Mr Kintas is the Art & Design teacher at Lucton School Chongqing, teaching the fundamentals of drawing, design and art-making to Year 9, 10 and 11 students. The art & design course is focused on equipping students with a variety of skills, in preparation for IGCSE, AS/A-Level studies and further education in the Arts. Today we can see the Y11 students hard at work on their exam art pieces.
Students in Year 11 have been preparing for their mock art exam, which involves researching their chosen theme, exploring ideas and concepts related to that theme and then creating their personal response to their theme subject, based on their findings, which is what they are working on in these photos. Each student has a unique perspective, and the art & design course encourages these young artists to express themselves in their own way.
Art exams are quite unique in that students are allowed and encouraged to use their previous preparation works, their research and printed reference images to help guide them to create their final works. The preparation work makes up 75% of a student’s grade, so this preparation work begins early in the term and continues right up until the end of the term.

There is no restriction on what art materials can be used for the exam art work, it is at the student’s discretion, though students must practice using materials before the exam period to be well-prepared for the exam. You can see that students are using a variety of different materials, such as pen, watercolour, colour pencils and oil pastels to complete their exam works.
Students are free to move around the classroom to fetch materials, as illustrated, the atmosphere is more relaxed, which can help the students to feel calm and focused on their art-making. Art exams typically last for 10 hours, split into five 2-hour sessions. For this mock exam, the time was reduced to 3-hours, split over three days, to give the students a better understanding of the conditions they will be examined in when the final exam comes in May this year.

A student is using their preparation studies, material practice and photo references to guide them in their exam piece.

The classroom atmosphere is relaxed during an art examination to give students enough space to focus on their exam task.

Students focused and managing their time well during the 3-hour exam in IGCSE Art & Design.

A student using mixed media for their exam piece. In this example there is a mixture of watercolour and colour pencils being used together to create the desired effect.