces or purposely try to fill spaces with anything useless, even if it means your project will be shorter
-include information about an artist, like where they were born, grew up, worked or age
-have a really short project (for example 10 A3 pages or less) because this is not enough to demonstrate a consistent ability

I hope this was helpful

hi, i dont understand what a complex thumbnail is what do you mean by merging areas and artists to create a complex thumbnail? thanks

Hello GCSE Art Students!

I'm Farhan and I did GCSE Art. After the long and painful journey of **** I hated, I got 200/200 in my GCSE Art, so I thought I'd use my experience of GCSE Art to string a guide (attached) together on how to reach a Grade 8/9, or in other words how to get 90%-100% in your Art GCSE. This is a strenuous journey, and pretty much ALL of it HAS to be done to get a Grade 9, but just put your mind to it, practice, manage your time well and I'm sure you guys will definitely get the grades

Have fun...?

- Farhan.

I'm currently doing GCSE Art, and I'm wondering, how many pages (roughly) did you do for your coursework? Is this A4 size?

I feel like I haven't done enough and it's driving me nuts.

hi!
there’s no “enough” to the amount of pages. it’s all about quality over quantity. the examiners much rather 10 pages of good work over 50 pages of rubbish work. of course, for full marks, you’ll probably need to do 50 pages of good work to convince them (these are example numbers btw!) but in all honesty someone who completes one sketchbook of good work is just as good as five sketchbooks of okay work, and if you ask me it’s more efficient to go for the former
i did A3 btw haha

Thanks for the quick reply! The general idea was exactly what I wanted. When you say 50 pages do you mean 50 A3/A4? Or do you mean 50 of either size.