Learning Resources for Year GCSE Year 10 (University of Leeds: Plan, Prepare, Provide resources).

Focus:

Notes to accompany BP Portrait awards image gallery:​

Composition and content of art work is not easy to master for any artist, never mind those who are just beginning to develop their individuality.

By analysing the work of others, this can become easier when spotting the keys that artists have used to leave clues. You may wish your students to just have a critical studies approach to analysing others’ work, so that they look deeper and make connections stronger. You may also want them to be able to discuss their own work in greater depth and compose their own artwork in a more discerning way. ​

This can be seen to be easier with, for example, still life, vanitas, or five senses artwork, that allows the discussion of individual objects and their significance.

However, when creating portraits, it can be more complex. When not a mere vanity portrait, but daring to show a ‘warts and all’ representation, the discussions of content have a great deal to say and unravel.

The following slides can be picked at random and you may just want to focus on just one image.

Think about how it may link to other famous portraits to help make connections and throw a net wider over the historical and more contemporary works.

I am hoping that you may not have heard of any of these artists, so that the famous names are secondary to those here. The questions asked here can become the questions that the students ask and answer in their own work, as they develop their ideas, explain the whys and annotate to let others in on their reasoning.​
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Lines of inquiry - let the conversations flow​