Dear art students and parents,

I hope my sharing here helps you prepare the work for the Art & Design IGCSE 0400
subjects.

Here, I would like to share my guideline on HOW TO PROCEED WITH 'PAINTING AND
RELATED MEDIA' art style for the COMPONENT 1 - COURSEWORK (again, for the
syllabus Art & Design IGCSE 0400 / syllabus 2020-2022).
*
Okay, let's say your student wanted to do something related to Nature and she/he would
want to capture all the Nature such as plants or flowers around her/his house. You
absolutely can say yes to that idea. Recording nature and carryout nature Art
Coursework is one of the easier and the best because you won't be struggling in getting
the First-hand studies (Primary Resources) at all!
My recommendation for this topic is that you might want to choose another name, other
than 'Nature'.
There is nothing wrong with using the topic of 'Nature', but you might want to name it
with other words and make it interesting for the whole set of work. Let's call it 'Alive' for
this guideline. I would pretend I give this guideline to a student named 'Megan'.
 Above - SUBJECT MATTER PICTURES (SM Pictures)

Firstly, Megan needs to share with me her Primary Sources as many as she could. For
example, she sent me about 35 mixture pictures of plants and flowers around her house.
For your information, my students usually will share with me about 30-60pictures for their
Subject Matter Pictures (SM Pictures) for the topic I approved, and we agreed. The more
pictures your students present to you is the better for the ongoing discussion.
So let say Megan discuss with me her selection of SM Pictures for her nature
Coursework called 'Alive'. From her observation, while capturing the Subject Matter (SM)
with her gadget, she did the AO1 Record while taking the pictures, selecting the images,
and choosing the best SM for her work. She investigates the various Art Elements and
Art Principles that she could capture while selecting her SM for her work. This
experience will help her a lot in the upcoming creative progress on each prep work.
 PREP1

So, here we go for the Prep 1. You can label your work as Prep 1 or Page 1 or Board 1.
It's all up to you and your student. How I guide my students for the Prep 1. As you can
see the layout above,

Prep 1
- You must have a brief 'Introduction' of your idea for the whole Coursework that you
plan to venture with.
- You can write about your idea and content. However, make it as brief as possible.
- You can print your SM pictures and paste a few at this prep as well
- Topic has to be cleared, and you have to do mind-mapping. Early ideas using
mind-mapping are always good to generate ideas, and with mind-mapping, you can write
in points of suggesting artists, objects, or items to research. You can organise your early
ideas better with this method. Also, it's always good to present your early ideas to the
examiners.
- Then, you can start to select your SM Pictures and proceed to SM Studies at this prep.
You can develop, explore and experiment with primary media at this prep.
- When I label SM Studies, it means, using your SM Picture, you plan, select, and make
a decision of which SM Picture you want to draw or paint and what media you think that
you want to explore first at this prep.
- You might want to choose dry media first, or you might want to sketch-and-draw first.
It's up to your final decision, and of course, you should consult and discuss with your art
teacher first. Discuss which media best to show at your Prep 1.
- You may want to do 4 SM Studies, or 2 small sizes and 1 big size of SM Studies or you
would like to do 2 big sizes of SM Studies at this prep. The suggestion layout above is
not compulsory to follow, okay. Above is the visual outline layout that could help you as a
teacher (to guide your students) and to help you as an art student to plan your layout
and propose to your art teacher for further discussion.
- You can rearrange the position of the mind-mapping. It is not necessarily to be placed
as the sample above.
- The small boxes are for the Recording of your media used at SM Studies.
- Annotation is essential. However, my recommendation, you don't need to annotate too
long. Enough to write about the process of the SM Studies you did.

PREP 2

Prep 2
- Some of you might want to plan, such as Artist Reference at Prep 1, Prep 3 and Prep
5. That will do too.
- For today's sharing, I planned to put Artist Reference (AR) at Prep 2, Prep 4 and Prep
6.
- Artist Reference could be any established artist that the student researched, finalised
and the students should know why they choose the artist in the first place. The AR work
can be related to their SM or be different from their SM as long as they know why they
choose the artist's work.
- I don't advise my students to take an artist from Instagram, TikTok, unless they extend
the research about the artist. The artist should be one established artist and had years of
experiences and number of art exhibitions.
- At this Prep 2, again, the layout arrangement above is one suggestion, and please
explore more for the layout arrangement. I arranged 2 with the frame, and 1 is
frameless. If you want to present 4 of SM Studies at this prep, you can do so. The
students should develop, organising ideas and discuss the Artist Reference here with
the teacher and what media and techniques suitable for each study presented at this
prep.
- Dry media or wet media, or even collage techniques. The students should be able to
develop ideas - in term of the size of the SM Studies and show the insights relevant and
the intentions as their working with the work from one part to another part.

PREP 3

Prep 3
- A few SM Pictures can be pasted here.
- Again, the layout arrangement is up to your creativity. Above is just a suggestion for
you to generate more ideas.
In this prep, you might want to guide your students to select media, materials,
techniques, and processes.
- At this stage, all the studies should show the depth in understanding in visual and
tactile in art. Students should produce results (from the media selection, materials, etc)
that suit their work style.
- The process of each exploration can be presented in a simple process, with tiny
studies to the larger scale of the work.
- Also, the students might want to keep on relook and select the impactful SM Pictures
(e.g plant with more precise Texture, petal with contrast colours etc) for the detailed
studies.
- It could be from an essential media exploration to the complex ones. From this
process, we can include the AO3, which demonstrates critical understanding by
selecting media on structured SM studies, exploring specific techniques, and making an
outcome comparison for some of the exploration.
- Again, annotation is essential. Find a slot/space to annotate your creative process at
the side of the work.

PREP 4

Prep 4
- Here, we include another research and studies of Artist Reference #2.
However, in a similar process as AR #1, you may want to choose the artist from a
specific Art Era/Movement. E.g artist from Impressionism, Cubism, Pop Art (to name a
few)
- From the same process of recopying the artist's work, the student should imitate the
same technique in the SM picture.
- Above is the suggestion for the layout, and again, you can come out with your layout
arrangement. As long as it shows your ideas' flow, together with the continuous creative
process and manipulation in media used at each study.
- You can repeat the same SM Picture, let say, from Prep 1 or Prep 2 and try out using
different media, technique or style, you can do that too.
- Doesn't mean you have to capture, record, explore and experiment with all-new SM
Pictures at each prep. You can repeat some of the earlier SM Picture, and you might
want to adjust the size and manipulate the different techniques from the previous prep.
 PREP 5

Prep 5
- Another layout arrangement for the Prep5.
- You can explore the size of the SM object, you can do collage, or you can explore with
certain Apps and show the evidence of your creative process in this prep.
- Some students might ask you whether they can use a filter in certain Apps. I would say
it's fine as long as they know why they want to do the filtering and what they want to
achieve by doing that process.
- It is important to know why you do what you do.
- You can experiment with the mixed media work too.
- I quote this from one of the art reference books,
Your investigation must show visual continuity with your development work, so do
not include anything which does not link with your subsequent development.
- For the annotation, it would be great to annotate with appropriate art vocabulary as you
describe your creative process for the studies.
 PREP 6

Prep 6
- The similar AR exploration as AR#1 and AR#2.
At this prep, you can plan to combine particular SM objects or studies and explore the
Composition for each of them. For the half of the larger frame (as above), you might put
SM Picture of plant with Texture and half of it you can place the smooth Texture from
petals and observe the outcomes from your media exploration for both.
- Another idea, you can do half of the study with collage style and another half with
traditional painting style.
-You can also take the plant and paint detailed studies, but you explore the pointillism art
style for the background—just some suggestion for you.
- You can explore a close-up study as well. Using wet or dry media.
- You can crop the studies and fill in the small boxes as part of the media recording.
- Annotate as usual.
Prep 7 & 8
- For Prep 7 & 8, you can consider emphasising the Composition/Arrangement or
Proportion or use of space towards the Final Piece.
- To quote one from the book I referred,
There is no minimum or a maximum number of studies, but you should try to
produce several developments.
Quality is more important than quantity, but your work should effectively demonstrate
the process you went through to develop your idea towards your Final Piece. Include
your best work. Adding poor-quality development to fill up space may affect your
mark.
You should also consider the inspiration you studied from the ARs in the previous preps.
You may not take the 3 ARs into our Final Piece idea arrangement, but somehow you
may want to take some aspects from one or two ARs and apply/manipulate them into
your work or can be part of your work for the Final Piece.
- Well, that is why Prep 7 & 8 are the prep that you could explore your idea development
towards the Final Piece. This, including your best media, explored and experimented in
previous preps.
- You can annotate why you choose this and that SM Studies for the Final Piece ideas.
- You can 'tell' the examiners which media you would want to use and which Final Piece
draft ideas you won't use for the Final Piece. You can state why as well.

IMPORTANT INFO
PREP 2 is at the back of PREP 1
PREP 4 is at the back of PREP 3
PREP 6 is at the back of PREP 5
and
PREP 8 is at the back of PREP 7
Total : 4 sheets with back to back studies