IB Visual Arts - Will It Be The Right Fit?

Welcome to the creative world of IB, where it is all about art, imagination and practical skills. And no, it's not just colouring, painting a wonderland, and sketches; it's much more than that.

 

The IB visual arts course permeates all facets of human creation, emotion, interaction, and knowledge. They are an essential component of daily life. Traditional models ingrained in regional and larger groups, civilizations, and cultures are included, as well as the numerous and disparate activities connected to new, developing, and modern visual communication styles. They could be coercive and disruptive in certain situations, instructive and joyful in others, and they could have ceremonial, philosophical, ornamental, and practical significance in addition to social influence. In addition to creating pictures and things, we also honour the visual arts by appreciating, enjoying, respecting, and reacting to the artistic activities of people worldwide.

 

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Visual arts theories and practices are constantly evolving, connecting various fields of study and aspects of human reality via solitary and group inquiry, artistic creation, and critical analysis.

 

Students who take the subject of the visual arts in the IB Diploma Program are encouraged to push the limits of their creativity and cultural norms. It is a challenging course where students learn to achieve technical competency and self-assurance as artists while developing reasoning abilities in problem-solving and diverse creativity. Students are required to interact with, explore, and intellectually remark upon a wide variety of modern practices and technologies in addition to investigating and assessing visual arts from many viewpoints and in diverse situations.

 

Now the question arises, who benefits the most from IB Visual Arts?

 

This course is intended for people who wish to pursue a career in the visual arts and those who are looking to enrich their lives through the subject matter.

 

The course enables students to proactively examine the visual arts throughout and across a range of local, provincial, global, regional, and multicultural settings, complementing the stated mission and student profile of the International Baccalaureate. 

 

Students studying visual arts get an understanding of the emotional and aesthetic richness in their surroundings via inquiry, research, contemplation, and innovative application. They also learn to generate and absorb contemporary art with critical thinking. 

 

The IB Visual Arts course focuses on the individual student, who is encouraged to explore their interests as part of a comprehensive learning process. The selection of which creators, artworks, contextual factors, mediums, and genres to examine is entirely up to you so go crazy! 

 

You're allowed to choose, investigate, and pick anything you find fascinating.

 

You can also use various original presenting techniques, such as seminars, demos, and galleries, to share what you have learned. This course must be taken with caution because learning about visual arts entirely depends on skill-based activities.

With Visual Arts IB, learning is like an endless horizon. Here you will learn about the procedures of sharing their work since it is crucial to the visual arts and remark on them. Hence, higher-order cognitive abilities, such as simulation and optimization, as well as organizational self-management and solitary academic skills, are crucial. Additionally, you will discover how to put their comprehension and knowledge into practice by turning concepts into deeds and deciding what is pertinent and valuable to their studies.

 

Students will gain knowledge of visual arts from a wide range of cultural settings via this course. Still, they will also understand the significance of creating their own practical activities with moral fibre, notified by theoretical approaches. With an understanding of the potential effect, their concepts and work will have on their surroundings. 

 

You are encouraged to research by experimentation and to arrive at conclusions based on your individual embodied encounters in the IB Visual Arts course, in addition to employing more conventional academic approaches.

In IB Visual Arts, each student must develop a unique piece of material centred on a theme or subject. This basically indicates that we anticipate you to acquire a variety of skills.

 

The following describes how well these skills may be used in the visual arts.

1. Research: abilities include knowing how to obtain information online and in person, determine whether the material is reliable, and utilize it truthfully.
2. Communication: abilities include the ability to concisely convey the thoughts and objectives behind your creation, write concise observations and replies to the Comparative Study, and write your exhibition description.
3. Every class in visual arts requires students to use their critical thinking abilities. Being able to analyze, describe, assess, debate, find connections, deal with problems, and understand the "big picture" is something you must be capable of learning.
4. Since you'll be learning many courses and participating in various projects, self-management skills are essential for success in IB Visual Arts. You must have the capacity to function autonomously, productively, and methodically. 
5. You must have good time management skills to complete your deliverable, i.e., your artwork, by the stated IB deadline.
6. Independence growth: You will get assistance on organizing work and deadlines, and it is anticipated that you take the initiative to manage how your time is spent both during and outside the course to achieve these milestones.

With additional evaluation criteria at HL that enable variety and deeper depth in the learning and instruction, the visual arts syllabus clearly distinguishes the course at standard and higher levels.

 

The assessment assignments call for HL learners to further explore other art-making mediums, methods, and styles and reflect on how engagement with other artists has inspired their personal art. 

 

Students at the HL level are urged to create a more significant body of finalized pieces and to exhibit a deeper understanding of the communication between their completed works and a possible spectator.

 

It doesn’t end here. The topics, too, are incredibly different!

 

Topics will differ from individual to individual because of the extraordinary growth of student concepts and themes as well as their skills in art-making areas. 

 

3 art mediums are important in IB visual arts:

1. 2D Forms
2. 3D Forms
3. Electronic-Based Forms. 

 

As a baseline, SL students need to have hands-on experience with 2 different art-making mediums, each chosen from the three mentioned above. Similarly, a minimum of three art-making mediums must be used by HL students in their coursework.

Like every building needs a strong foundation, you must have a good grasp of IB Visual Arts basics to stand tall.

 

The 5 terms of the IB visual art course lead up to a self-curated Exhibition. 

1. You will acquire the knowledge necessary to pursue an artistic career.
2. Produce original works of art
3. Develop critical and independent thinking abilities via theoretical engagement
4. Art production exercise.
5. Curatorial training. 

 

Students will gain a new understanding of the three practices (discussed later in this blog. Jump to IB Visual Arts Curriculum) at each step of the course.

 

This course is adaptable and heavily influenced by the requirements and preferences of the study.

 

There are three parts to the IB visual arts course.

The work in your Visual Arts Workbook that makes up your Process Portfolio demonstrates experiments, investigation, modification, and refining of various Visual Arts projects. As students, you will be required to:

1. Demonstrate competence in exploring methods, procedures, and abilities
2. Researching and connecting information
3. Formulating ideas and goals
4. Conducting introspective studies
5. Lexicon for presentations and the arts

 

The ultimate grade you receive from this will be 40%. It is marked externally and forwarded to IB.

A comparative study is a written assignment that looks at and contrasts at least three pieces of art by various artists and, in HL, examines how much the art and artists under consideration have inspired the student's work and practices. 20% of your final mark will be based on this. It is marked externally and forwarded to IB.

The exhibition consists of finished art creations demonstrating technical skill and comprehension of the concepts, materials, and methods relevant to data visualization. Both a statement explaining the artist's objective and a text outlining the curatorial justification for the show are required for every piece of artwork. 

 

It is internally marked and externally moderated. The ultimate grade you receive from this will be 40%.

The curriculum is vast and damn interesting, and of course, it is incomplete without the internal assessment!

 

In the visual arts, composing an essay will allow you to study a subject of particular interest. You, as students, are expected to utilize various abilities to generate and critically and imaginatively investigate a concentrated research issue relevant to the visual arts, as well as to evaluate and verify your study by taking into account how it will affect the specific visual arts field.

 

The final product of the study ought to be a well-organized writing assignment (with relevant images) that successfully tackles a specific topic or purpose of the study relevant to visual arts. The student's firsthand exposure to artwork, handicraft, or architecture, including curiosity in creating a specific artist, genre, or timeline, may serve as the basis for or inspiration for the study. This could be influenced by their ethnicity or that of another culture. The utilization of regional and other original materials and direct communication with artists, designers, and others is highly urged.

Reflecting on the relationship between theory and research and how we comprehend what we say we understand is a requirement of the IB ToK course.

 

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8 different methods of knowing are listed in the course:

1. Logic
2. Feeling
3. Speech
4. Sensory perception
5. Intuition
6. Fiction
7. Faith
8. Memory

 

Scientific studies, gender studies, cognitive arts, morality, history, arithmetic, religious philosophies, and indigenous knowledge structures are just a few of the domains of knowledge that students examine in this regard. You are also expected to compare and contrast the many fields of expertise, focusing on how proficiency is generated in diverse disciplines, what those areas of study have in apparent, and what sets them apart.

 

Additionally, the art topics support the ToK philosophy by highlighting interdisciplinary links and enabling you to investigate the advantages and disadvantages of unique personal and cultural viewpoints. Students must examine and doubt their own knowledge sources while studying the arts.

 

You can also develop a better understanding of the interconnectedness of knowledge by examining other Diploma Program areas of study with an artistic subjectivity. This will inspire you to get engaged, empathetic, and active participants in learning and recognizing that other people, with their distinctions, can also be justified.

You should ensure that your preparation covers all the curriculum activities listed below, whose substance and emphasis are optional, to adequately prepare yourself for the assessment tasks' requirements.

 

The curriculum is broken into 3 general practices, as elaborated below, which are expected from you as a student:

IB’s breakdown of the visual arts curriculum can also come in handy so don’t forget to check it out!

The numerous creative processes by which information, skills, and mindsets from diverse ethnic settings are created and transferred are studied by students of IB visual arts. Students can research and consider the complexity of the human experience through these disciplines.

 

It would be best if you worked to build a grasp of the technical, intellectual, expressive, and informational components of the arts by experimenting with various media and technology.

 

Students taking IB Visual Art courses are required to

1. Create individually meaningful pieces of art that draw inspiration from their research.
2. Enhance visual and textual investigational abilities and methods.
3. Use the visual art expert language to connect art with its cultures for thousands of years to the present and to develop.
4. Create and apply the art evaluation and critique procedure via contrasting and comparing.
5. With comprehensive contextual research and personal observation, investigate and refine concepts and methods for studio recordings.
6. Look at design and art's many themes, aspects, and ideas.
7. As your unique voice develops, consider using these personally.
8. Learn how to use different media with competence and assurance and push your limits.
9. Make links with their personal and other people's thoughts and actions.
10. Establish a clear connection between research and a deliberate creative approach in your production work.

 

By studying IB visual arts, you can examine creative information from various angles and learn this knowledge through more conventional academic techniques and practical learning. 

 

Due to this, exploring many fields of knowledge overall and understanding multiple art forms, in particular, may work together to help us better comprehend who we are, our recurring behaviours, and how we interact with one another and our surrounding environment.

 

With this guide, understanding if IB Visual Arts as a subject is the right choice has become a cakewalk for you. 

 

If you still need clarification, feel free to get in touch with any of your teachers who can help guide you in better depth.

 

Remember, IB is not rocket science, so don't fret! Nail IB is here to help you at every step of it. With our IB course resources and guides, things will be easier.