1.

AO2: Refine ideas through experimenting and selecting appropriate

resources, media, materials, techniques and process. ................... 1
A. The 'journey' of discovery. ............................................................... 1
B. The process of development and experimentation. .............................. 2
C. A series of experiments with surprising outcomes. .............................. 3
D. A body of work, not one final piece. .................................................. 4
E. Risks taken in the exploration process. .............................................. 4

AO2: Refine ideas through experimenting

and selecting appropriate resources, media,
materials, techniques and process.

The 'journey' of discovery.

• Describing your project or development work as a 'journey' is possibly the best

description to give this aspect of your coursework. Just like any journey, your
project(s) and sketchbook work needs to include a start, a middle and an end.
The start being your initial thoughts and ideas, usually these would include some
sketch work and illustrations along with comments and notes to explain your
initial thoughts for an idea or project. The middle part of this journey requires
substance and depth. For a strong 'middle' to your coursework or project
journey, there are many ways that you can gain mark, here are some examples
and ideas that may help you develop this part of your work.
• Most projects and/ or items of coursework will usually begin with some drawing
or sketching. A good way to start a project or item of coursework is to familiarise
yourself with your work and idea by producing a series of sketches in a
sketchbook. During this process, consider variety in your work. For example,
don't do all of your drawings using the same size/ scale. Produce some studies/
sketches that are small, some that are medium and some that fill the page or
even use double pages. It is also worthwhile leaving some sketches and
drawings unfinished. By partly finishing a drawing or sketch, this will allow you
to show development and structure in your work, which otherwise would be
hidden by the finished article itself and not seen.
• Leave room and space around your drawings and sketches so that you can add
comments and notes. This could be a date and time of when you completed the
work, it could also include a short explanation of what you intend to do, or how
you think your work will develop, or maybe a couple of notes that explains your
reflection and thoughts about the work, for example, after drawing or sketching
your idea and work, now that you can see it, is it working out as you had in mind
or planned?
• Try to ensure that all work that you do in your sketchbook has a time/ date
clearly posted along side the work. This could be individual items of work or by
simply adding a date to each page. You should also label your work and pages.
Add titles to each task or development piece that reflects what you have done.
You could also add a small note that indicates how long you spent on a task too.
By using and adding dates and titles throughout your sketchbook or
development work, you are creating a clear and obvious 'timeline' of events
throughout your work. Doing this will make your 'journey' of discovery clear and
visible for any assessor as and when they look through your work.
• Towards the end of any development work that you create in your sketchbook,
another good way to gain a few important 'extra' marks would be to provide
some indication of your reflection about what you have done. Think of this as a
 kind of conclusion exercise, where you reflect on what you set out to do, look
back at what you have done and then provide a short summary of how you think
you have done. Providing a 'Reflection' about your own work is good way to add
a little extra to your work that shows and demonstrates your understanding and
knowledge about your own work.

The process of development and experimentation.

• Providing evidence that you have 'developed' and 'experimented' both your
project and coursework ideas and use of medium or materials, is crucial if you
are to gain high marks for this assessment objective (AO2). Whenever you work
on an item of work, you should clearly show and provide evidence that you have
considered alternatives to your chosen outcome. For example, suppose you were
working on a brief which uses the theme of landscape, and you have an idea in
mind to produce a piece of work based on place that you visited on a recent
holiday. Rather than simply working from one source such as a photograph or
postcard of the holiday destination, initially you should try to develop a few
possible outcomes, perhaps by working from more than one photograph taken at
the holiday location. Or, another way forward would be to identify key features
and items within a selection of photographs and bring these items together, a bit
like a collage, to produce a montage or unique response to the holiday location.
Doing this will also allow you to experiment with layout, structure and
composition. Trying out a range of different composition's so that you can see
what features work well, and which features to exclude from a final piece of
work.
• As well as developing the context or subject of your work, you also need to
demonstrate that you have experimented with a range of suitable media for your
work too. For example, suppose that you intend to produce your final outcome
in acrylic paints. In your sketchbook, produce a series of small-scale studies of
your final work/ idea. Then on each of these studies apply different possible
colour schemes to each. This will show that you have explored and developed a
final 'chosen' set of colours for your work, rather than simply mimicking the
same colours as you see them on your source image(s). Another way to do this
would be to produce a full page drawing of your intended outcome, and then
divide this work up, into different work areas. You can then experiment and
apply different colour schemes to each of these areas, producing one piece of
work but with a range of alternative ways in which you could use colour for your
final outcome.
• When experimenting with colour, consider also a more subtle way to
demonstrate your ability to explore and develop. For example, by using a range
of tones within set colours could be a more effective way to develop your work,
rather than just changing the actual colours.
• You should also demonstrate that although you may have set use of medium in
mind for your final work, that you have at least considered the use of other
materials, even if you decide not to use them in your final work. Take the
previous example of the landscape based on the holiday destination. Suppose
that you have decided early on that this will be a painting, and suppose that you
have explored a range of different possible colour and tone schemes, before you
go ahead and make a start on the final outcome, take a step back and use your
idea or chosen holiday destination as a subject for exploring other materials,
consider creating a version using pastels, oil and/ or chalk, or maybe just use
pencil crayons. Try to include texture in your development work too. This can be
achieved very easily by working on top of alternative papers and cards. For
example, try tearing and shaping a few lengths of coloured papers, adding a
layer of corrugated card or piece of fabric. Basically, try to build up a surface
that uses a range of layers and materials. Draw or sketch your work on top of
the mixed-media surface and then work into it with paints and other materials.
 • Now consider all of the above suggestions of developing and experimenting, if
you plan your development work carefully, it is possible to demonstrate that you
have explored and developed colour, tone, materials and media all within your
chosen ideas, bring your possible ideas and possible colour, materials together
and then you could produce some ideas using some materials, other ideas using
other colours and tones, and then final ideas using a combination of materials,
colours and tones.

A series of experiments with surprising outcomes.

• Sometimes, and more often than not, there will be times and occasions during
the GCSE Art & Design course when you may feel out of your depth. This could
be when a new material is provided for you to work with. Maybe you have had a
bad experience in the past with a certain medium, the chances are that if given
the choice you are likely to avoid using such materials for fear of failure.
However, it is important that you demonstrate an ability or at least a knowledge
and understanding of the use of a range of medium within your folder of
coursework. For example, if all of your coursework was created using only a 2B
pencil. An assessor would be asking questions about your ability and knowledge
of other media. As a consequence many marks would not be gained due to a lack
of depth or variety of materials used to create coursework. As such, you should
try hard to work with as many different types of media and materials as
possible. As for the materials that you struggle with, or find hard to achieve
desired results from, try thinking of the subject as a type of sport. For example,
take the sport of golf as an example. Just like Golf, in the subject of Art there
are certain skills that can be developed, improved, worked on. In order to
improve a Golfers overall game, practice is required. This practice may be on the
skill of driving a ball from the tee. To do this a golfer would usually get
themselves down to the local driving range and spend half an hour or so on just
that one skill. Through many visits to the driving range, over time the golfers
skill at driving will improve, and then when the golfer is next on a golf course,
the skill of driving a ball from a tee and up the fairway may well see an
improvement, and in some cases it may require the golfer to a few more visits to
the local driving range. However, what will improve will be the golfer's
confidence. And this is exactly like learning and developing a skill in Art and
Design. The more practice taken to improve a weak skill will (if anything)
improve the artists confidence at using and apply that skill in their work. With an
improved confidence, the artists skill will then improve too. This will usually also
help the artist take and tackle other weaker skills, which in-turn improves the
artists confidence even more, and thus allows the artist to pursue other skills not
yet tried due to lack of confidence.
• So in essence, do not choose not to use a certain material or medium in your art
simply because you lack the confidence to do so. Instead, practice using this
material, and in time your confidence will improve. As your confidence improves
so will your skill at using the material.
• Outcomes gained through experimentation can be both surprising and
rewarding. Demonstrate your own experimentation in your sketchbook. This
could be a choice of colour that you may use in an item work, for example, most
paintings will require you to mix and make your own colours and/ or tones.
Instead of making your tones and colours on a plastic mixing palette or dish, use
small scraps of paper to mix on. Save these scraps of mixing papers rather than
throwing them away, and stick them into your sketchbook. This will then allow
you to add comments and annotations that explains what you did, how you did it
and weather or not you achieved the desired results. This is a good way to gain
a few extra marks for AO2.
A body of work, not one final piece.

• Although your final outcome or item of work for a project does gain you many
marks, it is really important that you understand that the final outcome will only
gain you up to 15 marks out of a possible 60. So where do the other 45 marks
come from? Each assessment objective is worth a possible 15 marks each. The
marks gained for each of the assessment objectives add up to give you a final
score out of 60 marks. This is why it is really important that you learn and
understand where and how you can earn your marks for each of the assessment
objectives. Taking the time to read through the requirements of each
assessment objective will pay dividends towards your final score or mark.
• This known, is why you need to consider all of the work that you create during a
project creates what is know as a 'Body of Work'. To summarise, a 'Body of
work' can gain you a possible 60 marks. Where your final piece of work will only
gain you a maximum of 15 marks.
• Included within a 'Body of work' should be AO1 - Art History and connections
with the work of other artists to your own work. Refer to the available podcast:
GCSE Art + Design AO1 for a greater understanding about this assessment
objective. AO2 - Experimentation's and Explorations of materials and media (this
podcast), AO3 - Recording of ideas, observations relevant to your own work.
Refer to the available podcast: GCSE Art + Design AO3 for more information,
and AO4 - Present a personal, informed and meaningful response. Refer to the
available podcast: GCSE Art + Design AO4 for more information.
• A final outcome is basically AO4 (assessment objective 4).
• So in essence, a whole body of work is as (if not more) important that the final
outcome itself, largely because for a body of work you can gain many more
marks than you could gain for just the final outcome of a project.

Risks taken in the exploration process.

• Inevitably as with most creative subjects, you will need to take some risks within
your work. That does not mean that you should take unnecessary risks during a
final outcome, which may jeopardise the end result and compromise your work.
However, you should be willing to take a few risks during the development and
experimentation of your ideas and work. Usually these risks would take place in
your sketchbook, and would usually happen when you are trying out new
materials quite naturally. What you need to try and do though is document these
risks and assess the outcome of such risks that you may take. For example, lets
go back to the idea of the holiday landscape project. Suppose that have explored
and developed possible colour schemes and a range of materials to help you
decide how to best develop and put together your final piece of work for this
project. A risk that you may undertake could be to explore the inclusion of
another medium or material in your work. One that you had not previously
explored or used. For example, you may have seen some art work created by
Tacey Emin. In the examples of work that you have seen, you notice how Tracey
used thread within her work, which sparks off an idea to use this material in your
own work. So even though you have explored and developed a range of possible
materials that you intend to use in your final outcome for your Holiday
Landscape, it is considered a 'risk' worth taking, and so, on top of a previous
development piece you decide to use a needle and thread to bring in an
alternative and new medium into your work.
• That is one example of how you could take risks that are worth taking during the
exploration process, and which will help you gain a few extra marks within this
assessment objective - AO2.