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NCEA Level 3 - Visual Arts 2010

Examples of Candidate Work – 90667 Painting

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Excellence

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Excellence

This portfolio has been centred on an articulate use of both image-making and object-making. The candidate has tackled what appears to be a difficult project because this simple approach is difficult to execute successfully within the micro-art constraints of the portfolio format.

The candidate has been very careful with geometry and materials, using the space of the portfolio to accentuate the exchanges between positive and negative space.

An elegant shift in the use of media is evident, from the torn and taped card to the carefully cut and painted balsa wood.

It is clear that the candidate sees small effects of cutting and moving the forms as a rich source of possibility for composition. The movement across installation, painting and collage are clever reinterpretations of a simple geometry.

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ExcellenceThis portfolio shows a broad range of subject matter based on the same theme, being drawn in paint and dry media.

The simple figure and ground relationships have been developed and the pictorial space shows simplification. The cues of the environment are dissolved into simple washes of oscillating colour.

The figure and ground exchange has been analysed. This can be seen in the loose gestures which have been made bolder, becoming a tangible component in the ‘world of the figure’.

A sophisticated relationship has later been developed with the range of figures in the series of works. This has been used to suggest and activate illusory space integrated with the painterly forms, for example; the central yellow work where the girl sits on the red ‘cloud’. This idea has been extended in all the works in the latter part of the portfolio. Evident also is the developing sense of evaluation and synthesis of these devices in a range of works. The depth of the candidates understanding and control of the idea has been revealed.

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Merit

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MeritThis portfolio is noteworthy because of the evidence of the candidates ability in ‘picture-making’ in painting and the systematic yet broad approach to the relating and evaluating ideas. Some works contain lapses in realist skill in drawing the figure in urban/architectural space. Yet these lapses do not disable the purposeful development of a pictorial idea.

Most of the works on panels two and three clearly show understanding of established procedures. The candidate develops a painterly technique to devise and evaluate montaged compositions where flattened and illusory spaces have been twisted and juxtaposed. There are lapses in the clarification of options but the technique is handled with sustained inventiveness.

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MeritThis submission starts with a straight forward series of studies of water and sand forms in drawing. This is linked to the artist model, Terry Winters. Like Terry, this candidate manages to extract plenty of material from a narrow selection of subject matter.

This portfolio demonstrates “the implicit use of a model”. For example, after the explicit reference to Winters to generate a pictorial idea, the candidate draws compositional, procedural, colouristic, and painterly ideas from the work itself. Earlier works have been drawn upon re-phrased and investigated in later works.

Demonstrating skill in mark-making, the manipulation of figure and ground, translucency, opacity and shifts in scale, the candidate challenges this narrow range of organic elements.

Like all Merit portfolios, this one shows a systematic and continual relating and evaluating of the moves made to advance into new works. It seems there is more that can be done to advance to Excellence.

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Achieved

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AchievedThis submission has escaped a heavily prescribed series of generative steps and instead uses a model for painting in the work of Philip Guston. To the benefit of the portfolio, the work also escapes the disparate nature of this model rephrasing the vocabulary of Guston into a contemporary piece of street Pop; the skate park which is evidently a part of the candidates own world.

The candidate demonstrates a lack of skill in painting and drawing that limits the extent to which the candidate is able to develop fluency and purpose in the project. Frequent shifts of compositional structure have been poorly evaluated and built upon; from the fisheye bowl close-ups (at the bottom of panel two) to the flat montage and then to the skate deck.

However, each of these phases of work demonstrates clear generation, analysis and regeneration of ideas.

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AchievedThis portfolio is a very good achieved. The candidate demonstrates a systematic approach and manages to extract a great deal of pictorial information from a specific piece of subject matter.

There is a lapse towards the end of the portfolio as the work shows a ‘zoomed-in’ quality. This results in an ‘emptying-out’ effect. A lack of skill in handling a reduced or minimal aesthetic weakens the success of the latter works.

The earlier successful vibrant interplay of contrasts in light and reflection are lost as the works become more ‘deadpan’.

The strength in the portfolio lies in the candidate’s ability to draw out the geometric and chromatic subject matter in panels one and two.

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AchievedThe question arises, “Is there enough painting on this portfolio to achieve”? Established practices in fashion illustration, drawing and photo-collage provide an adequate precedent for the submission.

This portfolio reveals limited skill in linear and tonal drawing. However, the linear drawing has been used to translate and distort the photographic subject matter of the cosmetic advertisements. A pictorial relationship has been developed between the swatches of cosmetic samples, the patterns of dress fabrics, the emerging fractured photo-collage and the tentative examination of colour.

A limited amount of subject matter has been drawn into the initial part of the study. The candidate has used this sufficiently to sustain the project across the portfolio.

The development of the pictorial idea has been handled in a sufficiently systematic way. There are a number of works across the portfolio, particularly the works at the bottom of panel three, that provide evidence that the student has learned to control simple disjunctions of figuration and interplays of figure and ground.