S3 is the first year of the Standard Grade course and assignments during this year will be part of the Standard Grade coursework. This year should be spent developing your drawing and painting skills, your use of other media (such as clay, collage, digital imaging/Photoshop), your design activities and your critical abilities. You will work on projects which will vary from lasting one lesson to 2 or 3 weeks, so managing your time will be crucial. Not everyone paints or draws at the same speed - if you feel the pace is too fast, you may need to work on outside of class in order not to make sure work is completed. You will write essays on artists and designers as a way of getting ready for the essays in S4 which count towards your Standard Grade (3,000 words max, one third of the total mark).
If you have an interest in portraiture, landscape or fantasy and imagination, you should start to develop this in and out of class. The S3 painting exam and the S4 prelim exam (5 hours) will normally consist of a still-life painting, however if you can prove that your skills have been developed well enough in another genre of painting, then you will be able to do this in your prelim. We normally recommend still life so you can 'bank' a good mark as a back up for your real exam.
A design unit will be started in S3, which if successful may be further developed and completed in S4. Otherwise a brand new design unit will be started in S4 and carried on over several weeks. This unit is marked internally and moderated externally and must be finished to a high standard, with good research and development work as well as a quality final outcome in order to 'bank' a good grade.
S4 Expressive carries on in from S3, concentrating on further developing painting and drawing skills, especially in the area you are planning on taking your exam in. Work outside of class is crucial to succeed this year, so you should be making at least one solid drawing a week in your sketchbooks. The art rooms are normally available at lunchtimes if you want to come in and practice your painting skills, if you don't have paints at home. The Expressive exam takes place early in June and lasts for 5 hours. The paintings are sent away to be examined by the SQA. You must practice hard in and our of class in order to give you the confidence and the skills to do well in this exam.
There are 2 essays you must write for submission to the SQA, one related to your Expressive Activty and one ot your Design Activity. You will have a lot of help in class to get started on these, but you must complete them out of class. There will not be the time in class for you to be able to fit in all the reading, writing and editing involved. Your teachers will take in a draft of your essays and give you pointers as to what you need to improve - take notice of these comments, as they are likely to be able to get you at least one grade higher! These essays should be around 1,500 words long each and must be word processed. There are excellent books in the department, plus plenty of information on the internet. This website contains links to quality art and design related websites which should help save you time surfing! Try and avoid meandering through the web - be focussed in your searching.
