Alton College A Level Art Blog: 2nd Year A Level Portrait Project Update

Meg Clarke

Welcome back!
We hope you are ready to get stuck into the second year, for the first half term we will be completing the Portraiture work we started in the Summer term (after your AS exams).
As a quick reminder the work you should have completed so far for the Portraiture is:

A great set of source portraiture photographs taken specifically for this unit, with a range of these printed out at a decent scale and included in your sketchbook.
Several sustained drawings in response to these photographs.
Other drawings exploring expressive technique and mark-making.
Some experiments with printmaking (Gold Card or Mono) in response to your source imagery.
Research into 6 portraits from different historical periods (see the original project brief you were issued for full guidance on this).

Over the first 3 weeks of term we want you to work towards an outcome for this set of work, this will involve purposeful experimentation with colour, composition and media to resolve your ideas and prepare you to start on final pieces from Monday 2nd October. Also during this period you should be adding to your research, find at least 2 Artists whose approach relates to your intentions and gather a range of imagery by them to analyse over several sketchbook pages.
We will then dedicate 3 weeks to completing your outcomes, which will take us up to half term.
You will have the half term week to finish sketchbooks off (and/or outcomes if you take them home), before submitting the work for Assessment on Monday 30th October.
To provide a little inspiration here are a few images produced by former Alton A Level students on the Portraiture theme: