Section I

The student works displayed on this page are reproductions of actual works submitted by students in June 2009.

Click an image to view a larger version.

Quality Sample 1: Nicole Dyer, Lois Cowles Harrison Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, Lakeland, FL
Score: 6

Rationale for Score:

• This portfolio is of excellent quality, making use of a variety of approaches to drawing and celebrating a wide range of mark-making.
• Subtlety and sensitivity, along with a deliberate and confident use of traditional and nontraditional materials, are consistently evident in the entire portfolio.
• Commonplace materials are transformed through experimentation and risk taking to become exceptional compositions.
• There is a seamless integration of form and content in these works.
• An excellent understanding of drawing is evident. Experimentation and risk taking raise these drawings to an exceptional level.

Rationale for Score:

• While there are inconsistencies in the quality of this portfolio, the work is generally strong.
• The three works that incorporate material experimentation (double portrait, carrot views, and soldier) are innovative and evocative and demonstrate successful risk taking and experimentation.
• The pastel portrait fails to demonstrate the quality that is evident in the majority of works presented. More attention to rendering and figure/ground integration are needed.
• The marker portrait is an ambitious and challenging example of foreshortening with some generalized areas of line.
• The majority of work in this portfolio successfully demonstrates a confident and well-integrated use of the elements and principles of design.

Rationale for Score:

• This portfolio displays good understanding of drawing.
• Technical aspects are handled well, especially where subtleties and attention to detail are necessary. The student establishes areas of emphasis where core, complex visual relationships of light, shadow, form, and space reside.
• The compositions function primarily around the center of the picture plane in most of these works. Large areas of the drawings remain featureless and inactive; these areas should be integrated with the more active areas to make a stronger composition.
• Mark-making is fundamentally confident, but the drawn lines can be too mechanical or simple in some applications.

Rationale for Score:

• This portfolio of work addresses drawing ideas, but the technical skills to resolve them are weak.
• There is a sense of real effort; however, understanding of the elements and principles of design does not move beyond a level of basic application.
• The tomatoes and the skeleton show some experimentation with color and composition, but the sense of form through modeling is not explored.
• The contour drawing of hands shows a limited understanding of drawing concepts and skills.
• The drawing of the portrait reflected in the spoon does show a sense of challenge, but the skill level to resolve the idea is modest.
• Further study is needed in drawing from observation, with an emphasis on the relationship between elements, principles, and technical skill.