Art

Fine Art at A level will give you the opportunity to improve your artistic skills and explore your creativity. You will experience a wide range of activities in two and three dimensions and be encouraged to develop your own personal style.

In Year 12, students will be introduced to a wide range of techniques and activities in order to explore who they are as an artist. Activities include:

• Creating and effectively using sketchbooks to show your journey as an artist.
• Exploring a vast range of media and techniques, many of which you won’t have experienced at GCSE. Some techniques will be familiar such as drawing, painting and ceramics, but you will develop your skills, knowledge and creativity to a much higher level.
• Exploring cultural sources, responding to the work of other contemporary and historical practitioners and learning about the context of their work.
• Studying in depth the formal elements of Art, and gaining mastery of how to use them to achieve your own personal and meaningful responses.

Starting points for your Year 12 work include abstraction, portraiture, human form, and landscape. You will be encouraged to take an interest in current online and live exhibitions, as well as visiting existing Art Galleries independently.

Once you begin Year 13, you will begin your Personal Investigation, which is the opportunity to do what you want as an Artist. You will develop a project entirely unique to you in any media you choose. 

As part of this A-Level you will be set fortnightly reading tasks in Year 12 which will enrich your subject knowledge and help you to read like an artist. In Year 13, once you have started the Personal Investigation, the reading you do will be much more self directed in terms of subject matter, and you will share your reading with your peers in seminar type lessons. This is great preparation for how many university courses are run, where you read articles and then bring your findings to seminars to discuss with peers and lecturers.

Assessment is based on a combination of the Personal Investigation (60% of final grade) and an externally set assignment (40%).

Your Personal Investigation (60%) is your choice of subject matter, and is a whole project within Fine Art with an accompanying essay of 1000-3000 words.

The externally set assignment (40%) will be given to you in February, and you will have several weeks to work on a project, culminating in a 15-hour controlled assessment where you will produce a final response for the externally set assignment. 

Fine Art is suited to further courses or employment where ‘what we see matters’ and has transferrable skills to working in the arts, teaching, project management, marketing and design. Many students have furthered their studies through a foundation course, which has provided excellent preparation for further study or employment in the Creative Industries. 1 in every 8 businesses is in the creative industries, and overall it is greater to the UK economy than the oil and gas, automotive, aerospace and life sciences industries combined! Former students are now working in Fashion, Photography, Textiles, Architecture, Museums, Animation, Fine Art, Archaeology and Transport design.