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gcse art exam unit

hii, rn i'm in year 11 studying edexcel gcse fine art and the exam project theme was gatherings. at first i panicked and my only reasonable idea was running (i've been a long distance runner for 2 year years now 10km/20km stuff and with a run club). i started it with a few artist inspirations like eadweard muybridge, keith haring, shiraga. now the only experimentation ive really done has been running on paper with paint to show colour, movement, energy. i've also started sketching ppl from my run club using biro and straight marks, and graphite with looser and quicker marks. after this i have NOTHING to do and quite frankly i am PANICKING. i have two months left, i've been trying to do this multi flash long exposure photoshoot of me running but my school cannot even give me a hall for one hour, and i only have some half decent ones but even those are bad bc they aren't in a pitch black room. this project now feels so limiting and i'm so scared, like i have no idea what else to do and what can my final piece even look like? i don't even have enough work or experimentation and there's 2 months left. all my other subjects i am predicted 9s apart from english lang (8) and as someone who loves art i really want an 8 in it too. my previous coursework which was worth 60% of the grade was very strong like a 9, about femininity and freedom, but this project is bringing me down a LOT. i would really appreciate any advice, ideas or share some (hopefully comforting) experiences 🫶🏼

Reply 1

alma.ajf

Hi there!! I'm Alma, I got a 9 for art in my GCSEs, hope I can give some good advice

I did AQA Art, Craft, and Design, but I'll just talk about idea development which I'm sure is similar between the two. From what I'm hearing you're concerned about how to develop your idea of running going forward. I totally understand, especially at this point of year, getting worried about where you'll go next with your ideas. Most of all, I'd like to say that not knowing what you'll make for the exam 2 months before it happens is a very good thing. Your ideas and exploration is what gets you there, if you're doing good exploration of ideas and letting them influence your work, its impossible to know how your work will have been shaped in 2 months time.

If you're hitting a brick wall and feeling limited in your direction, start with whatever idea you're on right now and see just how abstract from that idea you can go. So take running, and for example, you could focus on journeys and destinations, bring that into places and do small experimental pieces on landscapes. You say gatherings, focus on holidays, travel to holidays, long distances, loneliness and isolation. Maybe go more conceptual, use the idea of running symbolically, then you can venture into fears, expectations, what people run from in their daily modern lives, the 'daily modern sprint to survive'. Cavemen and their running for survival, the office worker running for their bus.

When projects start to feel limiting, let whatever idea string you've got that's not sparking joy take a seat and explore other stems of ideas. Examiners love it when you explore literally every idea that comes to mind even if its suuuper loosely connected, and even if you don't like the idea and don't expand upon it, that's part of the process. Dedicate a page or two to a specific subject of drawing, a media, a super out of character artstyle. If you totally hate it, drop it, pick up a new idea. Even better if you dip back into your own experimental work later down the line, lets say you like a particular media or theme you briefly dived into months ago, you can pick it up and revamp it.

Using lots of media is great, especially experimentally and earlier on, now I'd say focus on your ideas and use the techniques (like you say, your graphite and gestural markmaking, very very good, and your observational drawing and photography) as tools within the exploration of your new ideas. Wherever possible, anchor your new ideas down with an artist. Explore, research, refine, move forward.

The one thing that will ensure your doing well in a subject is a real love for it, don't bog yourself down in a string of ideas that makes you feel too limited or uninspired. If running isn't doing it for you, don't be afraid to dip in and out of it. I started my Externally Set Assignment dead set on illustration of story books, ended up making a diorama sculpture of an animal in my exam, that I only got to the idea of a week or two before the exam. If you know what you're going to make in your final exam 2 months before it happens, your exploration of ideas is not gonna be adequate, so not knowing where you're going to go is a very good sign as far as im concerned.

So above all, DO WHAT YOU ENJOY, don't plan too far ahead, follow your idea journey literally anywhere you like that you can defend as 'gatherings', and work that mark scheme! Good luck!!! If you have any more questions I'd be very happy to help however I can :biggrin:

Reply 2

sunflowerglue

Original post

by alma.ajf

Hi there!! I'm Alma, I got a 9 for art in my GCSEs, hope I can give some good advice
I did AQA Art, Craft, and Design, but I'll just talk about idea development which I'm sure is similar between the two. From what I'm hearing you're concerned about how to develop your idea of running going forward. I totally understand, especially at this point of year, getting worried about where you'll go next with your ideas. Most of all, I'd like to say that not knowing what you'll make for the exam 2 months before it happens is a very good thing. Your ideas and exploration is what gets you there, if you're doing good exploration of ideas and letting them influence your work, its impossible to know how your work will have been shaped in 2 months time.
If you're hitting a brick wall and feeling limited in your direction, start with whatever idea you're on right now and see just how abstract from that idea you can go. So take running, and for example, you could focus on journeys and destinations, bring that into places and do small experimental pieces on landscapes. You say gatherings, focus on holidays, travel to holidays, long distances, loneliness and isolation. Maybe go more conceptual, use the idea of running symbolically, then you can venture into fears, expectations, what people run from in their daily modern lives, the 'daily modern sprint to survive'. Cavemen and their running for survival, the office worker running for their bus.
When projects start to feel limiting, let whatever idea string you've got that's not sparking joy take a seat and explore other stems of ideas. Examiners love it when you explore literally every idea that comes to mind even if its suuuper loosely connected, and even if you don't like the idea and don't expand upon it, that's part of the process. Dedicate a page or two to a specific subject of drawing, a media, a super out of character artstyle. If you totally hate it, drop it, pick up a new idea. Even better if you dip back into your own experimental work later down the line, lets say you like a particular media or theme you briefly dived into months ago, you can pick it up and revamp it.
Using lots of media is great, especially experimentally and earlier on, now I'd say focus on your ideas and use the techniques (like you say, your graphite and gestural markmaking, very very good, and your observational drawing and photography) as tools within the exploration of your new ideas. Wherever possible, anchor your new ideas down with an artist. Explore, research, refine, move forward.
The one thing that will ensure your doing well in a subject is a real love for it, don't bog yourself down in a string of ideas that makes you feel too limited or uninspired. If running isn't doing it for you, don't be afraid to dip in and out of it. I started my Externally Set Assignment dead set on illustration of story books, ended up making a diorama sculpture of an animal in my exam, that I only got to the idea of a week or two before the exam. If you know what you're going to make in your final exam 2 months before it happens, your exploration of ideas is not gonna be adequate, so not knowing where you're going to go is a very good sign as far as im concerned.
So above all, DO WHAT YOU ENJOY, don't plan too far ahead, follow your idea journey literally anywhere you like that you can defend as 'gatherings', and work that mark scheme! Good luck!!! If you have any more questions I'd be very happy to help however I can :biggrin:

omg thank u so much ur an angell! i think the problem is that i've been thinking too literally about it instead of delving into something more symbolic. i guess what i've been worried about is that if i start with experimenting around ideas of running like a sport and a club and then shift to things like u mentioned which i rlly liked like running away from problems or the 'daily modern sprint to survive'. then there's also trying to link it to gathering and what i've most struggled with is getting references and primary sources, because it's movement so yh. thank u sm for ur help it's genuinely so useful

Reply 3

alma.ajf

Original post

by sunflowerglue

You're very welcome! I see what you mean in terms of linking it back to gatherings. What I'd say is that having gatherings as a starting point means that it only has to link very loosely to whatever you make. As long as you can clearly annotate how this could be linked to gatherings, it works.

Using the modern life idea as an example, keeping gatherings in mind, and looking for primary sources and reference, lets think of what you should get photos of. Seeing as running feels like somewhat a solo activity, you could maybe think about where everyone's paths of life intersect. If you think of people's daily modern lives as a sprint, you can locate the mutual points where people stop. So the places where people meet in their daily lives, and then go their different ways. For example, people waiting in line for coffee in the morning, bus stops or train stations, waiting to cross the road... Even more abstract, you could take photos with the absence of people but with the trace, for example, pathways from shoes on grass, rubbish left at tables in cafes, lights in windows etc.. These examples are just to get you thinking, its up to you if you want to take inspiration from them but I'm trying not to overstep, its gotta be your idea development not mine (even though im loving thinking about this idea, we just got our art a level prompts and they're so terrible 😭)

Basically, I think if you're including 3+ people, or insinuating the presence of 3+ people (like you can always go symbolic, e.g. a set table, footprints, without flat-out showing several people--drawing 3 people is a lot of work!) you defend it as gatherings, but there's no need to focus any closer than that on the idea of gatherings if you don't want to. My starting point was 'image and word', and basically so long as my final exam piece contained an image and a word, that was all i needed to meet that requirement.

You can always check with your teacher and ask if they think you're on the right track and if your ideas are well enough under the gatherings umberella, after all they'll likely be the person marking your work before its moderated, they can tell you if you're doing the right thing :smile: