AP Art enters the most stressful time of the year
Within the few weeks before the holidays, it’s more than likely that you will find every single AP Art student either panicking, crying, or trying to catch some sleep during the school day. Outside of the AP Art world, many students are probably wondering, “What’s so hard about AP Art, don’t you just make a paintings?” It turns out that it’s a bit more complicated.
While the holidays may be exciting for others, AP Art students at this time of the year are under the most stress. Now with exams being before Winter Break, AP Art students have one less week to get all of their work done. Within these few weeks students are required to have their 6 projects completed for the quarter, which is already tough enough to achieve. On top of this the Scholastics Art Show is just around the corner.
“It’s a lot of work, you don’t realize how much work has piled up until you reach the few weeks before break, then everything starts to hit you all at once,”said AP Art student Brooke Kozar.
The Scholastics competition for senior art students is vital in gaining recognition and being exposed to different art schools with the idea of scholarships being an important factor. The students are required to submit an eight piece portfolio into the show of traditional art, anything from drawings to paintings. However, the amount of work doesn’t stop here. This year, AP Art students are also required to submit an eight piece photography portfolio due to the altered judging system that now contains more photography biased judges.
AP Art Teacher Sean Berrodin said, “...judges change every year; however, judges can be influenced and can have a huge impact. I have noticed that in the past several years, photography has been taking the main stage over traditional fine arts.”
To meet the deadlines for Scholastic's, the AP Art students need a week to prepare, organize, and submit their portfolios. This steals another week away and creates even more of a time crunch. The portfolios are all digitally submitted, which demands for carefully edited photos of the traditional artwork that represent them as well as they are perceived in person.
Taking photos of the work to be submitted is yet another challenge. Unfortunately, students cannot just take an Instagram quality photo, throw a filter on it and submit it, the process is much more detailed than you may think. To take an exceptional quality photo, students must take their work outside and have it on an easel flat up against a wall. With the weather getting colder it makes this task even more dreadful, especially when the wind picks up and blows your work off of the easel :- ). Large scale paintings on black canvas are one of the most challenging types of pieces to photograph due to the black being a magnet for light, which causes large glares to spread across the painting. More often than not, when students are taking photos there will be at least three other students holding up foam boards around the paintings to try to block out the sun to eliminate the glare.
While the setup of the work takes time, getting the camera settings perfect is yet another obstacle. The high quality cameras students are provided with take some time to learn about the different settings to ensure that the photo will come out correctly. Changing the ISO, white balance, and other settings that I’m still not even sure what they are, can make all the difference in taking a good photo.
“Taking photos is probably one of the hardest parts about AP Art, the photos have to come out perfectly and trying to get that ‘perfect photo’ is a lot harder than it seems,” AP Art student Amairani Chavez said.
After the photos are taken, they must be put into Photoshop to be carefully looked over and edited to ensure that the photo represents the work in its true splendor. All of the photos must be approved by teacher, Sean Berrodin, before submitting to Scholastics. There is no way around “faking a good photo” since it’s most probable that you would have to retake about half of the photos anyway. The added stress of the photo taking process takes away another huge chunk of time that could be spent working on the six projects that are due before break.
Just when you thought there couldn’t be anymore work to be done, there’s just one more thing all AP Art students must prepare for: the midterm. While the students do not have to study or prepare like they would for other classes, they must arrange as Berrodin calls, “The greatest thing you have ever done” for the Ohio Governor’s Show.
The midterm requires the students to work on the project for the given hour and a half; however, the project must be all drawn out or the canvas made, so that the entire time can be spent getting work done on it. The daunting task of creating something that should qualify as “the greatest thing you have done” is just another added stress factor. The project should stand out among everything else and should be of exceptional quality for the sole purpose of getting into the highly competitive Governor’s Show. Getting into the Top 25, or getting a piece even past regionals is a significant accomplishment that will get the attention of art schools from all over Ohio.
Whether or not you make it into any of the shows, there is a sense of pride for the incredible amount of work produced in such a short amount of time. It makes winter break feel even more relaxing without having to worry about meeting deadlines.
Berrodin said, “I believe student success has nothing to do with the shows, it is based on personal work and achievements.”
Now that there are only a few weeks left until break, the stress continues to grow for AP Art students. Although in the end, it allows for a relaxing winter break and a shot at scholarships for all of the hard work the students have done. Within the next few weeks, make sure that if you see an AP Art student struggling, give them some encouragement and probably give them some food too.
