hi! i've also just picked art for gcse and have lots of friends who are already significantly into the course. from what i can tell i think it does take over your life to a certain extent, however it's definitely worth it if art is something you really love or would want to pursue as a career. i have only just started the course, but am already a bit behind because of the amount of work that is set every week. it's not too hard to keep up, however as a perfectionist, a single page takes me the same amount of time as it would take for my friends to do three! so i'd say my main advice would be to carry on even if something isn't going as planned/doesn't look how you would like it, because in the end a single bad page is like 1000th of your gcse and doesn't really matter in the end. in short: don't be a perfectionist :,))i hope this helped haha