Project 1 - Part 1 and 2

Planning - have written out lists of annotations, postcards, projects, visits, reading & watching and assignments and stuck them into inside of kitchen cupboard.  Good visully reminder of what needs to be done.  Also nice to cross things off as I go along so can see how far I've come.

Emailed tutor re first assignment due date - I've suggested end of April.  (Now 5th and not sure if I'll quite make it but going to keep trying for it!)

Books - Buy Art and Artists dictionary.  Borrow other books as and when, buy anything I really like or find really useful.

Questions to ask about art -

Looking at it...

• what is pictured?
• what colours have been used?
• how effective?
• medium used?
• where does light come from?
• is it realistic?

Looking/find out...

• artist?
• size?
• when was it created?
• purpose?
• does it depict an actual event?
• is it imaginary?

To find out...

• background info - when in artist's career?  historical connotations?
• symbolism of items, people - might learn more about this as go along and do from looking?
• hidden meanings
• narratives

Project 1 - Part 3 - My Course Aims

I have decided to take Understanding Art as the first course of my degree with the OCA. I plan on concentrating on practical courses for the rest of my degree and don’t want to follow an art history path but think that what I learn over the next year will be really helpful in my future learning. Having no formal art training other than GCSE (nearly 20 years ago) I want to get some background knowledge and lots of practice in annotating, writing and thinking about art.


I have decided to do an art degree for a few reasons. Firstly because I finally have a vague career plan and would love to be able to teach art at some point in the future (I am currently a further education teacher working with young people with special needs and teaching literacy numeracy and ICT skills). This ambition is another reason for choosing Understanding Art – the theory skills would definitely be useful if teaching the subject.

I have also decided to do this art degree as I have spent the majority of the past 10 years studying and 2 years ago achieved a First Class Honours Degree through the Open University. After a bit of a break I need to do more learning but fancy something a bit more fun. When I left school my plan was to study art and eventually go to art college but life got in the way and instead I dropped out of college after 6 weeks and went to work in a factory – I’ve got back round to it at last! Again having recently completed a degree has influenced my decision to take Understanding Art – I am interested in finding out how to write academically in a different style and for a different purpose.


At the end of the course I hope to have a lot more knowledge about the subject than I have now. I also hope that I will find out I already know more than I think!


I want to be able to confidentially recognise different architectural styles - to tell the age of buildings or know the styles that have been used in designing them.

I can currently identify some artists work or styles. By the end of the course I want to be familiar with a range of artists from different periods and know a number of their works. I hope that I would be able to visit a gallery and recognise major works and be able to classify other works by age, style etc.

I want to become confident in annotating as this will be particularly useful when working on my logbooks in my future courses. I want to have a mental checklist of the questions to ask myself about any work I am looking at whether I am formally annotating it or not.

As the course progresses I want to become more confident in deciding which styles of art I find most appealing. I hope that I will be able to identify what I like and don’t like about different works which in turn will help me to find my own style when moving on to practical courses.

Overall I hope that I will enjoy the course even if I find some aspects more challenging and that I will complete all the projects collect all the postcards, make all the visits and get all my assignments in. Through doing all of the above I hope to go for accreditation and pass.

My First Post!

I've just collected the learning materials for the first course towards my art degree withe the OCA - Understanding Art 1 - Western Art.  I've already nearly completed their Foundation Art and Design course but this will be my first attempt at putting in my work to be assessed and gaining accreditation - exciting and scary!!!

I've chosen to work on an art history course initially as I'm hoping it will help me with the log books on my future courses. I feel I need to know a lot more about art and have lots of practice of thinking about what I like. I definately need practice in writing about art as so far I have got stuck every time I've tried - this will force me to just get on with it.

As well as being the beginning of a new degree this is also my first ever blog post...I'll be back soon