GCSE & A Level Art Exam Paper: Help & Ideas

Last Updated on February 8, 2017

The GCSE, IGCSE and A Level Art examination paper incorporate topics which must be used to stimulate ideas for a portfolio of artwork.For some students, a set starting bespeak makes life easier; for others, it throws upwards a mental cake: a paralysing fear that they will non be able to produce anything original, or – worse –that they will be forced to depict/paint/photograph/blueprint/sculpt something that is horrendously tedious and which doesn't interests them at all.

What follows is a list of thoughts, ideas and responses to the 2012 GCSE and A Level Art test topics from a range of different examination boards. They are intended to spur artistic thought and to assist the brainstorming process.

It is worth remembering, before you begin, that no topic is inherently deadening and that even the nearly mundane tin result in beautiful work. What matters is not the thing or even the thought, just the way it is interpreted; the way you respond to it, what it ways to you lot and whether it wriggles within and kicks at your soul.

It is important to remember that the all-time art topics are those which:

• Are significant and of import to your life in some style
• Yous know about or have kickoff-mitt experience of
• You have access to quality first-hand source material

It should also be noted that ideas on this list are provided equally an aid to the brainstorming process. They may or may not be appropriate for yous, depending on your circumstance. Option and exploration of ideas should occur only in conjunction with advice from your teacher.

Some artist model ideas have been included with the lists below. For additional ideas, please expect through our Pinterest Boards.

Relish!

Encounters, Experiences and Meetings

A beautiful epitome from a Yr 12 (Level ii) NCEA Printmaking folio (sourced from the NZQA website):

This beautiful mixed media image could exist the effect of an A Level Art exam theme such as 'encounter with nature'.

• The meeting between mother and child / adoption / nativity;
• The clashing of those who despise each other;
• Friends in a humming and crowded restaurant;
• SEX and other forbidden encounters in a teenage world;
• The shields we put upward in our brains: the filter betwixt ourselves and those we come across;
• The joining (or meeting) of two halves;
• Meetings between strangers…The 1000000 people we laissez passer on a daily footing, but never connect with;
• Drunken encounters;
• Encounters with god;
• Online encounters and the changing social landscape of the earth;
• The clashing of cultures;
• Coming together someone who has suffered a bully loss;
• Shameful encounters / those you regret;
• A meeting room, filled with business people who go most their daily lives in a trance;
• A boisterous meeting between children;
• A birthday party;
• Meeting at a skateboard park;
• Reunion at an airdrome;
• Meeting for the last fourth dimension;
• A life-irresolute moment;
• Focus on the senses (an effect experienced through sight / audio etc);
• Something that made yous cry;
• A deja vu experience;
• Remembering an experience a long fourth dimension ago: the passing of fourth dimension / generations;
• The coming together of truth and lies;
• The meeting of fiction and reality;
• Encountering animals: the interaction betwixt human and animal kind and our influence upon them (for adept or bad);
• Meeting your childhood self or yourself fifty years in the future;
• The coming together of land and bounding main;
• Physical meetings betwixt 2 things: the boundaries and edges, perhaps at a cellular level (plunging into / stabbing / tearing autonomously);
• The meeting of theory and practicality;
• How our own biases, backgrounds and modify/influence every experience we have: the influence of the heed;
• Truly seeing yourself equally you really are;
• Conception;
• The backwash of a meeting that never happened;
• Meeting temptation: the battle of wills;
• The meeting of technology and nature;
• Ancient man meeting the modern earth: the conflict between genes and the modernistic environment;
• Terrorist meet (see epitome below).

More exceptional Year 12 (Level 2) NCEA Printmaking piece of work, sourced from the NZQA website:

Terrorist encounters: This striking Year 12 page offers inspiration for the A Level Fine art exam topic 'Encounters, Experiences and Meetings'.

Combinations and Alliances

• A immature child holding the paw of their mother;
• Bad influences (combinations of friends) and peer pressure;
• A family unit, in alliance against the world;
• The butterfly effect (how a combination of actions / behaviours leads from ane matter to another until every tiny moment in a life is interwoven with all the moments that came earlier);
• Political alliances;
• How 'expert' people can complete horrific acts when lead on by the incorrect situation and the wrong company;
• Still life combinations: table salt and pepper, sweet and sour, fish & chips, apple tree and cinnamon; peanut butter and jam; the literal combination of ingredients used to brand a meal;
• Unpleasant combinations nosotros would rather not exist reminded of: chocolate and obesity; that cute lamb and the juicy steak;
• The legal binding (combination) of lovers: marriage / civil unions;
• Combination of genes: Darwin'southward theory of development – how traits are passed on etc;
• A study of two people (or animals), or people who care about each other;
• A person and something that they use to embellish their identity (i.e. fast machine, makeup, fashion accessories, label clothing, iPhones);
• Y'all and the one thing that defines you;
• Twins;
• Siblings;
• Mismatched couples;
• Unfortunate combinations: drugs and celebrities; childbirth and pain; cats and water; saccharide and molar decay;
• Field of study and being cruel to be kind;
• Combinations of exercises / sets / routines;
• Mixing of low-cal (light streaming through coloured glass windows etc);
• Lock combinations;
• Combinations of numbers – gambling, habit;
• An uneasy alliance: a dog nearly to break its concatenation;
• Things that depend on each other for survival: a plant growing in dirt trapped in a hole in the rocks; tiny creatures that live in on the fur / pare of others – ticks on cows / pilus lice / germs;
• Vaccinations and the alliance of 'expert' germs fighting confronting bad…
• Eco-systems – the interconnection of h2o / life etc;
• A trusted alliance: horse and rider; blind person and guide domestic dog;
• Business networks that rely on 1 another;
• Uniting confronting a mutual enemy.

Fossils

• Highly accurate, scientific records;
• The layering of time;
• Disintegration and memory;
• Basic: the construction of life – the architecture of a living form;
• Fish skeletons;
• Archeology and the documenting of fossils;
• Unexpected items as fossils (i.e. a fossil of an iPod or other contemporary object – remnants of a modern existence);
• Dinosaurs / extinction.

Note: this topic lends itself perfectly to printmaking, rubbings and layered, mixed media works.

Society Today

• Modern diet / processed food;
• Digital applied science and the touch on it has on our lives;
• Soaring depression levels / the psychiatric torment of modern man;
• Soaring caesarean rates;
• Drugs and heed-numbing forms of escape;
• Slowing down;
• More, more, more: ever increasing consumption;
• The mechanised processes involved in the production of meat: pigs in tiny cages / battery hens / images from an abattoir;
• Disconnection from the whole: i.e. a factory worker who spends his/her whole life assembling one tiny part of a product, without having any input into the big picture: disillusionment with life purpose.

Within / Outside

• Framing / windows;
• Blurring of the boundary betwixt inside and out;
• Prisons / loss of freedom;
• Breaking in the outside barrier of things i.e. injuries in flesh resulting in the spilling out of insides;
• Autopsy;
• Opening a tin of preserved fruit;
• Pregnancy /birth;
• Shelter from the rain;
• The inconsistency between what is going on in the exterior world and the inner turmoil of someone's brain;
• The modify in country equally something moves from outside to inside the human body (i.eastward. nutrient > energy);
• An environment that is devoid of 'exterior' i.due east. fluorescent lights / poor ventilation…lacking in plant life…unable to see nature outdoors…the dwindling human status etc;
• Apocalyptic future: what volition happen if humans destroy the outdoor weather; or a wall is erected to keep an infected virus-ridden population 'exterior';
• The peeling back of interesting things to betrayal what is underneath (inside)…i.eastward. banana skins, seedpods, envelopes.
• Vegetables or interesting fruit sliced through to expose the insides (things with lots of seed / pips / bumpy skin etc);
• Something opening to reveal something unexpected (i.e. inside a paper-thin box);
• The Impossible Staircase: indoors blending into outdoors in an indeterminable way / a blurring of dimensions;
• Inside the human body: complex, organic form: the miracle of life (man anatomy drawings / x-rays;
• Inside an animal carcass;
• The human 'exterior' – an exterior presented to those around us. The fixation nosotros have on creating the all-time outside possible: weight control/dieting; makeup; corrective surgery; latest fashions;
• Inside the earth: minerals / geology / the underworld;
• Exclusive views through a mural (i.east. showing a piece through the ground / inside the earth): mines / slips / erosion / quarries, with trucks and mechanism taking soil and rocks away;
• The soul: inside / outside – leaving the body;
• Plays upon storage and calibration, i.e. miniature 'scaled down' items inside other items, like large wild animals stored inside tiny jars;
• Castings of the insides of objects – things you don't normally think about – that are and then exposed for all to see;
• Walls / divisions / outsiders;
• Deterioration that has occurred to something every bit a result of being left exterior (i.e. an ice sculpture that is left in the sun or a decayed, rusted, weathered structure showing the long term effects of the elements);
• Lite streaming in a window from outside;
• Kids in a daycare facility looking longingly exterior;
• Animals in a small enclosure: a sad life in comparison to those wild and free outside;
• Looking outside from an unusual perspective, i.e. as if you are a mouse looking through a small crevice into a room;
• Inside a flop shelter;
• Inside is meant to equal haven / shelter: what if inside is not this at all: a offense scene / an inside that has been violated;
• In the palm of your hand;
• The contents of something spilling out;
• Shellfish or snails within their shells.

Harmony and Discord

• Honey and hate relationships / fighting between families and loved ones;
• The man mind, swinging from joy to misery and despair / schizophrenia / the meddling mind: our own worst enemy;
• A whole lot of like things, with 1 dissimilar thing that clashes with the residuum;
• Disturbing of the peace: a beautiful scene which is rudely interrupted (i.due east. a hunter firing a bullet into a grazing herd of animals or someone pulling out a gun in a crowded shopping mall);
• Musical interpretations: jazz bands / instruments / broken instruments;
• Coin: the root of skillful and evil;
• The broken family / divorce / merged families;
• The clashing of humans with the environment;
• Something beautiful and ugly;
• Meditation to escape the discord of modern day life;
• Prescribed medication (happy pills) to minimise the discord in life – but eliminates the harmony?
• A visual battle: a mess of clashing colours;
• Things in the incorrect environment: placing objects unexpectedly in different locations to create discord (or at least alertness and aliveness) a scene of apparent harmony.

Changed Mural

• Erosion;
• Changing seasons;
• The impact of human waste matter / litter on the surroundings;
• Urban sprawl;
• Forests cutting down to brand way for new developments;
• The pattern of crops, farming and paddocks on the land.

Heaven High

• 

  Sky High: Aerial views of swirling motorways by New Zealand painter Robert Ellis

  Black holes / stars / solar systems / the big bang;

• Skateboarders or snowboarders;
• A drug induced high;
• Cloud formations / the science of rain;
• Flying in sleep;
• Views from an aeroplane window;

• 

  Sky Loftier: Aerial landscape by Wayne Thiebaud

  Patterns humans have fabricated in the landscape – i.eastward. motorways / city grids;

• Hang-gliding / hot air balloons / free fallings / parachuting;
• Insects / birds flying;
• Wing structures;
• Airports;
• Aftermath of a plane crash;
• Superman / superheroes;
• Things blowing into the air (old newspapers / an open briefcase / seed pods / dandelion seeds);
• Falling off a high ascension building;
• Paper aeroplanes;
• Giants / over-scaled items;
• A inner cityscape of high ascent buildings – glimpses through windows to people living lives contained in tiny capsules in skyscrapers;
• Athletes / sports people leaping through air.

Possible Sky High creative person models: Robert Ellis (to a higher place right), Wayne Thiebaud (correct) and Joel Rea and  Jim Darling (below).

Sky Loftier: Australian creative person Joel Rea produces amazing paintings of dogs, people and other objects flying or gratuitous-falling through the air. His paintings have a surrealist element, ofttimes including over-sized elements. Brilliant work!

Sky High: Elementary and symmetrical compositions showing scenes out aeroplane windows by Jim Darling.

Shade

• 

  A beautiful photograph of a skateboarder and his shadow

  An intricate nevertheless life that creates shadows which go an integral chemical element of the limerick;

• Translucent sculptures;
• Images containing only shadow (without the source object);
• Woven shadows;
• Overlapping shadows from multiple calorie-free sources;

• 

  Crumpled pieces of paper: manipulation of shadow

  Shadows that are not of the object shown;

• A dark alleyway or other location where the lighting conditions are dramatic;
• Photographs of paper sculptures: artificial manipulation of form to explore light and shadow;
• Skin colour;
• A monochromatic subject area, with the emphasis on tone (light & shade) rather than colour;
• Sunhats and sunscreen / pare cancer;
• Buildings with visible shading screens built into the facade.

Prototype (right) sourced from Observando.

Icons

• Symbols in airports with crowds of people of multiple ethnicities (i.e. icons communicating without language);
• An absurd aspect of a popular star's life;
• The worship of a pop star past an ordinary teen (posters peeling off a crowded chamber wall etc);
• Religious icons – relevance in a modernistic world;
• Someone using icons to communicate;
• The prevarication of the icon: a pop star with a public epitome that is nothing similar they actually are;
• Sex symbols: the disparity between 'real' bodies and those portrayed in magazines…

Memorabilia

• An obsessed fan'southward memorabilia collection relating to a particular famous person;
• Objects related to something negative that you don't want to recall: i.e. a night out on the boondocks (cigarette butts, empty beer bottles);
• Memorabilia related to a famous wedding ceremony (i.east. Prince Charlies and Diana);
• A collection of tacky plastic characters from a particular film, that lie forgotten and dusty in the bottom of a box;
• War memorabilia, interspersed with photographs.

Neon

• 'Sleazy' signs from a dodgy part of town…with litter / other traces of homo life / dark alleyways underneath;
• A inner cityscape crowded with brightly lit signs – perchance exploring things to practise with the clutter of human life / overpopulation of space etc;
• An decrepit sign (on an amusement park or tired motel, for example) with broken bulbs / peeling pigment;
• Disassembling old neon signs and reassembling dissimilar signs together in tongue-and-cheek ways;
• Inspiration drawn from the Neon Boneyard – where old neon signs go to die;
• Focusing on the eye-catching attribute of neon colour to draw attention to unexpected subjects…

Playing

• Immature children playing with toys;
• A family playing a carte du jour or lath game;
• Playing in water – or at the beach, with a saucepan and spade in the sand;
• Sports – competitive playing;
• 'Playing the field';
• Apparel up games;
• A young kid putting upwards make-upward in the mirror (playing at the imitation of adults);
• Wendy houses;
• An early on childhood education scene;
• Playing gone wrong: an injured child / fighting children etc…

Folding Structures

• 

  A graphite cartoon of a paper aeroplane past Christina Empedocles. Drawings of folded newspaper provide ample opportunity for practising the rendering of form.

  Origami;

• Paper aeroplanes (see Christina Empedocles and Ali Page)
• Newspaper bags (see the painting beneath by Karen Appleton)
• Architectural models;
• Folding architectural structures;
• Tents;
• Beach chairs;
• Weaving.

Folded newspaper numberless by Karen Appleton

Elevating the condition of the ordinary: a printed folded paper aeroplane by Ali Folio

Journey

• A physical journey from a particular destination to another (i.east. the mundane drive between your home and school…seeing beauty in the ordinary etc; your starting time visit to run across something that moved you);
• The transformational journeying from old to new (sometime structure demolished for something new / old applied science making way for new etc);
• A journey through time, such as a person aging / physical changes, or a tape of memorable occasions in a life;
• Babyhood to machismo;
• Getting through an emotional circumstance, such as a loved i passing away or overcoming disease;
• Conception/pregnancy/birth;
• A miniature journey  (i.e. walking downward your garden path – with viewpoint at your feet etc; brushing your teeth in the morn – the journey from inflow at the sink to bright white smile);
• Achieving a goal;
• An academic journey – through school etc (ambition / bookish goals / failure / success / test papers / assignments / grades etc…as in the hurdles you need to get to university);
• On a bus or a plane or a railroad train;
• Memorabilia related to a item journey (i.eastward. an overseas trip);
• A still life made from tickets, maps, timetables;
• The journeying of an fauna (i.e. a bird or fish, swimming upstream);
• The journeying of an insect walking a short distance over interesting surfaces;
• Terrorism and the journey you will never forget.

Domestic

• 

  dishwasher drawing past artist Jo Bradney

  A family unit argument;

• Domesticated cat or other fauna;
• Domestic chores – focus on a mundane ordinary task such equally doing the dishes (see Sylvia Siddell and Jo Bradney);
• Housewives / the female role / feminism etc;
• Wild versus Domestic;
• The 'perfect' home situation illusion and what bubbles below the surface…
• Domestic versus foreign / invading / other;
• Domestic appurtenances = items fabricated in your own country…a nevertheless life featuring country-specific items…

Facades

• 

  A dripping painting of a edifice facade by Uwe Wittwer.

  Deceptive facades, and the walls nosotros put upwards to hide our truthful emotions;

• Decaying wall surfaces / peeling away;
• Reflective windows, mirroring a busy street or some other interesting scene (fragmented reflections);
• A decorative facade – old church building walls etc;
• One-time fashioned shop fronts / signage;
• Secrets hidden behind facades / the things nobody talks virtually;
• Sunshades / calorie-free streaming through facades / window openings;
• Masks / wearing apparel-ups;
• Abstraction of a building facade (see piece of work above by Uwe Wittner).

Digital Dreams

• The merging of reality and our 'online' lives;
• The fictional online persona (the person nosotros arts and crafts in our Facebook profiles and and so on);
• iPods / digital devices and brightly lit screens;
• Cyber dating / online love;
• Brain waves and digital imaging of homo brains while dreaming.

Looking Through

• Windows / frames – from unexpected locations / unexpected angles or in places where the outside scene contrasts the inside scene;
• Transparent layers / glass / distortion / interesting views through things;
• X-rays;
• Old overhead projector transparencies;
• Flicking through an former recipe book or photo album;
• Looking through modest gaps betwixt leaves in the foreground at a natural scene;
• Trains / tunnels;
• A child looking through cracks in a jetty at the water below;
• Invisibility, and the feeling you go when someone 'looks through' you – i.e. doesn't find you lot at all;
• Kids playing hide and seek, peeking out from a hiding place;
• Inappropriate snooping through someone else's personal belongings…

An emotive NCEA folio by Lizzi:

This outstanding NCEA Level 1 Art board (the equivalent of a Yr 11 GCSE or IGCSE Art folio) perfectly fits the 'Looking Through' theme.

People – Ordinary and/or Extraordinary

• People engaged in ordinary mindless actions, i.e. brushing teeth, doing i's hair, eating breakfast;
• Scars / tattoos / deformities that are out of the ordinary;
• The vices of ordinary people (cigarette smoking, alcoholism, food addiction etc);
• Portraits of really 'manifestly' people – seeing the beauty in the ordinary;
• The facades / layers people build up around themselves to brand themselves seem extraordinary – make-upwards, fashion accessories etc;
• A person of extraordinary importance in your life (your female parent or grandmother etc);
• Ordinary people who have extraordinary roles (i.e. a firefighter);
• The boggling;
• Merging images of people with other objects to make fantastical creatures;
• A portrait of an ordinary stereotype: the gossip or the cheerleader etc;
• The desperate attempts or lengths someone will go to go extraordinary;
• Depictions of ordinary people, so that they look eerie and extraordinary, like the crawly artworks by Loretta Lux;
• Sculptures of the ordinary, at extraordinary scales, like Ron Mueck (viewer discretion advised).

Quondam and New

• A grandmother or other elderly person belongings a infant;
• Meeting your childhood self or yourself fifty years in the future;
• Aboriginal human being meeting the modern world: the conflict betwixt genes and the mod surround;
• Ancient artefacts, alongside modern instruments;
• Discarded outdated computers / technology, to brand way for new (things that become rapidly obsolete);
• Fresh fruit alongside rotted and decaying produce;
• Plastic surgery: an attempt to make one-time into new;
• A decaying construction alongside a new, contemporary form;
• New posters overlaid onto an outdoor wall layered with onetime, peeling posters;
• An old architectural form demolished for something new / one-time technology making way for new etc).

Here and Now

• The touch on of digital technology on modern lives;
• Advances in preventative wellness and medicine;
• The prevalence of natural disasters in recent times;
• Terrorism;
• Time;
• The mechanics of an old clock;
• A topical issue, such as food addiction.

Arrival / Deviation

• Birth;
• Decease;
• Train stations / Airports / Looking out windows at that which is left backside;
• Divorce / divergence of a parent;
• Parents who leave their children;
• Recovering from a departure / coping mechanisms;
• First day at school (or another place);
• Feet walking away;
• A decaying, decrepit building afterward the deviation of the occupants;
• A look at building entrances and exits;
• Motorway exits;
• Maps / subway routes / directions for travellers…

Fruit, vegetables and gardening tools placed in a setting of your choice

• A freshly harvested outdoor setting;
• A farm-like scene with wooden crates / indoor wooden shed;
• Vegetables stored for animals;
• Vegetables hanging to dry, i.due east. onions / garlic with tools leaning nearby;
• A kitchen scene;
• A fruit and vege shop;
• A bustling marketplace;
• Preserving fruit – knives / chopped fruit / preserves in drinking glass jars;
• Fruit, veges and tools in an unexpected location, i.eastward. hanging in plastic bags;
• Abstract works derived from the patterns on the skin of fruit and vegetables or the interiors that accept been sliced open with knifes;
• The savage not bad of a watermelon or some other fruit or vegetable with a hammer;
• The hanging of decaying fruit and vegetables.

Time-Honoured

• Wedding ceremony traditions;
• Altogether celebrations;
• Religious rituals;
• Guy Fawkes;
• Christenings;
• Coming-of-age rituals;
• Graduation ceremonies.

This post is a work in progress. For more help with selecting a topic, y'all may like to read this blog post about what makes a good A Level Art idea.

You may also be interested in the article near the 2013 Art exam topics.

Amiria has been an Fine art & Pattern teacher and a Curriculum Co-ordinator for seven years, responsible for the grade 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 Fine art & Design Coursework Assessor.

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Source: https://www.studentartguide.com/articles/a-level-art-exam-paper

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