The Student Room Group

How hard is a fine art degree?

Hi,
I currently have offers for a foundation course at Bournemouth arts institute, and I also have a place at Reading to do a Primary Education speacialising in Art course.

I had decided to go and do the foundation course, because I really love art and want to develop it etc. however, I was wondering if any students studying a BA in fine art could tell me how much work is involved in it, and how stressful and draining they find it (if at all) in each year.

I have realised that as an art A level student I get loads more work then my friends who do other subjects, and I also find that it's stressful and sometimes quite draining, and I'm wondering whether it would be so much easier to do a primary education course. Do you get as much time to socialise as other students doing different courses?

I would be so pleased if someone would help me with this!!
Thankyou! xx

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Reply 1
I cant tell you alot as i dont do fine art, but my flatmate does fine art at chelsea.

she does nothing. when isay nothing, i mean nothing. socialising> yes, you'll have 10weeks a term, stressful? no.
Reply 2
I highly doubt your flatmate does 'nothing'. Art courses can be pretty demanding. My graphics course can be pretty intensive at times.
Reply 3
akmd
I highly doubt your flatmate does 'nothing'. Art courses can be pretty demanding. My graphics course can be pretty intensive at times.


Do you live with her? errrm no.

She works 6 days a week in a bar in central, and the rest of tha time she gets pissed. trust me, she does nothing. Also, when i did i say they're not demanding? all im saying is from my experience fine art is a joke. I know about graphics, afterall i live with 4 other graphic designers. I also design, but that can be left there.
My brother's doing a fine art degree, and he seems just fine with it. :biggrin: But then again, he loves the subject and kicks absolute arse at it (came away with an A grade at A-level), so I'm sure he would be.
Reply 5
Thanks for the feedback guys, it's been helpful. :smile: However, Erk, I doubt fine art could be counted as a joke lol.
Reply 6
hey snap i also have an offer from bourmouth arts institute (art and design foundation ) what did you think of it there? Do you think your go to bourmouth?

In regards to your friend ( who attends chelsea) either shes naturally talented and does work very quick and of high quality or shes a little lazy and will rush things at the last minute, or maybe shes just having a good time lol!

but i wouldent call art a joke at all it is very intense but if its something your interested in it will be worth it and with the intensity your enjoy the experience of producing artistic creations - anythings hard work even other subjects such as english etc . courses do not come easy however most degrees apart from design courses (the first year) from what i have heard is a laze about year, but that dosent work with a foundation art and design because you have to cram little areas of design into one year and not forgetting the art element. Im sure you be fine - if its something you enjoy doing your get through no doubt! its the intensity of the deadlines and certain things maybe not going to plan that can be frustrating in design subjects, its not the actual subject but just the rushing etc. Im sure your be fine i say go for it if your enjoy it

Good luck let us know how you get on
erk
Do you live with her? errrm no.

She works 6 days a week in a bar in central, and the rest of tha time she gets pissed. trust me, she does nothing. Also, when i did i say they're not demanding? all im saying is from my experience fine art is a joke. I know about graphics, afterall i live with 4 other graphic designers. I also design, but that can be left there.



Remember that Fine art is where most art or catagory of art (including graphics) stemmed from, calling it a joke could be taken as an insult by many people who really believe in art.

Obviously, you're friend either cannot care much for her future in art or like it has been said can work to a very high standard in a short duration of time.

Either way, Good Luck to her, if she's good enough to be accepted at chelsea she must be doing somthing right.
Reply 8
Uhm, my girlfriend does a BTEC in Art at the moment (she didn't want to do A-levels and then a Foundation year) and all I can say is that they have to work far harder than people do A-levels. In comparison, A-level art has an absolutely tiny workload.

There are people in her group that are currently doing a Foundation year (this is all at sixth form) and they are doing the same work. I am almost certain that if you do a Foundation course after A-levels you will find it a big step up and will require a lot of work and commitment if you want to get the most out of it.. Of course, it all depends on where you go.
Reply 9
Thanks again for the advise guys. I'm still not sure what I'm gonna do! Having been to a parents evening with my Mum, and my art teacher basically saying i'm not as good as last year (i'm in year 13), and saying that I don't do enough work (when actually I do the same as everyone else) then at this point in time I think I'm leaning more towards doing the primary course- espeacily coz Reading is so cool and I don't think I'd get the grades to go anywhere as good as that to do an Art degree.

Mango101-I've got an offer for Bournemouth Arts Institute, as I live in Bournemouth. I've visited it a few times and it's so nice- the building and environment are relaxing, yet creative at the same time, and the people there seem cool too.
Reply 10
Perhaps i used the wrong phrasing, my mistake. But no joke here, i know alot of fine artists, and most of them do nothing. Argue as much as you like, but waking up at 4pm, going to work, getting pised, 7 days a week.. hard work? i think not, she even says 'i may go to college today' comes back having been in the bar, or sat in her studio drinking tea/coffee. Most of her work comes from going on holiday and taking pictures - she does this once a term, for 3-4 days. So, i'll end it here by saying; fine art at the london colleges is not stressful, one crit once in a blue moon, and an essay a term.
Reply 11
All earthly mortals herald the arrival of Platinum Mech's most laboured Fine Art student sibling. :tongue: Perhaps I can offer an angle on the nuances of a very singular subject as a BA (Hons) Fine Art student at the Cleveland College of Art & Design, Middlesbrough. Any accompanying talk on those cuckoo London-domiciled sorts shall have to be momentarily neglected. Until I can make my own investigations down there come MA level, perhaps. :biggrin:

I was actually an entrant on my own BA (Hons) programme direct from A-Level, not the most prodigiously treaded-on of paths - and what I can do is vouch for the sentiments of a previous poster declaring many students to harbour a decidedly slack attitude to their studies. What with the considerable swathes of the student body performing a curious day-to-day 'disappearing act' once the most spurious reference to hard graft crops up, even if a student 'family' rapport exists, they remain, relative to yourself, rather more the obscure aunties and uncles, than brothers and sisters. Still, within of the confines of CCAD, at least, subject 'intensity' remains pleasingly subject to your own whims. There seem to have been few obstacles to me, an exuberant drawing and painting 18-year old, rapidly adapting to the rigour of such HE-level scholarly abandon. :tongue: And 'abandon' it indeed is. The lack of direct tutor intervention does make for a rather ragged course of study and you can be liable to drift into spates of thumb-twiddling inactivity should you not take all the initiatives going (optional weekly life-drawing classes; student-organised exhibitions; visiting artists/tutors et al). Conquer that, and Fine Art is as fulfilling and pivotal to one's academic fulfillment as any to revolve around libraries and textbooks. But it all hinges on you.

Phew. So, yes. I've uttered in a multi-paragraph deliberative frenzy what many would happily shoehorn into a series of scrawled notes. :biggrin: And the 'one essay a term' fable's no lie, either. On first-year evidence, anyway.
McNuggets
All earthly mortals herald the arrival of Platinum Mech's most laboured Fine Art student sibling. :tongue: Perhaps I can offer an angle on the nuances of a very singular subject as a BA (Hons) Fine Art student at the Cleveland College of Art & Design, Middlesbrough. Any accompanying talk on those cuckoo London-domiciled sorts shall have to be momentarily neglected. Until I can make my own investigations down there come MA level, perhaps. :biggrin:

I was actually an entrant on my own BA (Hons) programme direct from A-Level, not the most prodigiously treaded-on of paths - and what I can do is vouch for the sentiments of a previous poster declaring many students to harbour a decidedly slack attitude to their studies. What with the considerable swathes of the student body performing a curious day-to-day 'disappearing act' once the most spurious reference to hard graft crops up, even if a student 'family' rapport exists, they remain, relative to yourself, rather more the obscure aunties and uncles, than brothers and sisters. Still, within of the confines of CCAD, at least, subject 'intensity' remains pleasingly subject to your own whims. There seem to have been few obstacles to me, an exuberant drawing and painting 18-year old, rapidly adapting to the rigour of such HE-level scholarly abandon. :tongue: And 'abandon' it indeed is. The lack of direct tutor intervention does make for a rather ragged course of study and you can be liable to drift into spates of thumb-twiddling inactivity should you not take all the initiatives going (optional weekly life-drawing classes; student-organised exhibitions; visiting artists/tutors et al). Conquer that, and Fine Art is as fulfilling and pivotal to one's academic fulfillment as any to revolve around libraries and textbooks. But it all hinges on you.

Phew. So, yes. I've uttered in a multi-paragraph deliberative frenzy what many would happily shoehorn into a series of scrawled notes. :biggrin: And the 'one essay a term' fable's no lie, either. On first-year evidence, anyway.


Howdy fellow CCAD'er? whom be this?
Reply 13
Hello, ahem, 'Tom'. **Does quirky buffallo salute**...

For sake of information exchange, I'm Gavin of the 1st year of the BA (Hons) Fine Art course at Burlam Road. If such details were not aforementioned. Not that you'll be catching sight of me with too great ease for now - many of us are defecting to Madrid for a week. Ner, ner, ner-ner etc. :smile:

Just kidding. What course are you on yourself, and how are you faring, if you mind me enquiring?
ND Fine Art Yr 2 (Green Lane)

Im faring quite well myself, and you?

Are you in classes with Marise?

Have a good time in madrid!
Reply 15
There's people who do nothing on most courses. Praps it takes a bit longer for an Art student to get found out. Maybe you could just hang up a bit of string or a sardine something and say it was work. The rest of us have to write stuff and learn stuff and that's harder to get around. I'm sure there's some guys out there doing loads of painting and whatever all the time, because they like it and they're good at it. So, they work hard.
Reply 16
Thanks again for your advice everyone lol. I think that maybe I am acting from a particularly stressed point of view seeing as i'm finishing off my last units and have exam paper prep to do- so it's a stressful time of year! Not to mention that my art teacher's stressing me out as well! I have noticed that male art teachers seem to be so much more relaxed then female ones!
Reply 17
Theshortlist Tom,

Indeed I am, as if any other response was anticipated, heh. Although despite contriving to squeeze her beaming mug onto a page in the FE prospectus, lol, I haven't seen Marise produce an exactly prodigious amount of work for the self-directed project so far. Akin to most of the rest of us, it's easy to perform a disappearing act even if your mind's on the task. :tongue: Dratted reformulated course for 2005, shunts a self-directed project halfway up your snout with scarcely a few months' acclimatisation.

Oh, and Madrid was every inch the epitome of art-capital swellness that we all expected.

Do you know too many of the other BA (Hons) level fine artists? I was just about the only Burlam Roader, so far as my mind recalls, to visit that ND 'exhibition' that took place not too long ago, so I can't be too sure that you wouldn't have unwittingly already caught a glimpse of me. I'm a singular enough fellow in the looks-and-countenance department, so you'd have well known about it...

As for the rest of you, if you feel Fine Art encapsulates your own well-embedded sense of drive and purpose to equal degree as was the case with me - you'll have little to fear. One concedes that the comparatively lax culture of degree level study does leave you a little short-changed in as social as well as academic quarters, what with so many of your 'comrades' filtering through the exit door by 2pm on a not atypical sunny afternoon. Thanks to that little Spanish trek, though, some sturdy relationships have been chalked up thus far. :biggrin:
I'm doing fine art A2 and it's so much work. I don't know about a fine art course, but people I know doing foundation courses and things have to do so much work. Also, there are so many people doing art - what are you thinking of doing as a career? When you say primary education, is that as in being trained to teach primary students and you specialise in art? Because the good thing with that is that you're likely to always be in a job...? I don't know, just throwing some ideas in! X X X
[QUOTE=McNuggets

Do you know too many of the other BA (Hons) level fine artists? I was just about the only Burlam Roader, so far as my mind recalls, to visit that ND 'exhibition' that took place not too long ago, so I can't be too sure that you wouldn't have unwittingly already caught a glimpse of me. I'm a singular enough fellow in the looks-and-countenance department, so you'd have well known about it...



Only a couple, only those who migrated from Green Lane's ND last year. Ah, so you came to our exhibition? Entitled "The Show" what a wonderful title.... cough.

Mine was the ceramic work with the video/audio projection that didnt want to work how i wanted it too. Incase you cared. That was possibly the worst work i've ever done! i dislike Sculpture with a passion.


Charlotte_M

I dont know exactly how much work there is with A-level Fine Art, but i can tell you that if it is anywhere as stressful as A2 Photography then i feel for you. Good luck in the applications.

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