Exam Revision
General Advice
- Make flash cards to review the elements and principles of art.
- Identify the areas that relate to the Structural lens which you will use in Section A when analysing artworks that you have not seen before.
- Identify areas in the Personal Lens which you will focus on in Section B to discuss the artist’s influences and their intended message. You will need to use your descriptive skills from the Structural Lens to identify where evidence of these things can be seen in the artwork.
- READ the didactics of every artwork.
- Review the Surrealism art movement and the artworks of the artists we looked at.
- Summarise your notes for the three artists of Unit 2; Del Kathryn Barton, Blak Douglas and Julie Dowling. Review their artworks to familiarise yourself with their visual styles – how they portray images, illustrative, comic like, realism, visual cultural symbols and icons.
- Section C questions are about your own work so prepare responses adding as much detail and technical information as you can.
- Review the different sections of the Creative Process so that you can identify what you were doing at the different stages and use the correct art terminology.
- Research and Exploration;
- Development and Experimentation,
- Refinement and Resolution;
- Reflection and Evaluation.
During the exam
- Respond to the questions worth the most marks first if you feel you may struggle with time.
- Allocate 2 minutes per mark to help manage your time. 6 marks = 12 minutes
- Part of this time should be spent reading the question very carefully and underlining key words that should be included in your written response.
- Make annotations around images of the artworks to help you to collect your thoughts. This should include a selection from the elements and principles as well as adjectives.
- Make a note of the commend terms so that you respond appropriate; describe, explain, discuss, compare.
Key skills and knowledge you will be asked to respond to:
Aesthetic qualities – How and why the artist has used the elements and principles of art to create the mood, atmosphere or feeling in the work.
The aesthetic qualities of an artwork refer to the use of the art elements and principles to create visual effects or conceptual ideas. These are fundamental to analysing, describing and discussing art. You should know these by heart and refer to them in every response, adding to the depth of your observations with descriptive details of what is portrayed or conveyed.
Example – Colour and Contrast: The artist has used silver tones of greens with small yellow highlights (colour) to portray the natural qualities of australian gum leaves. These hues (colour) work harmoniously (low contrast) with the mottled shades of browns (colour) depicted in the tree bark. The hot pink (colour) flowers coming out of the open round gumnuts constrast strongly against this backdrop.
Subject matter – What does the artwork portray? What can you see in the artwork? Can you clearly see a scene or a story too?
Example – This landscape setting tells the story of the hard life experienced by farmers in the early settlement of Australia as they try to grow food in the foreign soil.
Materials, techniques and processes – How has the artwork been made?
What effects have been created with the way they have been applied?
What effects do individual artists create to determine their individual style.
In what order where the materials and techniques applied (process)
Do not use abbreviations such as ‘oil on canvas’, it is oil paint on primed canvas. It may also be on linen canvas or other types. Be specific with the information that is provided to you.
Example – The artist, working in her established style, has applied fine black ink lines with a pen over the wash of water and pale blue watercolour that has dried, to subtly suggest the forms of the facial features.
Materials – pen and watercolour paint
Technique – drawn fine lines, water mixed with diluted watercolour paint
Process/order – pen drawn over the face (second) after the watercolour paint has dried (first)
Message, meaning or idea – What is the artwork trying to convey? Does it have a specific message or is it a visual representation of something? Neither one is more significant in Art.
The artwork conveys, tells the story of, communicates, etc.
The artwork portrays, depicts, exhibits, shows, etc.
other options
The artwork reveals, challenges, dramatises, celebrates, etc.
Sources of Inspiration – What has inspired the artist to create this artwork?
This may overlap with the artist’s influences.
The artist was inspired by the beauty of the australian outback to capture the light and colours in this vivid setting.
Artists of Influence – Which artists have influenced this artist’s approach? How?
What experiences, beliefs, feelings, interests and/or personal issues and identity influence the artist and the images and messages in their artworks.
The artist has been heavily influenced by the challenges of their childhood years to convey this confronting message about bullying.
The artist’s approach to depicting this landscape have been influenced by the famous paintings of the Post Impressionism movement, particularly the style of Vincent Van Gogh.
Important: Always read the didactic information below the artworks you choose to write about.
Section A: Structural Lens
This part of the examination requires to students to use their skills of observation and their understanding of the application of the elements and principles of art to create visual and meaningful effects in artworks.
Command terms may include: Describe, discuss, explain, analyse.
An artwork will be provided with each question. These will be selected from the artists that have been investigated in this unit. The didactice information will always be provided with the artwork.
- Salvador Dali, Spain Historical
- Darren Doye, Australian Contemporary
- James Gleason, Australian Historical
- Rene Magritte, France Historical
Students are to respond to the question, making direct reference to the subject matter and aesthetic effects in the artwork provided to support their answer. This means where it is in the artwork as well.
Having investigated the artist style of Surrealism, students should understand the influences of the aims and philosophies of this movement and be able to apply them to support their analysis of artworks.
Section B: Personal Lens
In this section you will be asked to discuss the personal ideas and issues that artist’s express in their artworks. You will need to have thoroughly researched and memorised this information for,
- Del Kathryn Barton, Australian Contemporary
- Blak Douglas, Indigenous Australian Contemporary
- Julie Dowling, Indigenous Australia Contemporary
Command terms may include: Describe, discuss, explain, analyse.
An artwork will be provided with each question. These will be selected from artists that have been investigated in this unit. The didactic information will always be provided with the artwork.
Students are to respond to the question, making direct reference to the subject matter and aesthetic effects in the artwork to provide evidence in their answer. This means describing where the evidence csn be seen in the artwork as well.
Section C: Creative Process
In this section you will be required to write about your own experiences with the creative process. As this refers to your own aims and practices in your development of artworks,your responses are expected to be quite detailed. The four components of the creative practice are:
- Research and Exploration
- Development and Experimentation
- Refinement and Resolution
- Reflection and Evaluation
You must be able to explain the significance of the message you wanted to convey and back this up with the source of inspiration or context of this idea. You also need to refer specifically to your artist’s of influence and the materials and techniques you chose to use.
When discussing the materials and techniques you should be able to describe step by step how you produced the artwork. This should include any difficulties you experienced along the way and changes you needed or chose to make. Finally, the aesthetic qualities that you created for your final artwork need to be discussed and their connection to your message explained. You will need to refer to how you created these using your materials and techniques as well as describe the aesthetic effects you created to support your aims for your final artwork.
GLOSSARY
Visual Language: is an integral component of studio practice and refers to communication of ideas through experiences, images and objects.
Artists use visual language to communicate the exploration, development and resolution of artworks. They experiment with, and develop and refine, materials, techniques and processes and to communicate their intention.
When creating and producing contemporary artworks, the artist relies on historical understanding of specific styles, representations and imagery. Ideas, beliefs, values and concepts are communicated through the context, placement and juxtaposition of objects, styles and representations
Materials: Materials are what artworks are made with.
Materials have different qualities and can create different effects: they can be smooth or rough; hard or soft; heavy or light; fragile or indestructible.
Artists choose materials because of the particular qualities they desire for their artwork.
The same material can be used in very different ways to achieve very different results.
Techniques: how the materials are used or applied. For example: cross hatching, hatching, ‘thick on thin’ layering with oil paint
Symbols: a symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship.
Inspiration: artistic inspirations (from the artist’s practice or artworks), personal photography, news, music, poetry etc….. and how these have influenced an artwork. Always refer to what you can see in the artwork.
Subject matter: Subject Matter refers to what the artwork is about, what can be seen in it. It is the visual or narrative focus of the work. In some instances the title will give you a clue. You can also see evidence directly in the artwork and use the elements and principles to describe your observations.
Historical context: the time or era in which an artwork was created. These responses may include political, social, cultural, artistic and technological contexts, the artist’s personal history and local or world events such as war or celebrations.
Style: the ways in which an artist develops an individual way of creating an artwork through their use of art elements and principles, and materials and techniques. These visual qualities make their work distinctive or unique, as belonging to them and linked by a similar aesthetic, technical attributes or shared ideas. An art style may also relate to an art movement (a period of time in art history) These movements may have visual and technical pursuits or conceptual goals.
Aesthetic qualities: are explained as the way in which art elements and principles, materials and techniques work together to influence the mood, feeling or meaning of an artwork.
They should never be listed in a response.
They should be woven into your response through your description of the artwork in response to the focus of the question.
Use at least one adjective in front of the element or principle of art you have chosen to write about to provide evidence in your response.
1. Never put a list of the elements or principles of art in one sentence. Use these and words that relate to them as you describe the artwork and its composition.
2. Adjectives will score you marks. Be descriptive with what sort of lines, colours, textures have been used; how the tonal qualities create form, depth, etc. Always use an adjective in front of the element or principle to describe each area of the composition or item.
Be more descriptive with colours too! Red, yellow and blue are the most basic ways you can refer to colour. Try Indian red, sunshine ochre and cobalt blue. These are ADJECTIVES
3. Refer to the artwork by its artform; painting, drawing, sculpture, print, photograph or simply artwork. NEVER ‘piece’.
4. Only discuss the artist’s personal influences and beliefs that relate directly to the artwork in front of you. Random comments reduce the quality of your response.
4. If you are analysing the meaning or the subject matter of an artwork, only write about what is seen or what can be directly determined from the artwork.
Do not invent additional stories or meaning – these usually come from students overlaying the contemporary issues you have generally studied, and are NOT the intentions of this artist.
5. Not every artwork has a negative social justice story. Some artworks celebrate life, landscapes and people.