How to: survive A Level Art

Hello, Reader!

I’ve made a post about English Literature, my Maths retake… so it’s only fair I’ll tell you about my A Level Art experience. I started studying Art in year 9, so I had a good 3 years of building up my skills and techniques for A Levels. What I wasn’t prepared for is the amount of time I would have to dedicate to my Art, alongside three other A Levels. The reason I chose to study Art at A Level is that after GCSEs, I was convinced that I would go on to study Graphic Design at university. I adored studying Graphics and found that the requirement for studying it as a degree is to take one Art-related subject at A Level. I figured that Art would be enough and chose the rest of my subjects based on what I was interested in. This lasted all the way until about October of year 12 when I decided that I wanted to study Maths at uni- but the Art stayed! It is a linear A Level (like most are now) so I couldn’t drop it at the end of year 12 without losing a whole year of hard work with no qualification at the end, so it just stayed with me until the end and got me another B on my results.

My first project was named “Emotions in Context” which I started in September of year 12 and finished around January of year 13, so it took about a year and a half. I had no idea what I wanted to do for this project so I kind of just made it up as I went along. I started by drawing and painting my friends presenting a range of emotions. (If you ever let me take strange photos of you and draw them - thank you.) I was kind of spoon-fed ideas by my teacher and guided step by step through the project until it didn’t even feel like my own. In the end, I finished with a huge 6ft tall painting with a mixture of realism and expressionism which conveyed an emotional response to police brutality. I liked the final piece and the message behind it, and even some of the elements of it, but I genuinely didn’t like it as a whole and I regretted that I wasn’t more in control of the project. 

So, I took complete control over my second project. This one lasted between January of year 13 until the end of the course, in May of the same year- so it’s roughly 5 months to pull off another project of just as good quality as the previous. At the start of it, we were given an exam booklet from which we had to choose a theme. I decided to go with “crevices” and based my project around scars. I did a lot of human form studies in sketches and paintings before I decided that I wanted my project to be mainly in embroidery, on fabric. This was soon after I became really interested in embroidery and started learning it- so I just poured it all into my project. I used it to embrace femininity and fragility, experimenting with floral motives and pastel colours. In the end, I created a large embroidery piece with floral elements within self-harm scars. It was risky because the final piece has to be done in fifteen hours, and that’s already little time for an art piece on canvas, but if you’ve ever been in contact with embroidery you know that it’s a very slow and time-consuming art that creates very subtle effects. This means that my piece wasn’t the first one the examiners’ eyes would gravitate towards in the room, which was risky, but it had power in the execution, which was the benefit. So I took the risk and I adored my entire project, so I’d say it was a success. 

If I had to summarise Art as an A Level subject in one word, it would be “time-consuming”. Honestly, making time for it was the hardest part of the course. The way I made time is by spending a lot of my frees and my lunchtimes in the art room as well as staying behind after school… often until it closed. I had my own schedule of which hours in my time table I’d spend in the library and which in the art room during the school day which I made sure to balance accordingly to how much time I needed for each. Also, there were many days when I’d stay in school until it closed, and then later go to the library and stay there until it closed too. Another important thing to keep me on top of my work was clear deadlines I set myself for each piece and made sure I kept to it, otherwise I’d fall behind. If I could go back and choose my subjects again would I choose A Level Art? Probably. Although it consumed a lot of my time, it was also time that my brain could rest from studying. Similar to meditation, I think it was another thing that kept me sane throughout A Levels. So if you’re thinking about taking Art as an A Level, go for it! Make sure to stay dedicated to your work. If you’re already studying it, good luck! Remember to appreciate the time off from absorbing information and try not to stress about not getting everything perfect. 

You’ve got this!

Love,

Agnes xo