a level art essay examples aqa

Written Artist Analysis

Gut reactions.

You are going to briefly write in detail about an artist/designer - think carefully about who you choose!

First Reactions = Your Immediate Responses

When you first consider your theme, map out your initial reactions in a mind map - this will help to focus your attention on why you selected this theme / art object to explore in the first place!

Use these prompts to start with - then add in more detail as your responses develop..

Second Thoughts

These thought showers / mind maps can now evolve into a more extended piece of writing. There are detailed writing prompts to follow, that will assist you. Remember - the art examiner is more interested in your IDEAS and INTERPRETATIONS - than in a finished essay… Communicate your ideas to them.

Detailed Descriptions

Use the prompts below to assist you… Remember to sketch/photograph/illustrate what you write - and don’t focus on creating a long essay - just capture the IDEAS that interest you!

Concluding Comments

Crucially - sum up!

• What have you have found out?
• What ideas have you found most interesting
• What are you going to explore next, creatively?

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A-Level Art Sample Essay

Subject: Art and design

Age range: 16+

Resource type: Unit of work

Last updated

13 August 2020

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A* sample essay of A2/ A-Level Art Essay, which goes alongside coursework. This student focuses on the theme of sunlight and researches into historic and contemporary artists throughly. Exam board: AQA

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Distortion of Form: A Level Art Sketchbook, Preparation and Final Piece

Last Updated on April 2, 2023

These last few weeks I have been fortunate enough to write about three amazing A Level Art portfolios. This is the second of the three: a comprehensive and well-executed A2 Painting project (AQA A Level Fine Art) awarded 100%. It was completed by Claire Lynn, while she was a student at Carmel Sixth Form Catholic College , Merseyside, England.

READ NEXT: How to make an artist website (and why you need one)

Claire’s initial ideas are explored through photography, with a time lapse/open shutter and a 50mm lens. A Level Art teachers (and examiners) often worry about the use of photographs within Painting folios, particularly when it involves drawing from second-hand imagery. Claire’s portfolio, however, demonstrates how photographic works can be integrated with outstanding success. Not only are the photographs her original works (rather than sourced of the internet or cut from magazines, for example, which would be frowned upon in almost all circumstances), but the camera has been used as a tool to manipulate composition, exploring transparency and overlays through double exposures – effects which are critical in her subsequent drawings and paintings. Even better, Claire’s photographs are not merely snapshots to draw from; they are beautiful, well-composed images in their own right.

Showing an exceptional level of skill, Claire continues to investigate her topic (distortion of form) through a large number of smaller drawings. She conducts extensive experimentation with media, producing charcoal, graphite, and biro pen drawings.  These monochromatic drawings are rich and full of tone: black, whites and a multitude of greys (or colour) in between.

With backgrounds frequently omitted (allowing the focus to be upon the intertwined figures that slip and merge into one other) Claire paints and draws on range of surfaces, including newspaper and mixed media collages. She produces gauche and acrylic paintings and paints and draws on acetate (clear plastic) overlays to further explore transparency.

As Claire develops and refines her ideas, she learns from digital photographer Idris Khan ; line drawings by Dryden Goodwin ; blurred paintings by Gerhard Richter ; portraits by Shawn Barber ; and, for painterly treatment of human skin, Jenny Saville .

While Claire’s technical skill is excellent, it is her intriguing and original take on portraiture and innovative compositions that really sets this portfolio apart.

The multi-layered artworks suggest a relationship between the subject and the way they view themselves; the alter ego and the burden of the other self. Serene and somehow hopeful, the multiple expressions capture a moment in time that writhes and wriggles a little; as if a collection of frozen stills in a video frame. The works tell you much more about a person than you would ever know from a conventional single-image portrait. They give us a story.

This is one of those rare portfolios where the development journey is so beautiful and thorough: exactly as you wish it would be. So many students produce scattered, incoherent portfolios: here you have an A Level Art submission that is substantial and carefully sequenced: it can only be the result of a fantastic student meeting a great teacher. In depth and speaking volumes, this A Level project will be a valuable learning tool for many students and teachers to come.

A Level Art sketchbook

Claire’s project is accompanied by an outstanding A Level Art journal. There is no tacky decoration on the pages: effort has been placed into the work alone: a sincere and aesthetically joyful investigation.

I first discovered Claire’s work while perusing the Asia Region Art Educators website, where I stumbled across the beautiful images that her teacher Martin Cockram (an A Level Art moderator and examiner)  had uploaded. Martin was kind enough to share these with me, along with several other stunning images of her work.

More of Claire’s A Level Art journal pages are available for viewing here in this article about A Level Art sketchbooks .

Amiria has been an Art & Design teacher and a Curriculum Co-ordinator for seven years, responsible for the course design and assessment of student work in two high-achieving Auckland schools. She has a Bachelor of Architectural Studies, Bachelor of Architecture (First Class Honours) and a Graduate Diploma of Teaching. Amiria is a CIE Accredited Art & Design Coursework Assessor.

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                             Claude Monet

STRUCTURAL FRAME

• Artworks were solid and reflective →  Monet interested in reflections. Pushed him further. Eg.  water reflections
• Impressionism →  heavily influenced by Japanese art. Due to technology he found out about them. Looked at artifacts and loved it because it was different.
• Western art – Realism
• Reject the rectangular formation – used squares and circle canvas. →  Composition in a conventional way. Different to his time as everyone used rectangles.
• Created workshops/studios next to lake or piece if land he was painting.
• Purchases a whole lot of land (at least an acre) so he can create his own landscape to paint.

SUBJECTIVE FRAME

• Water Lillie’s: looks at paint and qualities of paint, moves, and atmosphere. Interested in how do we look and see things.
• Influenced by Japanese wood cut prints – flat layers sitting on top of each other →  new way of looking at art, of valuing it. →  Japanese valued their landscape (loved the colour) →  Monet was interested in landscape.
• Monet was influenced by the Japanese through their technique and subject matter (Japanese Gardens).
• Stops just looking at light and looks at atmosphere →  meditation & spiritual connections.

POST MODERN FRAME

• Impressionism: photo’s came out and questions the role of the artist →  documenting historical values (painting = one off, camera = many replicas).

→  Camera destabilizes the artist’s and what they’re meant to be. Use to be very representational.

→  People had certain speculations about how the movement worked ( eg.  horse’s legs all in the air when really 2 by 2).

→  Picasso’s predecessor was Cezanne – viewing the one object at different views at different times. Looks at colour & tone. Art isn’t about what you see (representation); it begins to be about the artist’s motives as well. →  Artists start painting for themselves rather than for the audience in Dutch Still Life.

• Western Art – Realism

CULTURAL FRAME

• Artists have social values because they could do the things ordinary people couldn’t. They were also wealthy.
• Gallery (Salon) – Authority in art. Tells you whether or not you made it as an artist. →  Funded and opened by the Government. Job was to entertain and provide. →  If you were selected then you made it. People will know who you are. Monet didn’t make it in and people laughed at his work – called it incomplete. The general public doesn’t like it.
• Salon refuse (the rejects of Salon): all impressionist art →  still not valued. No one bought it and general public didn’t like it (not pretty). →  Artworks were solid and reflective →  Monet interested in reflections. Pushed him further. Eg.  water reflections
• Western Art - Realism

ARTIST PRACTICE

• Painting →  historically →  you have to know the context of what the artwork means.
• Modernity (democracy – people did what they want): Things like the invention of steam, changes to the landscape, people’s way thinking about the world, country people can travel to city to be educated, jobs in the service industry. You didn’t have to stay poor anymore.
• Monet →  bourgeoisie
• Father was academic and wanted his son to be as well.
• Monet was wealthy: →  lived in France, Paris. Small community of impressionists. →  catch up at parties, café, Moulin rouge
• Western Art – Realism.

CONCEPTUAL FRAME: ARTIST

This is a preview of the whole essay

CONCEPTUAL FRAME: ARTWORK

• Artworks were solid and reflective →  Monet interested in reflections. Pushed him further. Eg. water reflections

MUSEE DE L’ORANGERIE (ARTWORK)

• Creates the artwork for specific places. Eg.  – dome gallery like an installation.
• Donates his work to the government.
• Stops just looking at light and looks at atmosphere →  meditation and spiritual connection.
• Sold his work to Americans →  they funded him →  success overseas but not nationally (sold them to bourgeoisie in America).

CONCEPTUAL FRAME: WORLD

CONCEPTUAL FRAME: AUDIENCE

• Salon refuse (the rejects of Salon): all impressionist art →  still not valued. No one bought it and general public didn’t like it (not pretty).

NIGHT CRIES

___________________________Tracey Moffatt

• Media – Film, colour (19 minutes)
• Setting – outback farm house
• Aboriginal woman nurses her dying white mother.
• Surreal in presentation and use of colour & props.
• Layout is both internal and external.
• Content deals with real and remembered time. Reflects on and makes use of memories.
• Colour changes with contexts. Eg  black and white segments = flashbacks
• No dialogue – images and sounds used to narrate story.
• Sound is heightened element due to lack of dialogue and used to link past, present and the fantasy worlds.
• Sound is important. It vividly links the issues/concepts of the film.
• Lack of dialogue relies on images to tell the story and the audience to experience the work on a personal interpretative level.
• Sounds are surreal and haunting.
• Only dialogue is the cry of the old woman from her sleep “Where are you?” The younger woman is lost in her own internal space.
• The work as whole impacts the audiences’ emotions, leaving them uncomfortable and on edge – highly emotionally charged.
• Sounds make the atmosphere; both internally and externally, feel empty – like the emptiness of the young woman’s life.
• Lack of emotional connection between the two characters.
• Younger woman’s indigenous roots appear foreign to her.
• Christian singer is unable to be heard – bad reception. The illusive struggle for peace and the emptiness of the messages to the younger woman.
• Heightened frustrations of the younger woman are obvious.
• The film leaves audience guessing as to the interpretation of the work. It raises questions rather than answering them.
• Heart wrenching in its impact on the audience’s emotions.
• Challenges audience’s expectations of film/story/plot. It is not clichéd – does not use typical American film formula.
• Title “Rural” links to Australia’s past and all the cultural connections contained within. Eg.  The country’s economy heavily reliant on agriculture and the ecology’s demise as a direct result.
• Obvious links to the 1950’s film “Jedda” where an Aboriginal girl is raised within a white context and the struggle she wrestles with as a direct result of her upbringing.
• The work itself is a film (not a traditional art medium) and the impact of the audience of this medium is far more elaborate and sophisticated in reference to emotion.
• The racial references inform the audiences of the artist’s subjective experiences as well as a generation’s experience by making sub minimal references to political issues of the black and white debate/related issues.
• The work reflects a loss of innocence, a sense of isolation and dysfunction.
• The memories of the younger woman share her struggles to escape her life’s situation, her lack of identity or relationship to her indigenous culture.
• In the beach scene we see her being strangled by seaweed come film – possibly symbolizing her memories constantly being returned and how technology is used to record history.
• Introduces the Post Modern concept of history being a subjective rather than objective record of events.
• Aboriginality – lack of connection.
• White Australia – its political persuasions, values and baggage.
• Religious beliefs – in particular Christianity.
• Deals with time and history.
• Symbolic use of Christian issues. →  Washing of feet (like Jesus wiping feet of disciples) →  “Onward Christian Soldiers” hymn. The impacts of Christianity on indigenous cultures but more specifically on the individual. →  The value of the individual – compassion
• Cultural icons – the squeaky farmhouse door. →  The corrugated iron outdoor toilet
• Lack of intimacy between the two characters – possibly reflects same in racial black and white relationships on political front.
• Emptiness of religion – broken promises of the Church.
• Empty life echoed in the setting.
• Guilt and condemnation for feeling of resentment to mother – issues of caring for the elderly →  burden.
• Deals with ideas on death →  Physical, spiritual, mental etc.
• Contemporary Australian film making
• Relates to Tracey Moffatt’s Aboriginal background.
• Personal experiences
• Semi Autobiographic
• Personal and interpretative.
• About her life, how these two people relate to each other.
• Explores emotions of frustration and loneliness.
• Mother and daughter relationship.
• Shows the loss of her brothers.
• Repetitive actions and movements.
• No answers to questions.
• Colour tones of purple, red.
• Setting – house, rural area.
• Artwork is confronting.
• Annoying sounds, repetitive creaking.
• Sounds intrude on the silence.
• Artificial setting – studio set.

CONCEPTUAL FRAME: WORLD  

• Racial history – Aboriginal vs. White Australia.
• Stolen generation – adopted into white family.
• Desert location – isolation, dryness.
• Christianity – singing songs
• Conflicts on culture – Jimmy Little.
• Washing of mother’s feet – like disciples washing Jesus’ feet.
• Assimilation policy.
• Issues of contemporary history.
• Does not fit into normal film genre.
• Leaves audience wondering.
• Movie is viewed on personal level.
• Personal experience on life Eg.  Bad childhood
• Read movie on different level.
• Creates more questions than answers.
• Sounds make audience think about answers.
• No dialogue makes it hard to understand story.
• Experienced individually.

_______________________________Bill Viola

• Architectural space = man made space + negative space in a building. →  Interested in filling space.
• Experiments with combining the effects of electronic sound with architectural space in order to combine the video’s properties with his own emotions and personal experiences. →  Explore show integral sound is to the perception of space.
• The submergence of water in several of Viola’s works →  linking to his personal experience when he was 10 and nearly drowned in a lake.
• Video artist
• He uses universal symbols used in beliefs →  water, fire and wind.
• Silhouette – alien like form →  scary
• Turns body into a landscape →  the human experience using the landscape to explore the human experience.
• Simplicity in the presentation but a very complex thinking process – deep meaning →  putting too much on the artwork restricts the meaning.
• Works very gradual: - distorting sense of space - you don’t realize how big things are until the end - manipulating, consumes the audience into his works then overwhelming them →  ( The Messenger )
• Works done in a loop – life and cycle.
• Water – cleanse →  is the person stuck in a better place?
• His works unfold the layers of human consciousness and self knowledge. - image starts revealing itself slowly - works the reverse of conscience →  reveals more deeper perspective - may trigger own memories because of its scale
• In his multimedia works he explores the phenomena of sense perception →   integrating a range of philosophies, both Western and Eastern.  
• His approach to life and his work has been greatly influenced by Eastern philosophy. →  Places humanity in the context of nature’s ongoing cycle and recognizes the whole as being represented in parts.
• His works are metaphors for birth, reincarnation, renewal, emergence of an individual and personal journey. →  Viewer is left to contemplate the meaning of life, as well as to dwell on the memories and fears.
• Concept of renewal, life etc is associated with the submergence of water in several of Viola’s works →  linking to his personal experience when he was 10 and nearly drowned in a lake. →  His memories of the experience are of mystery and peace below the surface.
• Works deals with life, with survival, with the will to live and also with death.
• Emotions and reactions
• Scared – dealing with the unknown →  appearing and disappearing like supernatural/abnormal →  looking for our reaction.
• Audience submerged in the artwork, like drowning →  reality you can hear a heartbeat →  plays with idea of Nasa.
• Work relies on the individual →  where we are in life (at that stage), their understanding of life and the world and how they interpret their work.
• Who am I? What is my purpose in life? →  Questioning ideas of what we accept as life for the individual with the different stages of life.
• Confrontational →  human figures, reality.
• Looking for universal truths in the world.
• Shared experiences of the landscape.
• As an audience you have no sense of space where the video is projected →  distorts sense of space.
• Being happy in their own misery →  What decision are people making? What idea should I be making?
• Turns body into a landscape.
• Like reinventing the human expressionism in Caravaggio’s works →  the greeting: Mary + Elizabeth. Last 3 colour works.
• Mediator of nature.

CULTURAL FRAME  

• He sees nature’s power as composed of interacting opposites (Chinese Yin and Yang) – light and dark, fire and water, spiritual and physical, life and death. →  The illusions created suggest a feeling of grandeur / hint of Romanticism (about human being small in comparison to Mother Nature).
• Uses innovative state of art electronic technology to investigate life and being itself.
• Influence by religion – he uses universal symbols used in beliefs →  water, fire and wind.
• Interested in the Earth and its elements and how we use Earthly elements in our beliefs.
• Universal – not limited to a certain culture.

ARTIST PRACTICE  

• Viola keeps a collection of notebooks in which he has recorded and developed his ideas and observations in.
• Auto bibliographical: fell off a boat in childhood →  repeated image of water.
• Influence by religion – he uses universal symbols used in beliefs →  water, fire.
• American Artist, New York.
• Constant use of resurrection – rebirth that can be revived.
• Not egotistical: not about him it’s about his surroundings.
• He sees nature’s power as composed of interacting opposites (Chinese Yin and Yang) – light and dark, fire and water, spiritual and physical, life and death.

THE MESSENGER (ARTWORK)

• Distorted image in dark atmosphere with little spotlight →  looks like its floating.
• Windy and strong gustily, whispery noises.
• Human figure (recognisable but distorted still)
• Image becomes clearer and body moves closer to focus →  a make head bopping up and down the surface of the water.
• Darkness consumes background and focus is centered yet smaller scale than the darkness which surrounds it.
• Slowly zooms into top half of body’s figure →  image distorts and face emerges from water still floating – eyes open, mouth open, a gasp of air? →  Music helps give a sense of relief is consumed and human flesh colour emerges.
• Music becomes soft and a little hollow and face floats on surface - sounds like heavy breathing being breathed under water.
• After two minutes body floats under water again. Colours turn blue, cyan, green and flesh colour disappears. →  life disappears. Eyes are closed.
• Body starts zooming out showing more of the whole body again.
• Bubbles emerge from under the water to surface →  drowning assumption?
• As body zooms away from focus, image distorts but area with face is filled with bubbles →  music becomes softer and almost silent.

Document Details

• Word Count 4328
• Page Count 11
• Level AS and A Level
• Subject Art & Design

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A-level Art and Design

7201, 7202, 7203, 7204, 7205, 7206

• Specification
• Planning resources
• Teaching resources
• Assessment resources
• Introduction
• Specification at a glance
• 3.1 Summary of subject content
• 3.2 Overarching knowledge, understanding and skills
• 3.3 Art, craft and design

3.4 Fine art

• 3.5 Graphic communication
• 3.6 Textile design
• 3.7 Three-dimensional design
• 3.8 Photography
• Scheme of assessment
• Non-exam assessment administration
• General administration

Students should be introduced to a variety of experiences that explore a range of fine art media, processes and techniques. They should be made aware of both traditional and new media.

Students should explore the use of drawing for different purposes, using a variety of methods and media on a variety of scales. Students may use sketchbooks/workbooks/journals to underpin their work where appropriate.

Students should explore relevant images, artefacts and resources relating to a range of art, craft and design, from the past and from recent times, including European and non-European examples. This should be integral to the investigating and making processes. Students' responses to these examples must be shown through practical and critical activities that demonstrate their understanding of different styles, genres and traditions.

Students should be aware of the four assessment objectives to be demonstrated in the context of the content and skills presented. They should be aware of the importance of process as well as product.

Areas of study

Students are required to work in one or more area(s) of Fine art, such as those listed below. They may explore overlapping areas and combinations of areas:

• drawing and painting
• mixed-media, including collage and assemblage
• installation
• printmaking (relief, intaglio, screen processes and lithography)
• moving image and photography.

Skills and techniques

Students will be expected to demonstrate skills, as defined in Overarching knowledge, understanding and skills , in the context of their chosen area(s) of Fine art. In addition, students will be required to demonstrate skills in all of the following:

• appreciation of different approaches to recording images, such as observation, analysis, expression and imagination
• awareness of intended audience or purpose for their chosen area(s) of fine art
• understanding of the conventions of figurative/representational and abstract/non-representational imagery or genres
• appreciation of different ways of working, such as, using underpainting, glazing, wash and impasto; modelling, carving, casting, constructing, assembling and welding; etching, engraving, drypoint, mono printing, lino printing, screen printing, photo silkscreen and lithography
• understanding of pictorial space, composition, rhythm, scale and structure
• appreciation of colour, line, tone, texture, shape and form.

Knowledge and understanding

Students must show knowledge and understanding of:

• how ideas, feelings and meanings can be conveyed and interpreted in images and artefacts in the chosen area(s) of study within fine art
• historical and contemporary developments and different styles and genres
• how images and artefacts relate to social, environmental, cultural and/or ethical contexts, and to the time and place in which they were created
• continuity and change in different styles, genres and traditions relevant to fine art
• a working vocabulary and specialist terminology that is relevant to their chosen area(s) of fine art.