Reality Of Being A GCSE Art Student

Doing GCSE Art was honestly much more stressful than I anticipated, but thankfully I left with a 8 (equal to an A* in the old grading system), so I’d love to share some tips and tricks with those who want to take the subject, or are currently doing it. Well let’s get to it….

WILL BAD DRAWINGS GET ME A BAD GRADE?

No not necessarily, you surprisingly can get good grades simply from having REALLY good annotations. Annotating your work to a good level of detail is what makes you a great candidate.

WHAT SHOULD YOU INCLUDE IN YOUR ANNOTATIONS?

In your annotations you should always link back your work to the artist your taking inspiration from for example mentioning similarities between yours and their work , and also mention if you’ve added a little twist of your own into your drawing. Also talk about what elements you like in your drawing and what you dislike. Explore the media you have used (e.g pencil, pen, crayon or ink) and evaluate what you like and dislike about your media choice, and how you will improve in the future. Make sure to talk about tones, light ,reflection and shadows in your drawing when necessary.

MY OWN EXPERIENCE

For Art you have to choose a theme to do and I decided to do Maps for my A4 sketchbook but did ‘cars’ for my A3 one. I found these themes quite enjoyable to do and drawing itself can be very therapeutic. The only struggle I had was time management and balancing my other subjects as well as doing my best drawings. I often found myself staying after school in art club to get things do and ask my teachers for help.

TIPS AND TRICKS

• Make sure to plan out your time properly
• Ask your teacher for help
• Take your time in your drawings
• Invest in buying paintbrushes, different toned pencils, ect
• annotate, annotate, annotate !!!
• keep on top of your work
• listen to music while you draw it helps relax you 🙂

Good luck to anyone who wants to do Art, apart from the workload it really is a fun and creative subject that I recommend !💕

Sairah