The Truth About GCSE Art |Dreams That Glitter

Hello! Now, this could be an incredibly lengthy, boring post but I’m going to cut it down into 5 top tips if you do decide to take this option. I took Art & Design which is a double award meaning I get two GCSEs at the end, but the same kind of things apply for the single option I guess. Everything said in this post is purely from my own experiences and I just wanted to put it out there. So…

1. Before you finalise the decision to take Art, make sure it is something you definitely want to do. You have to be completely dedicated and committed to the course right from the start. If it’s definitely something you enjoy and are willing to put a lot of time into, then you’ll be fine. 

2. Do the work! It sounds simple, yet no one does it. Stick to the deadlines and put in that little bit of extra effort to make sure everything is completed in time. It sounds cliché but it’s worth following, if you actually stay focused in the lesson then you will get everything done and everything will come together in the end! 

3. Don’t panic. As soon as you enter panic mode about not having the work done, or having too much to do in too little time (this is often the case, it is a huge work load and is a squeeze to get it all done, so if you are someone who can stay on task and not get distracted too easily then you’ll definitely be ok) then that’s when you end up spending lesson after lesson sitting doing nothing, simply staring at the work load that is in front of you. If you keep a calm attitude towards the subject then you’ll be much more likely to finish it all. A little self belief could go a long way. 

4. Don’t think you can’t take art because you’re not amazing at drawing/painting/etc. If you have a creative mind then you can do the course. I would say that although the fine art aspect is obviously important, there’s a lot more to it than just being able to pick up a pencil and draw something. There are other alternatives than drawing free hand such as using a light box or graphite transfer methods as a good base to aid your drawing skills. This way, anyone can do it! 

5. Manage your time effectively and plan your work. Make a timetable of slots you’re going to give yourself to do the work, and assign yourself deadlines for each bit of the course being completed. Your teacher may do this for you but some let the students be much more independent, which can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on how much motivation you can provide yourself with. If you’re passionate about the project then this is 100% easier. 

I think that’s it for now… Just know that the course is not just drawing and painting, it’s also a lot of writing about your ideas and thought processes, as well as artist research and analysing other people’s work. If you write annotations as you go through the course rather than leaving it all until the end, or at least write notes at each stage of your project then that helps too. you have to be able to think quickly and come up with a range of ideas within the first week or so of starting a project, otherwise the whole thing gets slowed down and it’s hard to catch up again. Having said that, the themes for exam projects are generally very open (Force, Order and/or Disorder, Fragments, Reflection, Disguise) and lots of topics/areas/interests can some how be fitted in to those titles, so it is quite free reign on what you can do. 

So that was my procrastination and anger over my art course transferred into a possibly helpful blog post… now I need to get my act together, take my own advice and go and get some work done! My exam is Tuesday – Friday and I have piles of work to do, mainly because I’ve done the complete opposite of what I’ve suggested above for the past two years. 

Anyone else taking/having taken/thinking about taking Art please comment below and let me know how you feel about it! 

Lauren x 

Dancer Project |Dreams That Glitter

After rediscovering the work ‘Dancers Among Us’ and the ‘Ballerina Project’ I managed to convince my dancer friends to pose for me so I could take some pictures of my own inspired by those photographers I’ve spoken about previously. We went up to the park and through the woods to take a few action shots and then went into the library, we did get a few odd looks here and there but I really like the results. Did I mention it was for my art project? We’ve started our exam projects now and I’m doing mine based around dance so after some artist research on dance photography, this was my next step. Thank you to my wonderful models Lauren and Maisie!

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Flower Girl Dress |Dreams That Glitter

I’ve been wanting to post this for a while now but I wanted to take pictures of my design work to show you with the final garment itself. First off the brief: 

 

Here’s my mood board I put together after exploring the brief a little: 

 

Next came my initial ideas: 

 

After this I explored some more original ideas and did some more developing ones before coming to my final design board: 

 

And then on I went with the making process once I’d bought my materials and made a toile.I enjoyed making the garment even though it did cause me a fair amount of stress because it turns out that when I have Textiles before midday I’m not very good at reading instructions. Or remembering something I’ve already done. Despite all the things I had to re-do (hopefully I’ve learnt from all that and won’t repeat any of it in the future) I’m quite pleased with the final product as I’ve managed to hide all the things that went wrong so it looks pretty decent! Here it is:

Group Contemporary Dance – Two Pieces |Dreams That Glitter

Had quite a productive day today… Me and Maisie spent just under 4 hours in the studio finishing our piece for a Christmas dance show in December and here’s the results… it still needs a bit of polishing up but we got it done and I’m quite pleased with it! Let me know what you think! X

It’s a Dance Life |Dreams That Glitter

 

Happy Friday everyone!

Thought I’d post a little update on everything dance related I’m doing at the moment. I’d like to start off by saying I don’t think I could be doing much more dance if I tried right now, the amount of choreography in my head is insane, I’m afraid it might explode if much more has to go in there. I’m doing dance on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and some Saturdays extra practice… That includes three different dance clubs at school including dance company which I think I like the most. We’ve pretty much finished our first piece for the show in December based on The Matrix. That’s another thing, I’m currently working towards three different shows at the moment too…There’s the one at school that has a movie theme, which I’m in like half of because of all the clubs I’m doing…

I went to sixth form opportunities evening last night because we have to submit our provisional choices forms so they can make the timetable (I’m going to sixth form at the school I’m at already). Beforehand I knew I was definitely going to take Dance but I went into the department anyway even though I had no questions, and my dance teacher saw me and was like ‘Lauren, I have a question for you!’  and she asked me to do a solo for the christmas show and after a bit of persuasion I agreed, so that’s something else I have to choreograph. It can be anything, but it has to be to a song from a movie. So far my best suggestions seem to be Moon River from Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Flashdance, but if anyone would like to suggest something else that’s not The Matrix, James Bond or Jai Ho, I’d very much like some more options! 

Then there’s another show which I’m doing and did last year because I’m helping my friend choreograph a contemporary piece for the street dance club which is all good fun. We taught the chorus of the song ‘Two Pieces’ by Demi Lovato last week and it seemed to go down pretty well, and hopefully we’ll have it all choreographed and taught and perfected in time (we haven’t actually finished choreographing yet). 

Finally there’s ballet, but that show isn’t until February so I don’t need to stress about that just yet. I have trouble remembering the choreography for a whole week though so… I’m in two dances at the moment but I think that’s going to go up because I’m in some of the highest level, and the fact we’ve already finished a dance in October, I doubt that’s all we’re going to be doing until February. I’m quite anxious to see whether a pointe dance gets put in, we’ve been doing pointe over a year now… 

This week I had my GCSE set study ‘Find It’ mock exam, and got a B (23-4/30) which I’m okay with but I’m hoping to bump it up to an A for the final exam which I have next Tuesday. I have a video recording of the mock, so I’m tempted to post it on here and see if anyone can give me some constructive criticism to help me improve for next week 🙂 

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend, I’m going to be quite busy, I’m off to London tomorrow to meet up with some friends and then on Sunday I’m going to an Armageddon fitness event with my mum, which includes me doing about 6 hours exercise and then struggling to walk for the rest of the week. Fun! Somewhere in there I have to make time for art, science and textiles homework as well as learning a 300 word spanish piece for my writing exam on Tuesday… There’s not enough hours in the day!

X

Dance is painful! My bruises from ‘Find It’

Dance Company |Dreams That Glitter

I was in two minds whether to upload this or not but thought what the hell I may as well, and also it’s a good thing to have as a comparison to any future solos I guess. This is my choreography to Lissie’s Go Your Own Way for my school dance company audition which is on Tuesday, I choreographed in about a couple of hours and have tried to practice it as much as possible… I don’t think this video is the best I can do it but hey ho. Feel free to let me know what you think!

Vogue |Dreams That Glitter

Vogue instantly comes to mind, doesn’t it? But there are also the likes of Elle, Marie Claire, Instyle and Glamour. I’ve been collecting these various magazines since I was about 10, at which age I was completely obsessed with fashion designing and spent pretty much every waking moment doing little sketches of these rather extravagant dresses I wanted to make. I’d sit there spread out across the living room floor with everything I needed: pencils, pens, paper, sketchbooks, rubbers, magazines, glue, etc, and spent hours cutting and sticking putting mood boards together and trying to copy the pieces that I liked best. I still have this massive folder that I’d made fuller and fuller and re done and re thought out designs and gained more and more magazine clippings, and it’s really not that brilliant but I was proud of it back then. Maybe I should start filling up a new one…

Anyway back to the magazines. You may or may not know that fashion magazines can cost as much as £4.99 sometimes, depending on the time of year and what magazine you’re buying. They are published monthly rather than weekly normally. You’ll notice that March and September are big months for fashion because they contain all the upcoming trends for the next season, therefore the magazines are quite a bit thicker, especially with Vogue.

But are they worth the price? When you can buy a gossip magazine for under £2? Personally I’m not a huge fan of gossip magazines unless there’s a celebrity column of someone I like, or there’s an interview/photoshoot of someone I’m a fan of, in which case of course I’m gonna buy it. They’re just generally really fake, and can publish some awful things about celebrities and at the end of the day they’re just real people, and while Katie Price and such like may seem pretty out there and in your face at times they don’t always want the details of their latest love affairs or weight gain plastered over the front covers of these cheap magazines that people are so interested in. Some celebrities want just fame but don’t quite realise that their every move is going to be followed by the paps and published in 5 different magazines. Some celebrities just want to be successful and got fame with it, and have the same thing, and can have some horrible experiences with the paps who can be incredibly intimidating and invading.

Fashion magazines are much different, a lot of them are just full of ‘adverts’ which are often actually the latest designer’s campaigns or collections which some people don’t seem to understand. The models in those so called ‘adverts’ as most people see them, are paid huge amounts of money for the photoshoots they do because it’s in Vogue. To be on the cover of Vogue is a huge achievement. To be the face of Marc Jacobs or Alexander McQueen is a huge deal to be modelling their work. Each collection is always so different as is each designer, and all the photoshoots vary so much they’re very interesting to look at all the creative ideas that these people come up with.

They also come with the best free gifts… previously I’ve had Jemma Kidd eyeliner, various mascaras, lip products, hair products, creams and nail varnishes including nails inc. which usually costs £11 a bottle. They’re all really good quality products and always worthwhile, sometimes with various ones to choose from a collection.

Vogue is the most successful fashion and lifestyle magazine that started off in America, and is now available in 23 editions. To be the editor of Vogue is to be the most influential figures in the global fashion industry. The editor has the power to make or a break any designer’s career.

There’s so many jobs available in the fashion industry and I’d love to be involved in it if dance doesn’t work out. The fashion industry is my main back up I think, I’d love to work for a fashion magazine I just think it would be brilliant, all the things you’d learn every day and all the great things you’d get to do and go to, it’d be amazing. Especially working for something as big as Vogue. But then again I’d also love to make clothes because I love designing them and seeing something come from a flat drawing on a bit of paper to a real life garment that you’ve made before is amazing if it goes well. I say ‘if’ because I made a skirt last year as part of my GCSE Textiles coursework and it really wasn’t brilliant to say the least, but I think I didn’t really know what to do at first and it was the first time I’d really made anything proper. We’ve just started our next bit of design work which is ‘Flower Girls in the Limelight’ and I’m really excited about this one because I think for starters I really like the design I’ve done and I’ve bought the fabric and the pattern and I’m kind of now thinking ‘oh ok, maybe this won’t be a total disaster’ because I’m now more familiar with what I’m doing and I’m going to take my time and make sure I do it all accurately and hopefully I’ll have a really pretty bridesmaids dress by Christmas. I do plan to share the progress of it here so watch this space.

I’m also entering a young designer competition which is linked with textiles at my school where we have to design a practical handbag inspired by the 1920s, and everyone who enters gets to go to the clothes show on the 10^th December so I’m really excited about that. If you make it as a finalist you have to make the bag but I’m not really expecting to get that far, however there is some quite good prizes available for the winner which is quite motivating. So I’ll probably post about that here too. In fact, here’s my 1920s moodboard…