Know exactly what you are preparing for...
Study the criteria and rubrics to see how you will be evaluated in your IB Exam. Make sure you provide evidence that DEMONSTRATES thorough knowledge and understanding, application, evaluation, and personal engagement for each markband descriptor. Show what you know! Show what makes you unique as an artist.
IB ART TIPS FOR PARENTS
- Dick Blick’s have the recommended sketchbooks in stock. They are an excellent source for art materials. Locally, look for Plaza Arts and Pearl stores. Many local stores offer coupons through email and rewards programs.
- While traveling, visit local art galleries and museums with your student. It fulfills a class requirement and is fun for the whole family!
- Ask your student what their current studio project/concept is. Their studio projects are very interesting and the extra conversation and perspective is beneficial to their growth.
- Encourage your student to work in their sketchbooks for at least 30 minutes a night. This will help them stay on track and help them to manage their time.
- Help your student set up a mini studio in your house where they can experiment with materials and work on their studio projects. Good lighting and a flat surface are essential.
The Top 10 Mistakes Made by Art Students
Are wondering if IB is right for you? Or are you wondering how to do well in IB? Consider this article from Student Art Guide: Helping Art Students Excel.
http://www.studentartguide.com/articles/top-10-mistakes-by-art-students
http://www.studentartguide.com/articles/top-10-mistakes-by-art-students
Pushing Through Artist's Block...
Key points
- Taking inspiration from another artist is a great way to get started – but remember to make art that’s personal to you.
- Challenge yourself to move out of your comfort zone, but rely on your strengths.
- Experiment with different materials and make notes on what’s good and bad.
- Hitting a wall is natural. Take a step back, pick out the good bits, and try to push them further.
HELPFUL ADVICE FROM A FORMER IB STUDENT IN THE UK WHO EARNED A 7 ON HER EXAM IN 2010.
Her advice...Hi I got a level 7 in HL art this year and I have some important advice.I was looking for it when I was working, all over the internet and all I got was a regurgitated syllabus (or maybe repetition of what teachers has said...)
1. Pretend you are not doing the IB or any equivalent of school work (if you did GCSEs, forget anything connected to the format or requirements.) The IB as you should know has NO prescribed themes, teachers usually try to make you set yourself limits. Resist. It's the one good thing about the actual visual arts course. 2. CULTURE!!! such a big word in the IB, but it doesn't have to mean worship and political correctness. If you really are a 'world student' and a thinker and all those other IB don't be afraid to criticise another culture as well as your own. You will not be penalised for having a voice as long as you know what you are talking about. Also don't focus on it too much I've seen a lot of people obsessing about the culture aspect and it is so false and forced. If you don't feel it, aren't really that interested in it DO NOT DO IT. My work was all universal - Apart from literally 4 sketchbook pages on voodoo. 3. Other Artists, mention many but I beg you, again, do not force or obsess. Some projects come from you! Why should everything be an inspiration by Picasso or Rothko etc. It shouldn't work like this - you are in the driving seat. When I mentioned artists it was usually because of how they worked - method or how they thought that was inspiring; I tried to explain this well, and also explain why my work looks nothing like theirs and is absolutely unconnected in theme. If you know your art history and theory well by reading in spare time,gallery's etc. this can work for you. 4. Studio Work is what makes you get a level 7 or so I believe, this is where the goods and time must lie whatever Option you take. Its what makes a real artist- I know a girl who in 2008 got a level 5 - I was shocked!!! her sketchbooks were the most beautiful, original and amazing things I have ever seen (god I was jealous), have never seen better even on university level but the final pieces were average. I would recommend academic sculpting-its very time consuming but I recommend you do this in year 13 if you are confident painter/drawer, it's also something fun and gives you a break from the whole paper format. 5. SKETCH BOOKS. the most difficult part for me as I hated having to be in a prescribed format (I generally hate rules I didn't make up) and I am a horrible perfectionist. I will be honest with you I ripped many pages, stuck many together and repainted over others. I don't believe mistakes are a very good thing. for me it is weakness, the learning experience is when you learn to do the page better and when your next RWB has less of those mistakes.(yes my teacher was angry - but doesn't everyone hate ugly pages?they are not ok). BUT do not make this mistake which I did, get obsessed about one pages and do it 10 times over chances are after the second time it will not improve much and is just a waste of time. 6.If you too hate sketchbooks I have a recommendation, carry around a moleskin/ small notebook where you really can have a diary/ note pad/ mini sketchbook with no rules. Scan the pages from it that are nice and pretty or have interesting ideas, insights into your work and stick them into your RWB. This went down a hit with every one, moderater,examiner. + present the originals at interview, exhibit and send to moderater (if your school requires it like mine did) it counts as extra work and is very personal and shows your serious. I took 4 HLs and got 7 in History, Art and Russian and 6 in English. But I did sacrifice my maths SL grade in the important months for art and ended up getting 36 after predicted 40 - beware. Time management is a good thing... I was never very good at that. http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=1345960 |
My Response as a Teacher1. Exactly. The best work will come from what you are passionate about and from within you. There are two main reasons we as teachers encourage you to explore a theme: To encourage you to explore your passions in depth. We want you to take your passions and your curiosity deeper into your artmaking exploration. This will make your art more meaningful and more personal to you. We want you to take risks and take your art to the next level. To help you unify your coursework so that it shows depth and cohesion when you submit it to the IB. The IB is asking to see what you have explored in depth and what connections you have made in your investigations. The IWB pages are supposed to support the coursework and the coursework is supposed to be reflected in the IWB. 2. CULTURE. Learn about how other people see and experience the world and be sensitive to other cultures in your artwork exploration. Show that you are a global citizen by MAKING CONNECTIONS in your artwork and in your IWB. Often, you can refer back to an artist who works in a way that interests you, who draws from their cultural understanding in their own work. Definitely do not obsess. 3, Other Artists. Know them. Refer to them. Learn from them. DO NOT FEEL LIKE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO COPY THEM! Show what you know by making connections between your work and theirs in theme, style, mark-making, what have you, but ALSO show where you differ. 4. Studio work TAKES TIME. Period. You already know that. Put in the time and you will see the results. The time you put in pays off in better work and better scores. If something needs to be reworked to be better, just do it. 5/6. Sketchbooks. Definitely try to push the limits. As long as it can be legible and scanned in to submit, it works. Yes you need 50% words and 50% images, but you should definitely play with the format. Her moleskin journal idea is wonderful! Have fun with them. If we can't read them, fix that somehow that works for you. But show what you know and are investigating! |
Lead with your Curiosity!
This journey is only as good as you make it. Here is an excerpt from yet another speech dedicated to high schoolers. Take it apart and do what you will with it.
And what's your real job supposed to be? Unless you're Mozart, your first task is to figure that out. What are the great things to work on? Where are the imaginative people? And most importantly, what are you interested in? The word "aptitude" is misleading, because it implies something innate. The most powerful sort of aptitude is a consuming interest in some question, and such interests are often acquired tastes.
A distorted version of this idea has filtered into popular culture under the name "passion." I recently saw an ad for waiters saying they wanted people with a "passion for service." The real thing is not something one could have for waiting on tables. And passion is a bad word for it. A better name would be curiosity.
Kids are curious, but the curiosity I mean has a different shape from kid curiosity. Kid curiosity is broad and shallow; they ask why at random about everything. In most adults this curiosity dries up entirely. It has to: you can't get anything done if you're always asking why about everything. But in ambitious adults, instead of drying up, curiosity becomes narrow and deep. The mud flat morphs into a well.
Curiosity turns work into play. For Einstein, relativity wasn't a book full of hard stuff he had to learn for an exam. It was a mystery he was trying to solve. So it probably felt like less work to him to invent it than it would seem to someone now to learn it in a class.
One of the most dangerous illusions you get from school is the idea that doing great things requires a lot of discipline. Most subjects are taught in such a boring way that it's only by discipline that you can flog yourself through them. So I was surprised when, early in college, I read a quote by Wittgenstein saying that he had no self-discipline and had never been able to deny himself anything, not even a cup of coffee.
Now I know a number of people who do great work, and it's the same with all of them. They have little discipline. They're all terrible procrastinators and find it almost impossible to make themselves do anything they're not interested in. One still hasn't sent out his half of the thank-you notes from his wedding, four years ago. Another has 26,000 emails in her inbox.
I'm not saying you can get away with zero self-discipline. You probably need about the amount you need to go running. I'm often reluctant to go running, but once I do, I enjoy it. And if I don't run for several days, I feel ill. It's the same with people who do great things. They know they'll feel bad if they don't work, and they have enough discipline to get themselves to their desks to start working. But once they get started, interest takes over, and discipline is no longer necessary.
Do you think Shakespeare was gritting his teeth and diligently trying to write Great Literature? Of course not. He was having fun. That's why he's so good.
If you want to do good work, what you need is a great curiosity about a promising question. The critical moment for Einstein was when he looked at Maxwell's equations and said, what the hell is going on here?
It can take years to zero in on a productive question, because it can take years to figure out what a subject is really about. To take an extreme example, consider math. Most people think they hate math, but the boring stuff you do in school under the name "mathematics" is not at all like what mathematicians do.
The great mathematician G. H. Hardy said he didn't like math in high school either. He only took it up because he was better at it than the other students. Only later did he realize math was interesting-- only later did he start to ask questions instead of merely answering them correctly.
When a friend of mine used to grumble because he had to write a paper for school, his mother would tell him: find a way to make it interesting. That's what you need to do: find a question that makes the world interesting. People who do great things look at the same world everyone else does, but notice some odd detail that's compellingly mysterious.
And not only in intellectual matters. Henry Ford's great question was, why do cars have to be a luxury item? What would happen if you treated them as a commodity? Franz Beckenbauer's was, in effect, why does everyone have to stay in his position? Why can't defenders score goals too?
Now
If it takes years to articulate great questions, what do you do now, at sixteen? Work toward finding one. Great questions don't appear suddenly. They gradually congeal in your head. And what makes them congeal is experience. So the way to find great questions is not to search for them-- not to wander about thinking, what great discovery shall I make? You can't answer that; if you could, you'd have made it.
The way to get a big idea to appear in your head is not to hunt for big ideas, but to put in a lot of time on work that interests you, and in the process keep your mind open enough that a big idea can take roost. Einstein, Ford, and Beckenbauer all used this recipe. They all knew their work like a piano player knows the keys. So when something seemed amiss to them, they had the confidence to notice it....
The important thing is to get out there and do stuff. Instead of waiting to be taught, go out and learn.
Your life doesn't have to be shaped by admissions officers. It could be shaped by your own curiosity. It is for all ambitious adults. And you don't have to wait to start. In fact, you don't have to wait to be an adult. There's no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. You start being an adult when you decide to take responsibility for your life. You can do that at any age. [10]
This may sound like bullshit. I'm just a minor, you may think, I have no money, I have to live at home, I have to do what adults tell me all day long. Well, most adults labor under restrictions just as cumbersome, and they manage to get things done. If you think it's restrictive being a kid, imagine having kids.
The only real difference between adults and high school kids is that adults realize they need to get things done, and high school kids don't. That realization hits most people around 23. But I'm letting you in on the secret early. So get to work. Maybe you can be the first generation whose greatest regret from high school isn't how much time you wasted.
Read the entire speech here...
http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html?dsq=33146195%2F