The IB DP Visual Arts course offers incredible freedom within the International Baccalaureate, a vast space for exploration, experimentation and learning by making. Great emphasis is put on individuality – what matters is your own progress and reflection. Your IB work is, however, expected to be grounded in an academic, research driven approach to the artistic practice. This culminates in the ‘Comparative Study’ – an in-depth analysis and comparison of artists of your choice, as well as the ‘Process Portfolio’ – evidence of your conceptual and technical process. These highly contrasting parts of the IB DP course – freedom in your studio practice on the one hand and academic research on the other – is what can make the course challenging, but also intriguing and rewarding.
To enjoy and perfect each component of the course, there are several key points to consider. They apply throughout your 2 years of studio work, as well the final ‘crunch’, which will have you prepare your exhibition, Process Portfolio and finalize the Comparative Study.
- Get used to documenting your process. Very often when we’re making art we get lost in the moment, whether completely immersed and focused, or frustrated and trying to overcome a hurdle, and forget to pay attention to our process. The IB Visual Arts course requires you to be reflective and asses your own progress – this can only be done if time is given for pausing, stepping back and reviewing. All elements of your process – from sketches to first attempts, mistakes, and mishaps, are worthy of documentation. Stopping and taking pictures when you are in ‘the flow’ can feel overwhelming and artificial at first. However, having recorded stages of your work won’t only help you learn from your mistakes, but also give a great sense of satisfaction as you’ll see yourself develop. Again, this course puts emphasis on personal improvement – not some gold standard of aesthetic perfection, but your own narrative. Mistakes and quirks are welcome In this IB course and wanted, sometimes they are the happiest accidents. And if you take enough photos, the Process Portfolio will be a breeze – thank me later.
- Start from your own creative interests. One of the reasons why research might feel restrictive to IB DP Visual Art students is because they concentrate too much on the academic context of the IB course, so they end up following IB guidelines and ticking boxes instead of exploring their actual interests. It is extremely important to approach the IB DP Visual Arts course from your own perspective – what is it that drives your creativity, what sort of art do you want to make, whose work do you adore? For example, when choosing the artists to compare for your IB Comparative Study, far too many students end up with something arbitrary from art history just because it seems to fit the IB assignment easier. This won’t only make you dislike the process of writing the IB essay but will also restrict you from delving deep and making creative connections between your sources. That is not at all to say you should pay no mind to what the course requires – on the opposite, when essentially motivated by personal interest, the academic requirements feel more like framing guidelines and less like artificial restrictions.
- Make research a natural part of your IB practice. This I feel is the most important point to keep in mind. Art making is fun! For many IB DP Visual Arts students, the studio practice offers an opportunity to freely explore their interests and express themselves, the best part being the actual ‘jamming’ with the materials and mediums at hand. A lot of this is driven by intuition. Research can then feel alien to this workflow and students often avoid combining it with their artistic exploration. This rests on a misconception about how research enters art practice, which creates a huge gap between components of the course. For example, if you are interested in street art and are planning to use spray paint for your project, you can just go and start messing about with the materials on a big canvas. Very soon, however, you will start noticing that things don’t exactly come out as you had imagined them, the paint seems capricious and doesn’t follow your lead. Here lies a great opportunity to step back and explore the way other artists have used the same medium – what do you like in their work, can you find out how they did it? Maybe they made these really dynamic, expressive strokes you just can’t seem to get right – look for footage of them working. Quite quickly you will find yourself immersed in a culture of art making you were referencing in the first place, just didn’t contextually engage with.
Research also doesn’t only mean seeking out sources and references – your own experimentation is a research process. Maybe you tried 5 different types of spray paint since none seemed to stick just right – that’s your gathered data! You now have knowledge and experience you can document and refer to later, when you try this medium again. Approaching research as a natural part of your practice won’t only help to prepare for the Comparative Study and Process Portfolio but will also develop you as a creator. Within the contemporary art world, we are all working within the context of art history, it’s just a matter of acknowledging it.
Keeping these suggestions in mind should help you perform better in the IB DP Visual Arts course and also make you enjoy it as a coherent whole. Future blogs will discuss the various components of the course in more detail, but right now there is no time to waste – go back to the canvas and get working!