IB Visual Arts... done!

So I've already blogged about IB Art, possibly more than once, but guess what- I won't be blogging about it anymore, because guess why- I'm done with IB Art.



Yeah. As amazing/awesome as that sounds, it's kind of sad in a way. I put a lot of effort into it, and spent a LOT of time doing art. When I was putting my work out for the exam, it completely covered three tables and two benches, plus I had a ton of stuff laid out on the ground, plus I had several pieces on the wall, and that's not even counting my photographs (I didn't spread those out).



The actual IB Visual Arts HL exam consists of 2 parts:



1. Candidate Record Book (CRB)- the CRB consists of a "portfolio" (where you include 4x6 pictures of 12-15 of your strongest pieces, plus 2 pictures of your "body" of work; for me, one of the hardest things was actually coming up with titles for everything... not as easy as it sounds!), a "candidate statement" (~300 words; basically an artist's statement), and 25-30 pages photocopied from the Investigative Workbook.



"But wait!" you say. "What's an Investigative Workbook?" Well, I'll tell you. The IWB is a hardbound sketchbook with a black cover. It's kind of like a "journal" of your artwork. You're supposed to have a balance of the 3 types of pages- studio/process/visual (your own art- how you make it, talking about it, etc.; when I did a painting, I would take a picture of what it was I was painting, and then include pictures of the painting as I was working on it, and wrote about what techniques I was using), critical (other people's art; I was doing some splatter-painting last year, so I read up about Jackson Pollock, and got some pictures of his work), and socio-cultural (relating something that has to do with your art to society and culture- I had entries about Converse All Star sneakers, the history and development of pointe shoes, and CBGB & OMFUG; all things that were important to some aspect of society and culture). The page requirement varies by school and teacher, but my teachers required us to have 15-20 new pages as a month as a junior, and 10 new pages a month as a senior (I was rarely under the limit, but often over).



I ended up having 291 pages in all- I completely filled one "volume" back in September, and had to start a new one. It's actually kind of amazing. I estimate I used at least 5 or 6 glue sticks, plus probably 2 or full rolls of double-stick tape, to make my IWB. At first, I was having trouble deciding what pages to photocopy, but I ended up photocopying more than I needed (of course I only included 30 pages).



2. One-on-one Critique- This was actually kind of scary. Basically, I laid out all of my work (!!!) in the gallery at my school, and talked about it with an examiner for 45 minutes. She asked me questions, but I definitely had to be prepared. I had a hard time seeing what she was thinking, because her face didn't really show much expression. Anyways, I think I did a good job, but I don't really know, since I won't find out until July. IB exams are scored from 1 to 7. I've done a lot of work (and I think some of it is pretty good!), but there are definitely people who are better artists than I am. Very, very few people receive 7s.