Fine Art is about expressing yourself personally, creatively and practically to the highest level. The course is about developing skills, becoming more creative, having fun, learning and achieving success.  You will explore new techniques of drawing and painting, explore varied media and materials, develop work from your own expressive photographs, produce work from a range of varied subjects of your choice. Usually you will work from broad themes and produce sequences of related works, which lead towards large-scale and ambitious final pieces. 

Contemporary art is often used as a stimulus to develop new and challenging approaches to art, and we encourage students to participate in the creation of installations in the College, murals, competitions and other extension activities.

Students have access to acrylic, watercolour and oil paints, printmaking facilities including a printing press, large scale display boards, and support for digital art, including 5 x Ipad Pro and Apple Pencils that can be borrowed from the department. 

There are points during the year when students can stay later to work on with their projects, and workshops to support students who need a little extra help.  You will produce ambitious and exciting final pieces based on your development work.  Fine Art has a particularly well-developed set of digital visual resources.

Fine Art involves a wide variety of approaches and ways of creating art, often targeted to your individual skills and interests.  You will be producing practical artwork in lessons, presenting the outcomes on boards. You will discuss your art with your subject tutor on a regular basis, exchanging ideas and sharing thoughts about ways forward, looking at the work of fellow students, developing your own practical and decision making skills, producing annotations and notes and developing your work in a range of materials and approaches.

You will have the opportunity to visit galleries and exhibitions to help you engage with artist's work and understand how professional artists work, as well as gaining an understanding and appreciation of a professional context. In the course of your projects, you will research artists, find out about their success within the subject and discover what they have achieved.

This is a new-style linear A level course.  You will NOT take an external AS exam at the end of the first year.  In the second year of the course, you will take external exams that assess content covered in the first and second year.  These exams (along with portfolio work) will determine your A level grade.

The A level components will be assessed through a personal investigation and an externally set assignment.

• Students are invited to join a high achiever workshop aimed at stretching and challenging the most able;
• Regular competitions highlighted for students, for example the Royal Academy Summer A level online exhibition - these can vary from year to year depending on what is available;
• Extension tasks are set, especially in the first year to challenge those who are more able;
• There is a least one trip per year to a leading gallery;
• Opportunities for workshops from external visitors are explored - examples of these have been a visit from the Royal Academy to run life drawing, and currently working with UCA to explore workshops for this year;
• Ex students visiting to talk about their experiences - these have varied from discussion around foundation courses, Fine Art and architecture degrees;
• Additional workshop times are available for students to come in and work - whilst this tends to be enforced for less able students, it is also encouraged for all learners, and for high achievers is time for extra contact;
• Around final piece time students are offered the opportunity to stay late until 7pm with staff to make most of facilities;
• On the Fine Art Study Directory page, there area number of extension opportunities including a reading list, many links to galleries and websites that can increase students knowledge;
• New book resources for students to access;
• On Google Classroom there are example projects for students to visit in their own time to review and compare against their own work;
• The Fine Art Rep role is a chance to extend knowledge of art as much as representing the course, and is advertised to students as such;
• Following one to one reviews specific targets are set, and for those aiming for A/A* additional targets are offered;
• Many students progress onto prestigious Art & Design destinations such as UAL (number 2 in the world for Art & Design), Kingston University, Falmouth University, Goldsmiths, Loughborough University, The Arts University Bournemouth, UCA and many more.

You can choose to do fine art with a wide range of other subjects.  It fits well with other creative subjects and with the humanities.  It also works well with maths and physics for students interested in architecture.

The fine art course can lead down a variety of pathways, such as architecture, art journalism, illustration, interior design, set design, concept design, working in galleries/museums, computer game design, jewellery design, fashion and textile design, media industry and art education.  Those who complete the course are equipped with transferable skills and attitudes that are applicable to other industries such as business, advertising, marketing and IT.

Many students progress onto prestigious foundation and degree courses locally and nationally, such as The University of Arts London, Russell group Universities and the University of Creative Arts. 

Please see below for careers and labour market information for fine art - use the refresh buttons to find out about different courses and careers, and use the left and right arrows to view more detailed information.

You can find the prep work for this course at prepwork.farnborough.ac.uk.