The visual arts are an integral part of everyday life, permeating all levels of human creativity, expres-sion, communication and understanding. They range from traditional forms embedded in local and wider communities, societies and cultures, to the varied and divergent practices associated with new, emerging and contemporary forms of visual language.

Lucy Lee, Grade 10 - 2014, ISPP Visual Arts Student

DIPLOMA ARTSINTERNATIONAL BACCALAUREATE

Visual arts and international-mindedness...International-mindedness represents an openness and curiosity about the world and its people. It begins with students understanding themselves in order to effectively connect with others. The arts provide a unique opportu-nity for students to recognize the dynamic cultural influ-ences around them. The IB Diploma Programme visual arts course gives students the opportunity to study a wide variety of visual arts disciplines and forms. Stu-

dents are expected to explore and engage with art from a variety of contexts.

Through making, investigating and critically analysing and appreciating differing art forms, students deepen their understanding of the visual arts, as well as their knowledge, understanding and experience of the visual arts within the global community. They become more in-formed and reflective, and develop their abilities to be-

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Davi Nil, Title:Unknown, Grade 11 - 2014ISPP Visual Arts Student

come enriched practitioners, communicators and visual thinkers. They learn to acknowledge the aspects that ap-pear in all art forms and art cultures, and also to recog-nize the unique ways in which particular cultures express and represent their values and identity visually.

Culture

For the purposes of this visual arts guide, “culture” is defined as learned and shared beliefs, values, inter-ests, attitudes, products and all patterns of behaviour

created by society. This view of culture includes an organized system of symbols, ideas, explanations, be-liefs and material production that humans create and manipulate in their daily lives. Culture is dynamic and organic, operating on many levels in the global con-text—international, national, regional and local, as well as among different social groups within a soci-ety.

Culture is seen as fluid and subject to change. Cul-ture can be seen as providing the overall framework within which humans learn to organize their thoughts, emotions and behaviours in relation to their environment, and within this framework “cul-tural context”, which specifically appears in both the taught syllabus and assessment tasks of the visual arts course, refers to the conditions that influence and are influenced by culture. These include histori-cal, geographical, political, social and technological factors.

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Grace Tranter-Entwistle, Title:Me, 2014 Grade 12 ISPP Visual Arts Student

Ivo Tarik de Vries, Title:Unknown, 2013Grade 12 ISPP Visual Arts Student

Engaging with sensitive topics

Studying visual arts gives students the opportunity to engage with exciting, stimulating and personally rele-vant topics and issues. However, it should be noted that often such topics and issues can also be sensitive and personally challenging for some students. Teachers should be aware of this and provide guidance on how to approach and engage with such topics in a responsible manner. Consideration should also be given to the personal, political and spiritual values of others, particularly in relation to race, gender or religious beliefs. As part of the collective consideration of the school, visual arts students must be supported in maintaining an ethical perspective dur-ing their course. Schools must be vigilant in ensuring that work undertaken by the student does not damage the environment, include excessive or gratuitous vio-lence or reference to explicit sexual activity.

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Visual arts and academic honesty...Referencing sources

If a candidate uses content from any source, including the internet, these sources must be acknowledged consistently in accordance with the school’s academic hon-esty policy. These should be recorded in a style that clearly identifies exactly what in the student’s work has been taken from another source and its origin. When a stu-dent is aware that another person’s work, ideas or images have influenced their own but it has not been referred to directly in their work, the source must be included as a bibliography reference in the student’s work. This is particularly relevant to the arts where the creative process will be the result of a contrasting range of stimuli, influ-ences and sources of inspiration.

When HL students include any images of their own original work, these must also be identified and acknowledged in the same way.

Meeting formal requirements

Most of the assessment tasks in the arts are completed as coursework, and as such have strict conditions under which student work must be completed, presented and, in the case of internally assessed work, assessed. There are formal requirements that must be followed to ensure that the work received by examiners and modera-tors is consistent and can be assessed against the marking criteria. Since these con-ditions and formal requirements are designed to ensure that each candidate is given an equal opportunity to demonstrate achievement, failure to follow them is a

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Matthew Clouter, Title: Paper Cut2014, ISPP Visual Arts Teacher

form of academic misconduct as it can lead to candidates having an unfair ad-vantage.

Submitting exhibition works

Please note that any work selected for final assessment in the visual arts course must have been made or constructed by the student. For example, a piece of clothing designed as part of a student’s study of fashion or a piece of jewelry cannot be presented for assessment in realized form if the student did not create it themselves. The same principle must be applied to the use of ad-ditional elements used to create an atmosphere or a specific experience for an audience (even though any audio component will not be assessed in this vis-ual course). If the student uses music or sound effects, for instance, they must be copyright free with appropriate citations provided or have been created by the student. Where the student has not created the realized piece themselves, they would still be able to submit the design of the piece as an artwork for as-sessment in the exhibition, but the realized piece cannot be included. Where a student has taken found objects and created a new artwork with those found objects, the resulting artwork would be considered as a piece constructed by the student.

When submitting artworks for assessment, students are required to include ex-hibition text for each selected piece. The exhibition text outlines the title, me-dium, size and intention of each piece. Students should identify if objects are self-made, found or purchased under the “medium” section when compiling ex-hibition text.

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Photos were taken from the 2014 ISPP final exhibition by Mr Clouter

Ivy Nang, Title: Broken Marriage 2013Grade 12 ISPP Visual Arts Student

The arts aimsThe aims of the arts subjects are to enable students to:

1. enjoy lifelong engagement with the arts

2. become informed, reflective and critical practitioners in the arts

3. understand the dynamic and changing nature of the arts

4. explore and value the diversity of the arts across time, place and cultures

5. express ideas with confidence and competence

6. develop perceptual and analyti-cal skills.

Visual arts aimsIn addition, the aims of the visual arts course at SL and HL are to enable students to:

7. make artwork that is influenced by personal and cultural contexts

8. become informed and critical observers and makers of visual culture and media

9. develop skills, techniques and processes in order to communi-cate concepts and ideas.External assessment

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Linking the visual arts core syllabus areas to the assessment tasks

Ivo Tarik de Vries, Title: Ian Curtis Blue 2013Grade 12 ISPP Visual Arts Student

External AssessmentSL - HLPart 1: Comparative study SL = 20%

Students at SL analyse and compare different artworks by different artists. This independent critical and contex-tual investigation explores artworks, objects and artifacts from differing cultural contexts.

SL students submit 10–15 screens which examine and compare at least three artworks, at least two of which should be by different artists. The work selected for com-parison and analysis should come from contrasting con-texts (local, national, international and/or intercultural).

SL students submit a list of sources used.

Part 2: Process portfolio = 40%

Students at SL submit carefully selected materials which evidence their experimentation, exploration, manipula-tion and refinement of a variety of visual arts activities during the two-year course.

SL students submit 9–18 screens which evidence their sustained experimentation, exploration, manipulation and refinement of a variety of art-making activities. For SL students the submitted work must be in at least two art-making forms, each from separate columns of the art-making forms table.

Part 1: Comparative study HL = 20%

Students at HL analyse and compare different artworks by different artists. This independent critical and contex-tual investigation explores artworks, objects and arte-facts from differing cultural contexts.

HL students submit 10–15 screens which examine and compare at least three artworks, at least two of which need to be by different artists. The works selected for comparison and analysis should come from contrasting contexts (local, national, international and/or intercul-tural).

HL students submit 3–5 screens which analyse the ex-tent to which their work and practices have been influ-enced by the art and artists examined.

HL students submit a list of sources used. 9

Part 2: Process portfolio = 40%

Students at HL submit carefully selected materials which evidence their experimentation, exploration, manipula-tion and refinement of a variety of visual arts activities during the two-year course.

HL students submit 13–25 screens which evidence their sustained experimentation, exploration, manipulation and refinement of a variety of art-making activities. For HL students the submitted work must have been created in at least three art-making forms, selected from a mini-mum of two columns of the art-making forms table.

Internal Assessment SL - HLPart 3: Exhibition SL = 40%

Students at SL submit for assessment a selection of re-solved artworks from their exhibition. The selected pieces should show evidence of their technical accom-plishment during the visual arts course and an under-

standing of the use of materials, ideas and practices ap-propriate to visual communication.

SL students submit a curatorial rationale that does not ex-ceed 400 words.

SL students submit 4–7 artworks.

SL students submit exhibition text (stating the title, me-dium, size and intention) for each selected artwork.

SL students may submit two photographs of their overall exhibition. These exhibition photographs provide an un-derstanding of the context of the exhibition and the size and scope of the works. While the photographs will not be used to assess individual artworks, they may give the moderator insight into how a candidate has considered the overall experience of the viewer in their exhibition.

Part 3: Exhibition HL = 40%

Students at HL submit for assessment a selection of re-solved artworks from their exhibition. The selected pieces should show evidence of their technical accom-plishment during the visual arts course and an under-standing of the use of materials, ideas and practices ap-propriate to visual communication.

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HL students submit a curatorial rationale that does not exceed 700 words.

HL students submit 8–11 artworks.

HL students submit exhibition text (stating the title, me-dium, size and intention) for each selected artwork.

HL students may submit two photographs of their overall exhibition. These exhibition photographs provide an un-derstanding of the context of the exhibition and the size and scope of the works. While the photographs will not be used to assess individual artworks, they may give the moderator insight into how a candidate has considered the overall experience of the viewer in their exhibition.

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Grace Tranter-Entwistle,Title: Srey Saart 2013Grade 12 ISPP Visual Arts Student

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Assessment Component Criteria...

Darshana Gauchan - Tilte: His City 2013Grade 12 ISPP Visual Arts Student

Elements of ArtSHAPE: Shape pertains to the use of areas in two-dimensional space that can be defined by edges.[2] Shapes can be geomet-ric (e.g., square, circle, hexagon, etc.) or organic (such as the shape of a puddle, blob, leaf, boo-merang, etc.). Shapes are defined by other elements of art: Line, Form, Space, Value, Color, Tex-ture

FORM: The form pertains to the volume or perceived volume. Three-dimensional artwork has depth as well as width and height.[1] Three-dimensional form is the basis ofsculpture.[1] How-

ever, two-dimensional artwork can achieve the illusion of form with the use of perspective and/or shading techniques.[3][4]VALUE:

VALUE: Value refers to the use of lightness and darkness in a piece of artwork.[5] "Value" is sometimes referred to as "tone". When paint-ing, tones can be created by add-ing gray to your paint.[3]

COLOUR: Colour is the element of art that is produced when light, striking an object, is reflected back to the eye.[1] There are three properties to colour. The first is hue, which simply means the name we give to a colour (red, yel-low, blue, green, etc.). The sec-ond property is intensity, which re-fers to the vividness of the color. For example, we may describe an

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intense blue colour as "bright, rich, and vibrant".[6] We may conversely describe a low-intensity blue colour as "dull, subtle and grayed". A color's intensity is sometimes referred to as its "colorfulness", its "saturation", its "purity" or its "strength". A colour's perceived intensity is related to its perceived brightness(brighter colours are more intense). The third and final property of color is its value, meaning how light or dark it is. The terms shade and tint are in reference to value changes in colours. In painting, shades are created by adding black to a colour, while tints are created by adding white to a colour.[3]

LINE: Lines and curves are marks that span a distance between two points (or the path of a moving point). As an art element, line pertains to the use of various marks, outlines and implied lines in artwork and design. A line has a width, direction, and length.[1] A line's width is sometimes called its "thickness". Lines are sometimes called "strokes", espe-cially when referring to lines in digital artwork.

References..."Understanding Formal Analysis". Getty. Retrieved 9 May 2014.

"Vocabulary: Elements of Art, Principles of Art". Oberlin. Retrieved 9 May 2014.

"Elements and Principles of Design". IncredibleArt.org. Retrieved 9 May 2014.

"What Are the Elements of Art?". About.com. Retrieved 9 May 2014.

" W h a t i s V a l u e i n A r t ? " . A b o u t . c o m . R e t r i e v e d 9 M a y 2 0 1 4 ."What is the Definition of Color in Art?". About.com. Retrieved 9 May 2014.

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Methods of Analysis...METHOD 1: Personal Responses - What do you bring to the artwork?Visual - What is your first reaction to the work? What is the first word that came into your head when you saw it? What did you notice first? Do some parts draw your attention more than others?Memory / Experience - Does it remind you of anything? Why? Have you seen or experienced something before like this? Can you describe where and when?Sensory - Does the artwork appeal to other senses apart from just seeing?Emotional - Does it make you feel a particular way? Can you describe why this artwork makes you feel like this?Value / opinion - How have you decided on the value of the artwork that you are analysing? Do you like it or not and why? Try to discuss: ideas, skill, originality, meaning and relevance.

METHOD 2: The Object - What can you see? (Formal Elements Materials and Meaning - Can you see what is the work made from or out of?. Why do you think the artists chose those materials and media. Are they significant to the art work?Space - Is there a sense of space in the work or is it a very busy and cluttered piece? Why do you think this way, what references can you find in the work that help to form and validate your opinions?Scale - How big it the work? Is there a reason for this and what imp[act does it have on the viewer or artwork?Shapes and Patterns - Does the work make use of patterns that affect it’s movement or rhythm or are they decorative, descriptive or symbolic. What visual qualities to they embody.what is it - You should try to identify what kind of art you are looking at, for example a painting, photograph, sculpture etc.

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Surface and Texture - What kind of surface and texture does the piece make use of and how does it effect the piece on a visual and conceptual level.Composition - What is the arrangement of objects within the space is there a compositional flow around the space or does it feel imbalanced? Is their a direct relationship between you first impressions and Mark making - Can you see evidence of the artists hand such as brushstrokes? Do the marks effect the work Eg are they expressive, energetic or calming.Processes - How has it been made? What skills and processes do you think are involved ? Colour - Can you describe how the artist uses colour? Eg, descriptively or emotionally

METHOD 3: Subject and Meaning - What is the work about and what is it trying to communicate?Title - Does the work have a title? Does this affect the way you see it?Narrative - Has the work got a narrative? What do you think is happening? Where is the action set? Where do you think the story comes from? What point in the story does the artist choose? Can you imagine what happened before or what might happen next? What are the similarities and differences in telling stories in art and writing?Theme - Do you think the work has a theme? Eg the city, war, relationship, family. Does the room its hung in have a theme and how does the work relate to it?Type - What genre or kind of art would you associate this work with? EG Portraiture, History Painting, Landscape, Still Life, AbstractDoes it crossover different styles or is it hard to define? Content and Ideas - Is the work about a subject? What do you think the artist is trying to communicate or represent? Could have the work have a moral meaning?

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People - Are there people involved? What are they doing? What do they look like? What are kind of people are they? Do they convey a sense of emotion or atmosphere.Interpretation - What information is available to support our reading of the artwork? such as wall texts or captions? What kind of information does it give? Does it offer a point of view? Does it influence what you think?

METHOD 4: Cultural Significance & Function and Purpose - Influences that shape the creation and reading of art? Where for? - Was made for a particular location? Eg, public commission, private house, landscape, a public monu-ment, gallery.Why - Why was this piece created and what function and purpose does it communicate?Arts - How does it link to other forms of art from the same time and place. Eg, Literature, film, music, fashion, design, theatre.History - How does it link with the social, cultural or political history of the time? Do you think these circumstances have influenced how and why it was made? Culture & Context - What cultural connections can you make to the to the artwork? What was happening at that time in history that might have affected why and how it was created? The Hang - In which room is the work displayed? What is the room title? What is it placed next to in the area or room.Style Connections - How can you tell a Hogarth from a Hockney or a Turner from a Freud? Compare examples of each and discuss similarities and differences making connections with different historical and cultural elements.

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Asessment Objectives...Assessment objective 1: demonstrate knowledge and understanding of specified content

a. Identify various contexts in which the visual arts can be created and presented b. Describe artwork from differing contexts, and identify the ideas, conventions and techniques employed by the art-makers c. Recognize the skills, techniques, media, forms and processes associated with the visual arts d. Present work, using appropriate visual arts language, as appropriate to intentions

Assessment objective 2: demonstrate application and analysis of knowledge and understanding

a. Express concepts, ideas and meaning through visual communication b. Analyse artworks from a variety of different contexts c. Apply knowledge and understanding of skills, techniques, media, forms and processes related to art-making

Assessment objective 3: demonstrate synthesis and evaluation

a. Critically analyse and discuss artworks created by themselves and others and articulate an informed personal re-sponse b. Formulate personal intentions for the planning, development and making of artworks that consider how meaning can be conveyed to an audience c. Demonstrate the use of critical reflection to highlight success and failure in order to progress work d. Evaluate how and why art-making evolves and justify the choices made in their own visual practice

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Assessment objective 4: select, use and apply a variety of appropriate skills and techniques

a. Experiment with different media, materials and techniques in art-making b. Make appropriate choices in the selection of images, media, materials and techniques in art-making c. Demonstrate technical proficiency in the use and application of skills, techniques, media, images, forms and proc-esses

d. Produce a body of resolved and unresolved artworks as appropriate to intentions

Chan Clara Kim Title: The Mind 2014 Grade12 ISPP Visual Arts

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Command

TermsThe command terms are related to the assessment objectives and should guide you in their use throughout your work i.e:

1. Comparative Study

2. Process Profile

3. Exhibition

Reference...Much of the work here has been taken from the subject guide as an educational resource, and highlights key elements associated with the course. It is designed to help and guide students towards suc-cess.

International Baccalaureate Organization (UK) 2014 Ltd Peterson House, Malthouse Avenue, Cardiff Gate

Cardiff, Wales CF23 8GL United KingdomWebsite: www.ibo.org

Keo Lim, Title: Unknown 2014Grade 10 ISPP Visual Arts Student

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